Year: 2024

Fans of muscle cars, British cars and rat rods prepare for another season on the road

By Zachary Lewis
[email protected]

Although metal, iron, copper, gasoline, asphalt, rubber, leather, fire and smoke are common elements in the world of muscle and sports car, American or import, the real fuel for these mechanized combustion wonders is the living, breathing community that supports and maintains these movable pieces of art, which will be on grand display at the Granite State Season Opener put on by New Hampshire Muscle Cars on Saturday, May 18, at the Deerfield fairgrounds.

This is a car club that unites thousands car enthusiasts alongside the other car clubs in the state such as British Cars of New Hampshire. Horsepower Farm and AK Rods and Customs are just a sample of the great crews and shops that craft and maintain the metal beasts. So this is a small selection of the large car world inside New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Muscle Cars club

The New Hampshire Muscle Cars car club was formed in December 2018 by muscle car enthusiast Phil Manro, and this is the club’s sixth show season. The club holds member events in the winter and summer. Exclusive to the summer and fall months are three car shows that are open to the public and for anyone to bring in their cars. These are the Season Opener on Saturday, May 18, the Midsummer Sizzler in July, and the Season Closer in October.

There are more than 11,000 members, making it the largest car club in New England.

New Hampshire Muscle Cars is a nonprofit organization. Money that is made goes back into the club to put on shows, to the infrastructure for the shows and club (a 24-foot club trailer, a couple of golf carts, scooters, lots of tents, a sound system, etc.) or to charities. Each event typically has a specific charity fundraising element. Working Dog Foundation, a group that trains police dogs, is the charity for the Season Opener and will be holding a demonstration of a police puppy taking down a perp.

“What we have tried to build and done so successfully is a nice community of car enthusiasts where we’re bringing together the vendors that support us with our member community,” Manro said. They have a core crew of around 30 volunteers who help put on these events, he said.

Muscle car ownership is not a prerequisite but if that prospect sounds like a nice future, this is the club to join. Shop owners around the state who work on such vehicles are in support and enjoy the connections made through membership. Keith Lefebvre, owner of AK Rods and Customs and a sponsor, said that the club “brings a great community together to learn from, to talk to, it gives you more of a diverse type of environment … one of the bigger things that makes a difference between what Phil does with the New Hampshire Muscle Car club and other events.”

Member-only events, although each is different, are held at sponsors’ sites. In April the event was at Horsepower Farm. It was a sort of open house where there was a shop tour and dyno tuning, which tests the horsepower of a car. (“Very loud,” Manro said.) Other locales have included places such as restoration shops.

Their biggest car show is typically the Season Opener. Their biggest year had around 1,113 show cars drive up and around 2,500 people. “We try to make it very affordable,” Manro said.

There’s a big grass field for parking and the first three gates are for the cars, while the fourth is where the humans enter.

The main fields, along with the gates, are devoted to cars with the fourth allotted for foot traffic and more than 40 vendors lining all the way up to the middle of the fairgrounds, where the food court will be along with, this year, live music blasted out by Southern Breeze.

Past this, there are two barns with car museum experiences: the indoor concourse showcase exhibit “Patina & Rat Rods” or their Barn of Rust, and the Race Car Barn. Behind the building is where the Working Dog Foundation will hold a demonstration.

Rat rods are typically older vehicles that are hodgepodged into functionality.

“In the movie Cars, Mater the tow truck there was all rusty and had a lot of different parts put on him. That’s kind of what a rat rod looks like,” Manro said. Now add a souped up engine that’s super loud. “They might look like something out of the junkyard but when you look real close you’ll see there’s actually a lot of craftsmanship that goes into making them. … They’re very eclectic.”

This year there will be 16 vehicles in competition in Barn 1 in battle for the Concourse Cup and the trophy that accompanies it.

Horsepower Farm owner Rick Soreno will have a rat rod competing in Barn 1. The 1930 Ford “was a parade car I bought in Belmont, New Hampshire,” Soreno said. “I took the body off it and sold everything else. Then we constructed a custom tube chassis for it. I had a Chrysler 300 SRT8 vehicle that got into an accident so I took all of the drivetrain out of that and put that into the chassis we built. We put it on ‘air ride’ [a type of suspension] and some big wheels and tires. It’s got the Gen III Hemi motor in it. A lot of custom fabrication work to it,” Soreno said.

A hemi is a car engine with a hemispherical combustion chamber, which is essentially a cylinder and piston top molded into the shape of a dome and typically refers to the V8 engine first designed by Chrysler in the 1950s and modified over time.

There are 30 different show car trophies up for grabs as well.

In the Race Car Barn there will be a 1960s front-engine dragster; these are unique in having the engine placed in front of the driver instead of behind as they are now. There will be road course cars, drag race cars and some others for a total of 10 very fast vehicles.

The what and why of muscle cars

According to Manro, a muscle car is “traditionally considered a car from the early ’60s to the very early ’70s, maybe ’71, ’72, with American-made V8 engine rear-wheel drive.”

The Pontiac GTO is considered one of the first.

