Autorama 2025 Concludes, Conjures up Good Memories

The Detroit Autorama has long been a favorite shows to attend. It's all about the cars and culture, for better or for worse. 

And 2025 appears no different. A well-deserved congratulations to Tom, Christy and Josh Bresnahan for their families 1955 Chevrolet Nomad, the "Grey Madder" built by Southern Comfort Customs out of North Carolina. It took home the coveted honor as the Don Ridler Memorial Award winner for 2025. 

The Ridler Award honors Don Ridler, an athlete and Autorama promoter. The award was created after his death in 1963 to honor Ridler, who was known for his creativity and professionalism. The award goes to the vehicle that best embodies those characteristics.

Photos will hardly do the winning car justice; though you can certainly get a sense of the hours of labor and craftsmanship poured into the competing cars. The Great 8 certainly is that, filter down to the 'Sweet 16' and even just general show vehicles that ooze passion.

It's important we continue to celebrate the honest to goodness craftsmanship that goes into many unrecognized builds and customs. And while it may be "easy" to buy a Art Morrison chassis, slap a LS crate motor under the hood and buy some wheels, it takes a lot of work and talent to pull together these builds that compete for honors.

The formerly named Cobo Hall, now called Huntington Place, (yet another corporate sponsorship snoozefest) still hosts the annual hot rod show, which is in its 72nd annual. And while I have not attended in person in a matter of years, it's still an event I love to follow thanks to the connection and coverage of social media.

Not so long ago the North American International Auto Show also occupied Cobo Hall as well. And with its once seemingly endless budgets for stages, booths, and displays - the switch to Autorama was a bit of a palette cleanser. 

While at the NAIAS, you're sipping champagne and getting monogrammed Moleskin notebooks at the Lincoln booth. Skip ahead a few weeks later, and you're watching the greaser car club member crack open a beer in the basement at 9am next to a Chevrolet Valliant in original patina. 

How about the guy that would just randomly sit down at a car, and hand sketch an incredible piece of art? Or the pin-striping clinic in a random booth for nearly nothing. A seminal experience for gearheads year after year.

You would walk out on the the Autorama show floor and hear the hum and buzz of mercury-vapor lights,(now all replaced with soulless LED's no doubt). Occasionally a racecar turns over, a few engines rev, or a big-cammed domestic eight cylinder lopping along and echoing off the bare walls. You hate to miss that kind of stuff.

Autorama will always be a great place to get a feel for genuine enthusiasts and passion. If you're in the area, it's worth the admission. Even if it's just to say you've been, it's a proverbial check mark for the automotive bucket list.

I'll miss the late-night eerily empty halls and corridors of the former Cobo Hall. The empty beer bottles in the elevator and the general malaise of a rundown urban environment. But I'm more than happy to see hot-rodding carried on and the next generations involved and participating. Long live gasoline.