Car show offers bright, shiny and unusual - The Banner-Graphic

Among those gleaming in the noonday sun was the brilliant Jaguar Italian racing red pearl-colored 1954 Ford F-100 pickup truck that earned Best of Show honors for Jay and Karen Arnold of Plainfield. Also standing out was the stylish 1954 Ford Skyliner with the see-through top owner by Jim McAfee of Russellville who positioned an old magazine ad on the back seat that fittingly read "the most distinctive car under the sun. Or perhaps the bright red 1940 Ford coupe of Al Seidel of Indianapolis or the candy-apple red 1950 Mercury Phil Humphreys of Greencastle acquired recently may have tripped your trigger. But certainly the most unique vehicle on display was the "1934 Gatsby," as owned Richard Evans of Brazil calls it. The stylish roadster, reminiscent of the Duesenbergs and Auburns of that Gatsby era, is a creation Dr. Frankenstein would love. Parts from no less than nine vehicles have been salvaged to create Evans' Gatsby. After all he's used his electrician background ("You know," he said, "an electrician's work is about 10 percent electrical and 90 percent mechanical") to create a whole that is certainly greater than the sum of its varied parts. The frame is a modified 1981 Ford Crown Victoria reshaped and stripped out, he said. A 302-cubic-inch Ford engine from that Crown Vic powers the car with a transmission from the same vehicle. Evans got the idea for his creation after finding a guy in California creating "Gatsbys. Source: www.bannergraphic.com