For the last eight years or so we have wrapped up the Road Tour summers with the Sherm’s Custom Plating Road Tour in California. Sherm’s owner Gary Matranga and partners Art Holman and Dave Dougherty have built a nationwide customer base for their high-quality chrome plating and polishing business. Sherm’s has also been the official chrome plating supplier for the Road Tour since 2009. Over the past eight years the Sherm’s Plating Road Tour has traveled to the California Hot Rod Reunion, the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, and the NSRA Golden State Nationals. This year we decided to spend an entire week in the iconic beach town of Ventura. The Sherm’s Plating Surf’s Up Tour will visit museums, rod shops, and manufacturers in the surrounding area and plan to wrap up the 2017 ARP/STREET RODDER Road Tour summer in the sun and sand of beautiful Southern California.
Friday evening the registered participants got together at the Holiday Inn Express at Ventura Harbor. The hotel will be our base of operations for the week. At the meeting we handed out the credentials, complete week’s itinerary, canvas goody bag, hat, and license plate. We also spent time going over the entire tour schedule. For the first time we have planned to have a hot rod movie night on Tuesday, complete with a large outdoor screen sponsored by Danchuk. On Friday night we will get together for a beach-themed Halloween Party at the Danchuk Drive-In with a Beach Boys 50th anniversary concert video providing the entertainment. It is going to be a fun-filled week.
Saturday we had our brief drivers’ meeting at 9 a.m. It was then an hour drive to the new facilities of Hollywood Hot Rods. Troy Ladd and his team have built two Road Tour vehicles in the past and his recent Mulholland Speedster Packard has been taking all the major indoor car show awards for the last year. We were greeted at the new facilities in Burbank by Troy Ladd and his shop manager Jim Aust. We were all surprised and thrilled to find that the Mulholland Speedster was at the shop; seeing it in person was amazing. There were other projects in the works and they all had that high level quality and unique design that has become Hollywood Hot Rods’ trademark. The second floor of the new shop contains the business offices and the walls were covered with magazine articles and cover shots of all of their famous projects. It was exciting to visit with Troy and see the new facilities.
From Hollywood Hot Rods it was a short trip around the corner to the famous Bob’s Big Boy and we all enjoyed some burgers at this famous Burbank landmark. It was then off to Sylmar just about 20 minutes north on I-5. Our destination was the Nethercutt Collection and Museum. We have visited the Nethercutt on previous Road Tours and even for people who have been before it is always an incredible two-hour tour. The Nethercutt Museum is home to one of the finest collections of classic automobiles in the world, including a number of Pebble Beach Concours winners. The collection is located across the street from the museum and included an amazing display of automobiles displayed in a recreation of an extravagant automobile showroom from the ’30s. The collection also includes fine art, sculptures, and what has to be the largest collection of mechanical musical instruments in the world. We were treated to a selection of music played on these amazing mechanical wonders. It was a fantastic visit at the Nethercutt Collection.
We wrapped up our Saturday with a visit to Galpin Auto Sports (GAS) in Van Nuys. Their retail store is filled with automoblilia and car-related items and accessories. We were also fortunate to be able to see their amazing collection of vintage ’60s and ’70s show cars, including vehicles built by Ed Roth and Von Dutch. We were greeted at GAS by head restoration expert and custom car builder Dave Shuten. Dave invited us to visit his new facility at Galpin Speed Shop just around the corner from GAS in Van Nuys. In the showroom we saw the Grass Hopper ’27 T that Dave completed a few years ago. In the shop area we saw some of the upcoming projects that are being created by Dave with talent and imagination. Many thanks to Dave for a real behind-the-scenes look at his new shop/studio and Galpin Speed Shop.
It was a heck of a full day of automotive fun. Stay tuned as we are just getting started on the Sherm’s Plating Surf’s Up Road Tour.
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