For their 44th annual show, the NSRA Street Rod Nationals Plus once again returned to the Kentucky Exposition Center, located in Louisville, Kentucky. This event draws over 10,000 street rods, musclecars, customs, and classics every year. And with over 60,000 spectators each year marching through the gates to get a look at the cars, it’s quite the spectacular sight.

Blue rods under blue skies. Ideal weather conditions made this year a great one for turnout at the Nationals.

How Big Is It?

Inside the North Wing, spectators check out some of the cars in the prestigious builder’s showcase.

To give you an idea of the vastness of this event, the Kentucky Expo Center is the seventh largest facility of it’s kind in the United States. It houses over 1.2 million square feet of indoor space, most of which is utilized for vendors, seminars, the Builder’s Showcase, and the Women’s World attraction at this event.

Outdoors, the Expo Center is situated on over 400 acres of property, much of which is occupied with cars participating in the Street Rod Nationals, vendor parking, and judging areas. The only event that comes close to drawing the same amount of people, or participants, or utilizes this much of the Expo Center’s space at one time, is the Kentucky State Fair.

We were once again on hand to check out as many of the cool cars as possible over the course of the four day event. This year’s Nationals had picture perfect weather. The skies were partly cloudy to mostly sunny everyday, and temperatures barely creeped above 80 most of the days. This made for some ideal conditions for both participants and spectators.

The Trends

We saw more high-end builds than ever before out in the parking lots this year. As usual the Model A and T Fords are the predominant vehicle, though there are plenty of early Chevy and MOPARs as well. We also noticed, as usual, a ton of Tri-Five Chevy’s, a good mix of high-end street rod builds, and rides that proudly wore their patina mixed throughout the grounds.

Traditional styling also took its place among many of the cars. We saw our fair share of flathead engines and rods styled to look like they’d been preserved since the early 1950’s. These cars were a refreshing site from some of the trends we’ve seen in the past, that seem to never go away.

Dale Turner brought his recently completed ’49 Buick Superliner to the Pro’s Picks on Friday. Check back for a full exclusive feature on this gorgeous custom coming soon.

One thing that was apparent, there weren’t as many Rat Rods this year. Instead we saw more of a mashup between the Rat look, patina, and traditional rodding, combined in many cases with modern flair. We’re not sure if the Rat trend has faded, morphed into something new, or if fewer of them are being hacked together and maybe we’re seeing a trend back to proper traditional hot rodding.

However, trucks are a growing presence. While always popular, we saw more custom and classic trucks than ever this year. With the Nationals now opened up to vehicles from as late as the early ’80s there were numerous C-10s, K5 Blazers, Broncos and F1s and 100s at the event. These too ran the gammit from nearly stock truck to beautifully-built customs.

Free Help

The NSRA offers free safety inspections throughout the event, and the safety booth is always busy, with cars typically lined up to get their safety inspection sticker for this year. Inspectors often catch minor details that are easily overlooked but sometimes very important for a safe ride. Some days see well over 100 cars pass through the safety area.

We were digging this 4.6 SOHC equipped high-boy – thumbs up for putting a modern Ford engine in a Ford.

Powermaster was on hand all weekend as well, not just in their booth indoors, but also with an outdoor crew offering free trouble shooting and analysis of starting and charging systems. These guys work out in the heat all weekend long, and the analysis is performed for free. Some problems are easily fixed by correcting poor connection or ground issues, often something that can be easily repaired on site. Others require more extensive work like an alternator or starter replacement. There’s never a shortage of vehicles lined up at the Powermaster tent.

Ridetech also offers free suspension checks, offering show-goers advice on how to make their car ride, or perform better. Many cars that show up are oversprung for their specific application, or have springs that suffer from coil bind due to improper application. The Ridetech guys often can educate rodders and recommend products to better suit their needs.

Patina, and an early Hemi – yup, sign us up.

Circle Of Winners

Sunday brings out the circle of winners awards – 40 rides are selected from various judging criteria. For every car that’s in the circle though, there are probably 100 or more that could have easily competed for an award. While the judging is very fair, spectator taste is often subjective, and while we encourage anyone attending the nationals to check out the circle of winners on Sunday and see the rides up close, this is far from the main attraction. Getting out into the parking lot is where the coolest and most interesting rides are generally found.

The crowd starts to filter in for the circle of winners early Sunday afternoon.

Friday afternoon was judging for the Classic Instruments Pro’s Picks. Chosen by a panel of judges, these twelve cars which must come to a pre-determined judging area, are some of the most beautiful cars in the world.

The winners of this year’s Pro’s Picks are:

We could have spent an entire weekend staring at Neal East’s ’27 Ford modified which took home a Pro’s Pick.

• Ed Sears – 1935 Buick
• Brian and Charlene Baker – 1955 Chevy 210
• Sid Tracy – 1969 Firebird
• Steve and Sheri Tracy – 1940 Chevy
• Joe Bailey – 1956 Chevy 210
• Tim Kilkeary – 1949 Chevy Woody
• Jerry Rice – 1956 Chevy 210
• Robert and Denise Cox – 1955 Chevy Bel Air
• Kenneth and Valerie Delcour – 1934 Ford Four Door
• Chad Adams – 1932 Ford Roadster
• Michael Bunch – 1959 Impala Convertible
• Neal East – 1927 Ford Modified

MOPAR country Circle of Winners also had some mighty fine representation.

MOPAR Country is another of the awards that is done through judging, and the cars are selected from a group of judged entries. Only five are chosen, with usually near 100 showing up for judging, this could be a tougher competition than even the Pros Picks.

This year’s MOPAR Country winners are:

• Mark Aubrey, 1970 Challenger
• Paul and Raquel Barber, 1939 Plymouth
• Greg O’Connel, 1963 Dodge 330
• Rick Ratajczak 1968 Charger RT

United Parcel Service (UPS) is a large employer for Louisville. UPS also sponsors the UPS Commercial Way awards, which selects two rides that represent the spirit of the company. This year there was no shortage of entrants, and the winners were:

• Ron Caicco – 1956 F-100
• Jack Sorich – 1956 F-100

Jack Sorich’s ’56 F-100 features Supercharged Edlebrock E-Force power, and was a pick for UPS Commercial Way.

PPG also selects a handful of cars for Outstanding Use of Color. Like the name of the award implies, these rides are beautifully painted and detailed, and stand out from many of the others with their beautiful use of paint.

The paint on Ron Sall’s 1959 Corvette was so slick and rich it looked as deep as a swimming pool.

PPG Outstanding Use of Color Winners:

• Robert Carpenter, 1970 Mustang Mach 1
• Ken Kerl, 1932 Ford Coupe
• Ron Sall, 1959 Corvette

The Comp Cams Thumpr award is always given to a vehicle that best represents the spirit of that hard hitting, thumping sound, made famous by a big cam under the hood. This year’s Thumpr award went to Richard Wahl of Louisville, KY with his ’33 Ford Coupe.

The long haul awards this year went to Ron and Barb Brandelli, with their 1936 Ford, from Oak harbor, Washington. The outside the continental USA award went to George Pauly with his 1954 Bel Air, all the way from Queensland, Australia.

It was an incredible weekend at the Street Rod Nationals Plus, we spent four days walking the cars, and the vendors area taking in all of the sights and sounds. The swap meet appeared to have been bigger than ever, and had we brought the checkbook, we likely would have taken home more than a few parts, probably an entire project car (but that might not have gone over so well with the wife). We look forward to the 45th annual show next year, and can’t wait to see what shows up.

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