AND THE WINNER IS …

Interestingly, this car was completed in time for the Lonestar Rod and Kustom Round Up in April last year, and, by the time it rolled into the halls at Pomona less than a year later, it already had 10,000 miles on the clock. It is simply unheard of for a car with that kind of mileage to compete for the most grand-daddy award of them all! Pre-show prep included debugging the car and touching up a few stone chips, along with an extensive clean-up. So, when the Hollenbeck ’32 was chosen for the title this year, it was a merited accolade. Terri is the youngest daughter of famed rodders Andy and Sue Brizio; anyone with those genes is born to drive hot rods, which is exactly what the Hollenbeck ’32 was built for: driving. The crowning of this car as America’s Most Beautiful Roadster for 2016 has put reality back into hot rodding and taken the gigabuck money typically required to win at this level out of the equation. It has proven that you can build a quality hot rod and win on the road and at a show, if that’s your gig. Terri’s dad, Andy, won the award back in 1970 with his ‘Instant T’ T-bucket. He then drove to Peoria, Illinois, for the Street Rod Nationals. Fast forward to today, and I can’t help but think that history has a strange way of repeating itself. Terri’s brother, Roy Brizio, has also won a couple of times with customers’ cars, so there’s a lot of emotion around it all. In an era when we are trying to host these American-type events here in New Zealand, and everyone is trying to raise the bar with car builds based on US trends, it’s great to see that the backto-basics attitude is alive and well. Having fun and the ability to drive the wheels off it is exactly what Darryl and Terri built their car for; taking the accolades as they come along is just a bonus. That’s a concept to live by with our current or future projects in mind, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s too easy to lose sight of the whole having-fun-withcars thing; too often, it becomes a case of one-upmanship and competition. New Zealand is way too small for any of that kind of carry-on.