On a warm Memorial Day weekend, Santa Maria’s streets filled with the smell of exhaust and the sound of roaring engines. Hundreds of customized roadsters and vintage cars and trucks rolled in from all over the world for the West Coast Kustoms’ Cruisin’ Nationals car show. For event co-founder Penny Pichette, emotions ran high.
“It’s really overwhelming,” she said. “I never would’ve thought this would’ve lasted 30 years.”
The Cruisin’ Nationals, held in Santa Maria for the fourth time, was the first without Penny’s husband Rich, who passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2010. The Pichettes originated the West Coast Kustoms club and car show in Paso Robles on a whim in 1981 as a way to get Kustom enthusiasts from Northern and Southern California to meet halfway. Since its humble beginnings, it’s blossomed into one of the most popular Kustom shows in the world.
“We kind of outgrew Paso Robles,” Pichette said. “We started out with a couple hundred cars, and it was cool, but then when you bring in more people and more cars, then there isn’t the population there. It’s got to be intimidating for a city.”
After a free public show in the parking lot of the Historic Santa Maria Inn on May 27, participants cruised up Broadway Road, showing off their hard work to curious bystanders. From there, the festivities moved to the Fairpark for the rest of the weekend, where attendees were treated to more shows, rockabilly music, auctions, and meetings with some of Kustomizing’s greats.
One of Rich’s icons growing up, Penny said, was George “King of the Kustomizers” Barris, whose more famous projects include TV’s original Batmobile; cars for The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters, and Dukes of Hazzard; and commissioned work for Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Barris said he’s yet to miss a Cruisin’ Nationals show, and he was on hand again in 2011 with several of his creations.
“This is what you’d call the legend of all custom-type shows,” Barris said. “When Penny started this show in Paso Robles, that moved you into a little town that you could cruise down the street, meet and greet people, and become a part of the vast, growing Kustom and hot-rod community. It makes it more interesting, because you can see what other guys are doing.”
Barris began his career as an illegal street drag racer and literally put the “K” in “Kustom,” coining the term in the 1950s. He’s displayed his creations at shows since 1941, and at the age of 85, he still customizes modern hybrid and electric cars. Where most people see a car, Barris sees a project.
“You think, ‘What can I do to make it better?’ and ‘What’s the challenge?’” he said. “That’s the enjoyment.”
Though Barris said building the cars has its own rewards, what he gets most out of the numerous shows he does every year goes beyond the nuts and bolts of it.
“One thing I’ve found that’s important is it’s not about the Kustom cars, it’s about the people who make the cars,” Barris said. “Look how many years I’ve been in it. Everybody’s the same way.”
Barris’s fellow Kustom Hall of Fame designer John D’Agostino, of Discovery Bay, showed off his eye-catching “Caribbean,” a fully customized pink-and-pearl 1956 Packard worth more than $300,000. His “landmark” car took him 16 months to build, and it’s won awards at car shows across the globe.
D’Agostino, who brings a different car to the Nationals every year, has attended them all. He called the event the “Grammy Awards” for Kustomizing aficionados.
“This show is the granddaddy, the top outdoor Kustom show of California—if not the nation and the world,” D’Agostino said. “We read about it in magazines; we see it on TV. That’s the dream around the country: to get to this show.”
For D’Agostino, owner of Kustom Kars of California, the enjoyment he gets from displaying his projects remains unparalleled by any other feeling.
“I get that smile on their face, and to me that’s a turn-on,” he said. “You see those little kids, you make them happy, and then they grow up and say, ‘I remember 20 years ago when I was 7 or 8, you showed me one of your cars.’ They start out small, but we all get big.”
As he gently buffed and cleaned his fully modified 1941 Buick, Juan Gomez, of West Covina, explained how being around other longtime Kustomizers has inspired him in his own creations. He’s brought his award-winning car to the Cruisin’ Nationals show for the past seven years—for good reason.
“If you’re into Kustoms, this is the No. 1 show,” Gomez said. “That’s all there is to it. I don’t care what anybody says. If you’re into low riders, they’ve got their shows, hot rods have their shows, but when it comes to Kustoms, this is it.”
Compared to Paso Robles, where he attended the Cruisin’ Nationals for 15 years, Gomez said Santa Maria has so far welcomed the Kustom community with open arms.
“Down here, it seems like everybody’s more down to earth, and everybody seems to appreciate it more, so it’s caught on a lot quicker,” he said. “You can feel it when you go to the store or to a hamburger stand; everybody just seems to be into it.”
As West Coast Kustoms’ “boss,” Pichette said she’d worried about the impact of the economy and gas prices on attendance this year, but she ultimately found her fears to be unwarranted.
“Whether they save all year or not, I don’t know, they just find ways to be here,” Pichette said of the show’s participants. “That makes me feel pretty special to think that West Coast Kustoms created that.
“We’ve just grown as a family,” she added. “There’s just so much heart here, so much love, and it’s not just about cars; it’s about people. That’s the important part.”
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas took the muffler off his keyboard. Contact him at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jun 2-9, 2011.