One of Sheri Goldstrom’s annual charity events is to co-host the South Point Car & Truck Show, which presents around 200 cars and a dozen or so semi trucks in an unusual setting — indoors.
Hey, temperatures in Las Vegas involve triple digits in late August, so the South Point hotel and casino on Las Vegas Boulevard south of The Strip opens one of its second-floor ballrooms to vehicles that arrive with no more than one-quarter of their fuel tanks filled with petroleum products.
The show benefits Speedway Children’s Charities and its goal of “helping local children in need live more productive lives.”
Vehicles on display range from vintage to contemporary, from those highly customized to those modified for racing, from those cherished by their owners to those offered for sale.
Sheri Goldstrom displayed her 1959 Peterbilt semi, a vehicle she drove for her father’s trucking and demolition company. An immaculate 1962 Chevrolet Corvair Rampside pickup was displayed with a license plate reading “F NADR.”
There were cars like those that will fill the Las Vegas Convention Center in a few weeks when the Specialty Equipment Market Association stages its annual show.
There also were vehicles that are rarely seen at any sort of car show, including a Czechoslovakian-built 1966 Tatra 2-603 with its rear-mounted V8 engine and a 1926 Durant touring car, built by Bill Durant after he lost — for the second time — controlling interest over General Motors.
The Durant has been owned for 10 years by Jeff Hacker, who in addition to collecting cars runs two Las Vegas-area businesses — Hacker’s Hot Rods & Customs and Old West Guns, the former builds hot rods and custom cars and the latter specializes in vintage guns, including black powder, trapdoor guns, shot guns, and even blunderbusses.
“He loves old antique stuff,” said Hacker’s partner, Stephanie Conover.
The Durant had been in a museum in San Diego but was in deteriorating condition, so the museum sold it to the president of the Durant owners club, she said. He, in turn, sold the car to Hacker.
“We shored up the wood frame, re-did the interior, made her mechanically sound and drive her all over the place,” Conover said.
Sometimes those drives are just for fun. Sometimes they’re in holiday parades.
And sometimes even indoors into a second-floor ballroom in a Las Vegas casino.
