05-11-09 Hoods and Trunks and Everything In Between

The Main Street McDonough Program hosted its annual Classic and Open Car Show on Saturday, April 25th in the back parking lot of the Henry County Judicial Center located on John Frank Ward Boulevard in McDonough.

Owners in beautifully restored cars and trucks were lined up by 10:30 a.m. awaiting the start of registration, not scheduled to begin until 11:00. Early arrivals waited patiently for Main Street Director, Linda Schenk, the Main Street Advisory Board members and volunteers to get registration in order and started. Before long, the preliminaries were concluded, and the car show was underway.

Hoods were popped and propped, and trunks were opened and left that way for the AMCA National Certified Judges to make their rounds as each entry had its turn to be evaluated, judged, and carefully ranked.

The unusually hot April sun caught the brilliant shine obvious on every car and danced from one to the other as if keeping time with the deejay’s oldies-but-goodies music playing in the background. It would be a task to find even one dirty spot on anyone of the 60 cars registered for the day’s event. These cars and trucks definitely had their “shine” on.

Hot dogs were browning on the grill, french fries sizzling in the boiling grease, and drinks chilled in the coolers for the crowd that continued to stream in throughout the afternoon. “This show is bigger than last year’s,” said Main Street Director Linda Schenk. “We have more cars entered, and the crowd is larger. She added, “People have always had a fascination for beautiful cars, and we have some really gorgeous entries on display.

Once the judges finished their evaluations and tallied the points, Advisory Board Chairman Lee Freeman and Director Schenk announced the winners in both the Classic and Open divisions.

Designated models in the TOP 10 classic car division, featuring cars through 1972, were:

Best of show – A 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air

Among the Winners were:

1976 Corvette -- the newest
1933 Ford -- the oldest
1972 Dodge Challenger – Ladies’ Choice

Designated models in the TOP 10 open car division, which included cars from 1973 to this year, were:

Best of show -- A 1980 Pontiac Trans Am

Among the Winners were:
2008 Dodge Challenger SRT Hemi -- the newest and
Ladies’ Choice 1980 Chevrolet Corvette -- the oldest

“It was a great show,” stated Schenk. “The judges did a wonderful job, and we appreciate the interest shown in the Main Street Program Car Show.”