About 110 cars filled the parking lot and field in front of the Veterans Memorial Museum for the Hot Rods for Holli benefit car show on Sunday, Aug. 13.
The event was organized by local gearhead Katy McCain.
After organizing her first car show last year at the museum, she chose to do it again this year as a fundraiser for her sister, Holli McCain.
“For my car show this year, I wanted to do a ‘Hot Rods for Holli’ benefit. She’s fighting breast cancer,” Katy McCain said. “She actually helped me get my ‘67 Pontiac, which made me a lot of the friends I have here, so, it’s affectionately our car.”
“I claim it. I love that car,” Holli McCain added.
The sisters thanked the Veterans Memorial Museum for hosting the car show, as well as all their sponsors, including Matt Gray, of Matty G Custom Guns out of Kelso, which provided a customized 1911 pistol as a raffle prize for the car show.
For more information on Matty G Custom Guns, visit its instagram at backyard_tactical or email Gray at mattygcustomguns@gmail.com.
In addition to the car show and raffles, a pinup contest was also held.
As for the cars that caught the eye of The Chronicle, a customized lowrider 1948 Pontiac Streamliner coupe and a 1977 Toyota Wolverine pickup truck stood out among the rest.
Not your typical lowrider
While most lowriders feature chrome bumpers, grills and trim that glints in the sunlight along with highly polished paint jobs, Toutle resident Andy Wells’ 1948 Pontiac Streamliner four-door coupe instead sports a copper-colored grill, bumpers and trim and a mixed matte black and turquoise paint job.
“I just wanted it to be different,” Wells said.
He’s owned the car for nearly three years and has done most of the work himself, including installing a custom Thompson submachine gun shifter for the car, completing its old-school gangster vibe.
Streamliners were produced by Pontiac from 1933 until 1951. In 1948, 160,857 Streamliners were sold, accounting for 66% of Pontiac’s sales that year, according to the fourth edition of the Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946-1975.
A rare Toyota?
The Toyota Tacoma is the car company’s famous small pickup truck and has been a staple of the company in America since the 1990s, being offered in both two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive options.
Before the Tacoma became so popular, Toyota first ventured into the four-wheel drive pickup truck world in 1978 when it debuted the Wolverine upgrade package for its standard two-wheel drive pickup truck before finally introducing its own factory-made four-by-four in 1979, according to Danny Elliott, of Castle Rock.
Due to the upgrade package’s high price, not many were sold stateside. Those who did purchase it received the necessary parts to convert the truck to four-wheel drive along with Wolverine decals. Elliott’s father originally purchased the upgraded 1977 Toyota Wolverine in Longview in 1979.
“My dad just happened to be driving by and saw it, so he bought it. My mom wasn’t very happy with it,” Elliott said. “Of course, nobody really knew what he had.”
Through his research, he’s found the original receipt for the truck, which shows the Wolverine package was purchased. Elliott is currently in contact with Toyota representatives and trying to get his truck officially documented by the company as the second running Toyota Wolverine in existence in America.
The only other Wolverine officially documented by Toyota is located in Colorado, Elliott said.
Aside from the original receipt, several parts on the car prove it had the Wolverine upgrade package installed, including the wheel mounts and oil pan.
“I kind of had doubts that this was a real Wolverine,” Elliott said. “But a stock Toyota pickup oil pan won’t fit on a Wolverine. So Wolverine and Warren had some company named SQL Engines build aluminum, finned oil pans that would have clearance for the suspension.”
Despite having a bit of a drive up from Castle Rock, once he heard about the show, there was no way Elliott was going to miss it.
“I just survived cancer, and so when I heard about this I said, ‘I’m coming up too,’” Elliott said.
