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2023 Grand National Roadster Show Mega Photo Gallery | Hot rod heaven

POMONA, Calif. — From an outsider's perspective, it would be easy to assume that the Grand National Roadster Show has always been a Southern California institution. After all, it celebrates the diverse postwar car culture of the region — hot rods, lead sleds, lowriders, and more. However, the show had its roots in NorCal in 1950 when Al Slonaker and his hot rod club showed their custom cars at the Oakland Expo. The GNRS moved to Pomona, California, in 2004. By then it had grown exponentially and seen about a dozen more car customization trends come and go. However, the show and its centerpiece award, the America's Most Beautiful Roadster prize, celebrate what is perhaps the first of those trends: the American hot rod in its purest form. Today, in its 73rd year, the GNRS is the oldest indoor car show in America. Annually it welcomes 500-800 cars, gathered into special themes like Tri-Five Chevys or Volkswagen Bugs. At this year's show, which was last weekend, a special hall was dedicated to pickup trucks built between 1948-98, including mini-trucks, groovy camper bed conversions, and resto-mods.  However, of all the vehicles presented, only nine are eligible for the America's Most Beautiful Roadster award. Winners get their names engraved on a 9-foot-tall perpetual trophy that was, according to The Ultimate Hot Rod Dictionary, the largest in the world when it debuted in 1950. Slonaker chose the word "roadster" initially because "hot rod" bore slightly negative outlaw connotations in 1950. Only American cars built before 1937 of certain body styles — roadsters, roadster pickups, phaetons, touring cars — are eligible, and they cannot have roll-down side windows.  Cars in the running for the cup cannot have been shown anywhere else before their debut at the GNRS.  Contestants for this accolade essentially build their cars to the a platonic ideal of a hot rod. This year the honors went to Jack Chisenhall of San Antonio, Texas, for his "Champ Deuce," a 1932 Ford Roadster. It's exactly what you picture when you think of a hot rod, but distilled to its absolute essence.  Other standouts included "Green Eyes," a two-tone green 1959 Chevy El Camino  with a heavily metal-flaked bed, "Blue Monday," a 1964 Buick Riviera lowrider, and a personal favorite, "Purple Reign," a purple and black 1951 Mercury. Cars may have started out as tools, but there aren't shows like this filled with custom refrigerators.

Junkyard Gem: 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT

If you like affordable, mid-engined two-seaters, the 1980s were your decade. Fiat (and, a bit later, Bertone) offered the X1/9, Toyota sold MR2s, and even General Motors got into the act by creating the Fiero. Available from the 1984 through 1988 model years, the Pontiac Fiero showed plenty of promise but ended up being mostly disappointing, in some ways echoing the career of the Chevy Corvair of a couple of decades earlier. Today's Junkyard Gem is a once-spiffy 1986 Fiero GT, found in a self-service yard near Denver, Colorado. After a long and painful development period stretching all the way back to John DeLorean's XP-833 Banshee (which ended up being a major influence behind the original Opel GT), the Fiero finally debuted in 1983 as a 1984 model. The top-of-the-model-range GT appeared the following year. The Fiero was built as a notchback coupe and as a fastback, with all the GTs being the latter type. I couldn't get the engine lid open, but this car would have left the assembly line (in Pontiac, Michigan) with a 2.8-liter V6 rated at 140 horsepower. This car has a five-speed manual transmission, making it a credible rival for Toyota's MR2.  The 1986 MR2 was less powerful than the Fiero GT (112 horsepower versus 140), but also scaled in significantly lighter (2,459 pounds against the Pontiac's 2,780 pounds). The MR2 also cost less, priced at $11,298 while the Fiero GT cost $12,875 (that's about $30,540 and $34,805, respectively, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). Meanwhile, the $6,998 Honda Civic CRX two-seater lured away many potential Fiero buyers despite being a front-engined/front-wheel-drive car, and the $7,186 Ford EXP/Mercury LN7 also put a dent in Fiero sales. I can't find a price for the 1986 Bertone X1/9, but it cost a hard-to-believe $13,990 in 1984. GM still was using five-digit odometers in many vehicles by the middle 1980s, but this Fiero has a six-digit unit and thus we can see that it nearly achieved 150,000 miles during its driving career. The 1984-1987 Fiero suffered from a parts-bin suspension design, with the front suspension borrowed from the Chevrolet Chevette and the entire rear transaxle/suspension assembly lifted from the front end of the Chevrolet Citation. For the 1988 model year, GM finally spent the money to design an improved Fiero-specific suspension … and then promptly put a halt to production.

Fiero-based Zimmer Quicksilver was objectively terrible, but we'd totally drive it

Now here's something you don't see everyday. It's listed in our classified ads as a 1986 Pontiac Fiero, but as you can see, that description is a bit misleading. In fact, it's a Zimmer Quicksilver, which was indeed built atop the guts of a mid-engine Fiero coupe but was heavily modified by the Zimmer Motorcars Corporation at a facility in Pompano Beach, Florida. And the one you see here actually seems to be a pretty decent deal for a highly unusual car. We're not sure what was a more popular starting point for kit and custom cars in the 1980s and 1990s, but it would have to be either the Fiero or the vintage air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle. Fiero-based machines usually mimicked the design direction of any number of highly desirable Italian stallions, most commonly, we'd guess, the Lamborghini Countach. The Quicksilver is an altogether different animal, with over a foot of extra wheelbase added in front of the A-pillar to make for a dramatic, long and low silhouette that somehow still only has barely enough room for two passengers in its leather- and wood-lined interior. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. A stock 2.8-liter V6 engine from General Motors is mated to a three-speed automatic transmission that sends 140 horsepower and 170 pound-feet of torque to the rear wheels. Period road tests found the 0-60 run took a little over 10 seconds, which is terrible today but wasn't all that bad for the mid '80s. Best we can tell, only around 170 Quicksilvers were made between 1984 and 1988, which are, not coincidentally, the same years that Pontiac produced the Fiero. The 1986 Zimmer Quicksilver you see here is priced at $18,495 and shows well under 30,000 miles on the odometer. There aren't a lot of Zimmer Quicksilvers currently for sale for us to compare, but the ones we did find that had sold within the last few years suggest a little under $20,000 is a reasonable asking price. It could be a fun and offbeat addition to the garage, and if nothing else, you're not likely to see another one at your local car show. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.