When he started flipping hamburgers at the A&W Restaurant, Jimmy Gribble, then 14, was like most boys just reaching their teens and eligible for a restricted driver’s license. He was car crazy.
“I liked hot rods,” Gribble said, as he carefully wiped dust from the glistening black paint on an upscale and highly modified car he will have at the Neil Westervelt Memorial Iola Rotary Club Show Car in Riverside Park Saturday.
Cars from throughout eastern Kansas — and a handful from out-of-state — are expected to give fanciers a huge menu to choose from, lined up in the south part of the park’s picnic grounds. Spectators will vote for winners in many categories, with trophies awaiting.
“I got out of hot rods after I got married (to Teresa) and started a family,” Gribble said, but his wife understood his interest in cars and was perfectly willing to have him indulge himself when he purchased a 1974 Chevy Nova hatchback about nine years ago.
Initially, Gribble’s plan was not to rebuild the car to where it is today. He thought a new coat of paint and a little tweaking here and there would be enough, especially after a fellow who was to help begged off. He planned on a car for weekend drives.
Gribble, 51, has been at A&W 37 years and has managed it for years, which reminded him of a former employee, BJ Schwindt, who with the help of his father, Mike Schwindt, rebuilt a car that came out amazing well.
Schwindt does rebuilds for a living at Motor Sport Restoration, 325 N. Sycamore, and was eager to help Gribble, who wanted to do some of the work. But, without Schwindt’s assistance the car wouldn’t have turned as nearly as well as it did, Gribble allowed.
“Mike is a artist in metal,” Gribble said. “He’s a master fabricator.”
With encouragement from Schwindt, “my imagination went crazy,” he said.
Originally, the car had “an ugly grill and big bumpers,” replaced in favor of more streamlined components, Gribble recalled.
Even so, he is satisfied most people would have trouble telling the car didn’t come off a factory’s assembly line, albeit much more exacting and sleek than a commercial model.
The car is powered by a 461-cubic-inch engine, previously a gas-guzzler in a 1974 Suburban, with the engine’s horse power pushed to “800, maybe 1,000 by a blower” at the top its fueling system. All under the hood is chrome and silver, which makes it stand out all the more against the midnight black exterior.
The car is tagged to run on the street, but seldom does. The paint is so sensitive that fingerprints can damage it.
“That’s why car guys are so touchy about people touching their cars at shows,” Gribble said.
The nine-year project led to a close friendship between Gribble and Schwindt, as well as a car that has won first-place trophies in its first two shows.
“I got first in competition street (cars) at the Park City show and first in radical custom at a Chanute show,” Gribble said.
MANY people don’t understand the caliber “of car guys we have around here,” Gribble said.
In addition to several year’s of help from Schwindt, he noted Marvin Marlar, who specializes in high-performance engines from his shop in Yates Center, built the engine.
“And we have people in Iola such as Curtis Utley (Iola Auto Body) and Jim West (who rebuilds for himself) who can do great things with cars. They all love cars and it show in the work they do,” he said.
Put Gribble among the group.
a
