The love affair with cars continues

Music played from the courthouse lawn and people walked along the square Friday night, eating food from barbeque stands and catching up with old friends and acquaintances, as people are want to do at any good block party.

The 2010 Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour was just rolling into Newton, starting with a cruise-in event that featured everything from refined, classic cars to those capable of flexing a little muscle. More than $3 million worth of automobiles filled the square’s parking spots. There were also more than a couple sour-looking lemons.

But the successful kick-off was small beans compared to the main event Saturday at Iowa Speedway, where organizers said more than a half billion dollars worth of automobiles lined the raceway’s gravel parking lot.

Attendees hailed from nearly every corner of the country, many coming to ogle beauties of steel, paint and rubber, while others sat in lawn chairs and admired those admiring their work.

Howard Hecker, who splits time throughout the year living in Ankeny and Texas, brought his purple 1935 Plymouth.

“I’ve been working on it two years,” Hecker said while wiping the car down. He added that those two years might seem like a quick fix, but he used “every minute” of his free time on the car.

The Plymouth, Hecker said, was one of only 32 originally built in Detroit. Clearly, trying to stand out from the crowd in a car show such as this was going to require more than a fancy paint job.

Lane Stroik, of Steven’s Point, Wisconsin, said this was the third year he and his Ariel Atom took part in the tour.

The vehicle, which with no doors has the look of a Formula 1 race car, was one of the more unique looking and harder to find cars in the tour’s collection, as only about 100 are manufactured in the U.S. each year. Stroik said that only 120 of his model were produced, his being the 94th.

The Atom goes from 0-60 mph in less than three seconds and weighs significantly less than almost all cars with comparable horsepower. The speed of the vehicle has given some of Stroik’s passengers reason to think twice before accepting another ride. For good reason, he has non-smoking styled symbols on the dash indicating vomiting and cell phone calls are prohibited.