Though cloudy skies loomed, the rain never came, and more than 70 entrants showed up to the 16th annual Seattle Children’s Hospital Walmart Benefit Car Show at the Walmart Supercenter in Chehalis Saturday, June 14.
Along with the $25 entry fee for car show participants, attendees raised money by voting for their favorite cars by placing money in a donation bowl in front of each vehicle.
According to car show organizer and Walmart department manager Krista Wilcutt, $3,736 was raised during the show — including $477 from Franz Bakery, which donated its profits from food sales at its booth during the car show.
“They do that every year,” Wilcutt added.
In 2023, a total of $3,066 was raised to donate to the Seattle Children’s Hospital, and last year’s car show brought in $4,380 in donations.
She thanked all the attendees and entrants for coming out. She said the 17th annual Seattle Children’s Hospital Walmart Benefit Car Show will return to the Chehalis Walmart in 2026.
Some of the cars that caught a Chronicle reporter’s eye at the show included a custom 24-karat gold accented 1981 DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) DeLorean and a pair of British cars parked back-to-back — a 1980 British Motor Company (BMC) MGB convertible roadster and a 2023 McLaren Artura supercar.
A dream DeLorean
Owned by Lenora Tanaka of Chehalis, her 1981 DMC DeLorean is truly her dream car, and one she’s wanted since she graduated from high school.
“I went into the (U.S.) Air Force in 1985 right out of high school, and of course ‘Back To The Future’ came out that same year, and I was just in love with them ever since,” Tanaka said. “Finally, I got the opportunity to buy one locally here in Washington. The old owner of this, his name was Cliff Query, super nice guy, but unfortunately today marks the one-year anniversary of his passing.”
Query sold the DeLorean to Tanaka before he passed after suffering a stroke which left him unable to drive it anymore.
“It was his baby, so to find me, he thought God sent him an angel in me who would take care of it, and I’m privileged to have it,” said Tanaka.
He originally purchased the DeLorean while living in California, which is also where he had the custom 24-karat gold accents added throughout both the car’s exterior and interior — and even on the engine.
“There’s over 300 parts in the engine alone that are 24-karat gold plated,” Tanaka added.
Owning a DeLorean in California during the 1980s had other perks as well, including access to events where the stars from “Back To The Future” would make appearances and even sign the cars for the owners.
“When ‘Back To The Future’ was doing a movie premier or a celebrity meet and greet, they would invite all the DeLorean owners to bring their cars to get autographed for free. Because Cliff lived there, it was nothing for him to just drive to all these events and get signatures,” Tanaka said.
The signatures of Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine Thompson, Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer Parker, and Bob Gale, one of the film’s producers and directors, can be found on the passenger’s side visor and dashboard of Tanaka’s DeLorean.
And on the driver’s side visor, the signature of Christopher Lloyd, who played Emmett “Doc” Brown.
“I have other things that Cliff gave to me when I bought the car, like an autographed picture of Michael J. Fox, things like that,” she added.
Despite DMC only producing DeLoreans from 1981 to 1983 before the company collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, Tanaka said spare parts aren’t hard to come by. This is because many DeLoreans were left unassembled following the bankruptcy, and the parts simply put into storage.
While many attribute DeLorean’s downfall to the drug trafficking charges owner John DeLorean faced, along with the fallout from less-than-positive reviews and build quality issues upon the car’s initial release, Tanaka doesn’t see it that way.
“I can tell you in every interview John DeLorean did as that company was folding, he was saying the same thing over and over again, ‘I don’t care if I go broke and file for bankruptcy and lose everything. What I care about are the people in Ireland where I helped squelch a civil war,’” said Tanaka. “It was Protestants and Catholics fighting, and he went there and hired both in his factory. They both came on level ground, and peace overcame the area. And for the first time in their life, they were making a living that they could actually afford things with, they weren’t poverty stricken.”
The DeLorean plant was located in Dunmurry, a small town in Northern Ireland. The total number of DeLoreans produced during those years is estimated at around 9,000, and Tanaka said only about 5,000 of those are still left on the road today.
British cars parked back-to-back
While the Irish-born gold-accented DeLorean stood out, a pair of its British-made cousin cars also did, and they happened to be parked back-to-back as well.
The first was a classic 1980 BMC MGB convertible roadster owned by Michael Painter of Chehalis, and behind it was a 2023 McLaren Artura supercar owned by Roy Sein of Kelso.
BMC began production of MGBs starting in 1962, and continued up until 1980 when production was put on hiatus until The Rover Group purchased rights to the MGB design and began making them again in 1992.
“As a kid, I always wanted something that sat low and I was able to shift the gears in and drop the top. This was available, and it was in my price range,” Painter said.
MGB roadsters featured a 1.8 liter inline-4 engine with a 4-speed manual transmission which produced 95 horsepower — which pushes the small 1-ton car from 0 to 60 mph in around 12 seconds, which may not sound like much by today’s standards but was fairly quick in 1980.
Designed and produced 43 years later, Sein’s Artura is just a tad bit quicker.
Designed by McLaren Automotive — which also currently designs race cars for the Formula 1 and Indycar racing series — the Artura has a 3-liter twin-turbocharged V6 hybrid engine producing a tire-blistering 671 horsepower. Its 0 to 60 time is 2.9 seconds and according to McLaren, the car has a top speed of 205 mph.
Speed isn’t the main reason Sein chose the Artura over other exotic supercars he was considering, including a Lamborghini.
“This one still had its three-year warranty on it, and it also has the pop-up (butterfly) doors, it’s like its party trick,” Sein said.
