Hot-rod night

Once a week, it's cruising time again in Danvers

text by Michelle Chihara
photos by Geoffrey Kula

Under the serrated edge of a slow-moving cloud front, several hundred cars are glowing in the dusk light of the parking lot behind the Liberty Tree Mall. A long row of classic Fords. A low pocket of Corvettes from the '50s. A clump of 1960 Pontiacs. Two Edsels. One Bentley. They're lovingly waxed, obsessively restored, and unbelievably souped up. In fire-engine red, periwinkle blue, banana yellow, and maroon, they flock together like tropical birds -- proud and preening, with the occasional hood lifted in display. A DJ plays the Chantels and Bruce Springsteen. Smoke from the Kiwanis hot-dog stand wafts across the blacktop.

Every Wednesday night from May through October, these cars -- and their owners -- migrate from all over New England to the Danvers Antique and Hot Rod Car Show. The biggest, longest-running regular "cruise night" in the area, it's partly a parade, but mostly a social gathering. The asphalt, the engines, the testosterone of cruise night are tuned down and smoothed over with nostalgia.

Tom Angers, who co-founded the event seven years ago, is acting as gatekeeper this Wednesday night. A 52-year-old plastics worker, Angers sits at the entrance to the lot and watches to be sure the arriving cars pass muster. He holds out a plastic milk jug for donations, which go to the Danvers police department's D.A.R.E. program. He ticks off statistics for each car that rolls by: "Chevy 350 engine, 345-horsepower Muncie four-speed transmission, nine-inch Ford rear-end."

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Classic car photo gallery

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Touching his thumb and forefinger together for emphasis, Angers patiently gives a little history of hot-rodding. The original hot rods, cars from the '30s that young men fixed up for cruising and drag racing, "had junkyard parts and crank-up windows and were crude to the point where you were lucky if you got a decent ride." But hot-rodding has aged with its participants, and now it's more about amenities: the AC, the power windows, the CD players, and the cushy suspension systems. "You get a little older," he says, "you want a little more comfort."

The classic hot rod is still a Ford roadster from the '30s, but pretty much anything that's been souped up gets into the show. "If it's later than 1970, I look for some chopping and channeling," Angers says, which means lopping the top off to turn the car into a convertible, or lowering the frame over the wheels.

The show includes museum pieces as well as souped-up hot rods. Over among the Pontiacs, Gordon Sprague hovers near the long, flat, teal-colored Catalina that his mother bought in 1966. The car has its original paint job, stainless-steel detail, and aqua upholstery. "It's not modified," he says. "It's a family car from the '60s. A transportation car." A faded photograph shows Sprague, age six, leaning out of the driver's seat with a goofy grin. "I fell in love with it when my mother bought it," he says. "I knew it was just a matter of time before it would be mine.

"She still loves it. I send her pictures."

Clearly, American cars do sometimes provoke a deep and abiding passion -- something inexplicable, like love between people. There's also a tribal element. "I don't like to say one car is better than another," says Sprague, who parks his Catalina every week with the other Pontiacs at the show. It's simply that "people who love Pontiacs join the Pontiac club." Tonight, the Pontiac people are tolerating a Ford on Sprague's left side and, two Pontiacs away, a Chevrolet Corvette belonging to Dick Toleos, who went to high school with Sprague. "We started parking together. I used to have a Pontiac," Toleos says, but Sprague "still lets me park with him."

The Pontiacs, and some other cars, are dismissed by Vito Venuti with a casual sweep of his arm. "If you actually look around, you're not going to see too many actual hot rods," he says. "That whole row over there? They're not hot rods. They're classics." In a tight-fitting T-shirt and black jeans, Venuti is sporting a deep tan that sets off his white hair and the Colgate-worthy enamel on his reproduction 1932 Ford roadster. A real-estate broker in Melrose, Venuti is proud that his roadster does not, like many of the pristine classic cars, sit garaged. "It goes 150 miles an hour," he says. "I've taken it to Indianapolis and back, and not in a trailer. We drive them."

Venuti offers no more justification for his preferences than Sprague does. "It's the era we grew up in. It's the cars we built in the garage. The younger guys who grew up with Trans Ams, they're going to get Trans Ams. Have you seen American Graffiti? That's us. That's us when we were kids," Venuti says.

Most of the guys here are well into their 40s, if not their 50s or 60s. They talk about working on cars growing up, about their childhoods, their fathers, the summers spent in the garage. But only a small minority have recruited their sons into the passion. In the age of flexible polymers and processors under the hood, the nature of America's romance with cars is clearly changing.

The exceptions keep the hope alive. Back at the entrance, Tom Angers's grandson Mike stops by to say hi with a couple of his friends. When his buddy blurts out that his favorite car is a Porsche, Mike hisses at him, "No -- what's your favorite real car?"

Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com.