Santa Maria 35th West Coast Kustoms Cruisin’ Nationals
- Johnny Angel Rey
- Aug 31, 2018
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 9, 2019
Hot Rods, Lowriders, Classics, Rat Rods and Pin Ups along with live music made this event memorable until next year.
I was fortunate enough to attend the Santa Maria 35th West Coast Kustoms Cruisin’ Nationals on Saturday May 26 at the Santa Maria Fairpark in a cool 67-degree weather.
The show featured American-make autos pre-1961. It started on Friday night with a Santa Maria City Cruise; the Show-n-Shine car show throughout the weekend and finished off on Sunday with a big swap meet. Some of the great legends of the “kustomizing” world were there to meet and greet. Plenty of food, craft and a variety of vendors and live music were there to feed and please the crowd. Pin stripers showed off their skills on panels who were later raffled out for charity.
As I walked around the park taking pictures of the custom vehicles I realized that there was a whole back area that I had missed a few years ago when I first attend this event. The atmosphere was great, all the people where very friendly and willing to share their story of their custom cars and the inspiration and motivation behind them.
Tim and Dawn Kerrigan are the owners of “Radilak” a 1950 Cadillac Coupe Deville drove down from Napa County to show off their beautiful car. Some of the car features are a 509 cubic inch motor delivering 615 horses along with a 700R4 transmission on a Fatman subframe with Air Ride Technology.
There were so many customs with wild paint jobs. I also seen a few 39 and 40 Mercs from original to full custom. Chevys Cadillac, Mopar and Buick were hitting heavy in the 50’s and 60’s as always. I didn’t count how many vehicles where there, but I know it was a lot, because I ran out of room on my compact disks. I would guess about over eight hundred to one thousand custom vehicles, truck and bikes.
Good Ol’ Burgers had a huge sign that made it irresistible to stop and get a burger for lunch. After sharing lunch with some friends, I continued to the second half of the park to see what other treasures I would encounter.
I met some members of the Instagators Car Club from Fresno and The Drifters Car Club from Santa Maria. Other clubs I spotted where the Emperors, Viejitos Central Coast Chapter and Los Grasosos.
After a long day of photographing some of the most beautiful custom cars and gorgeous pin ups, I decided it was time to head home, after all, it was a three-and-a-half-hour drive back home, but not before running into some more gorgeous pin up dolls. I had the opportunity and pleasure of meeting and photographing someone I follow on Instagram, “Hellcat Suzie” a pin up model and business owner of vintage items. This was definitely a great way to end the perfect day.
I made many new friends at this event and was invited to many car shows and get togethers all over California. It’s amazing how friendly this community of people are, and I can’t wait to see them at the next car show Welcome to your blog post. Use this space to connect with your readers and potential customers in a way that’s current and interesting. Think of it as an ongoing conversation where you can share updates about business, trends, news, and more.
GALLERIE
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