There are Trans Ams, Firebirds, GTOs, Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers. Manufacturers include General Motors (Chevy, Pontiac and Oldsmobile). Then there are Dodge, Chrysler and Ford. The nuance of company ownership and titles is vast but these big names are good for an overview of the subject.

Now, there are “modern muscle vehicles, so you have modern Camaros that are kind of created in the likeness of their predecessors from the ’60s and ’70s,” Manro said. “It looks like an older Camaro, it looks like an older Challenger, or it looks like an older Mustang.” Around a third of the attendees have these, he said. “It’s a field of both classic and modern muscle cars.”

Manro grew up within walking distance of a race track, Oswego Speedway, and would head there on Saturday nights with his neighbors.

“That was what really got me into a little bit of the racing side of things,” he said. His father had muscle cars and imports. “He had a Jaguar in the ’60s that he worked on and restored, and that kind of got me into it.”

Manro’s first car was a ’77 Camaro he acquired in the mid-’80s when he was in high school. “Back then it was just a used car,” he said. Working on that car, and its history, cemented his love for the machine. When he was older he built his first kit car, a Factory Five Racing Shelby Cobra. “I had a lot of fun building that car,” Manro said. “Built probably a handful over the years.”

The suggestion to start the club was from his wife, Virginia. “She said to me, ‘Why don’t you start a Facebook group?’” he recalled.

The original intent was to find a handful of like-minded enthusiasts to go to shows and talk shop, but this vehicle shows no signs of stopping with over 11,000 members.

Soreno, the owner of Horsepower Farm, has been with Manro since the inception.

“I think I was the 20th member of the club. I’ve been with Phil since Day 1. It’s a good collaboration between the club and what we do for the members’ vehicles,” Soreno said.

This community spirit will be on display on Saturday, May 18, at the Season Opener. “I think it’s the camaraderie and the family aspect,” Phil Manro said. “We get a lot of families … people walking around having a lot of fun. … [It’s] a nice, inexpensive way to spend your day.”

New Hampshire Muscle Cars
Info: nhmusclecars.com; Cost of entrance is collected at the gates the day of the show for show cars and spectators. No online sales.

Granite State Season Opener
When: Saturday, May 18, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; gates open for show cars at 8 a.m. Rain date May 19.
Where: Deerfield Fairgrounds
Admission: $15 per show car, includes driver. $5 per passenger or spectator. Free for kids 12 and under.

The Midsummer Sizzler
When: Sunday, July 21, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Star Speedway
Where: 176 Exeter Road, Epping
Admission: $15 per show car, includes driver. $5 per passenger or spectator. Free for kids 12 and under.
This event will contain a burnout and a slalom competition between traffic cones.

Granite State Season Closer
When: Saturday, Oct. 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Hopkinton Fairgrounds, 392 Kearsarge Ave., Contoocook
Admission: $15 per show car, includes driver. $5 per passenger or spectator. Free for kids 12 and under.
Free apple cider and doughnuts; trunk-or-treat

The New Hampshire Muscle Cars car club will also take part in the 23rd Annual Cruising Downtown display of vintage cars, trucks, and motorcycles Saturday, Aug. 31, in Manchester; cruisingdowntownmanchester.com.

Horsepower Farm

The sounds of revved engines replace the rooster call at Horsepower Farm. When the sun is up, they do a lot of dyno tuning, car building, restomods (restoration and modification of vehicles) and LS swaps (an LS is a series of engines manufactured by General Motors).

“We do exhaust systems, suspension systems, braking systems, wheels, tires, just about everything but paint right now,” said Rick Soreno, the owner of Horsepower Farms.

Dyno tuning involves a dynamometer and is a helpful tool in measuring the performance of any given car. At Horsepower Farm it is a big machine inside a drum built into the floor, where “we strap the car down to the ground and then we can run the car stationary — it’s kind of like a treadmill for a car,” Soreno said. Unlike what happened to Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, miles are not being ‘reversed’ off his dad’s shiny red 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder and the vehicle will not ultimately go crashing out of a glass garage.

Sensors are placed inside the tailpipe and as the vehicle is run, and Soreno is able to garner from the readings how to maximize output and see how different modifications performed on a car have enhanced its power. It’s a way to “get the most horsepower out of a vehicle without racing up and down the street,” he said.

This knowledge and subsequent modification and tuning can be applied to most vehicles.

“Any car could benefit from a tune. They all come from the factory a little bit de-tuned. You can always add a little bit of timing, get a little more snap out of it, get a little more response,” Soreno said.

The LS engine family, which started in 1997 with the release of the Chevrolet Corvette (C5), the fifth generation of Corvettes, is popular because of the price for the small-block engine that holds anywhere from 300 to 400 from the factory but can reach well over a thousand with modifications.

“Parts are easy to find,” Soreno said. “They tend to go in cars easy, a good swap for old muscle cars. … Any GM car that has a V8 in it is probably an LS motor that can be put into a muscle car. … If you boost them, and when I say boost them, put a supercharger or a turbo on it, they’ll pretty much double the output power. … Everybody wants more power,” Soreno said. These engines are a newer generation of the hemi engines created in the 1950s.

Apart from using the tools to create the equivalent of the Christopher Nolan-era batmobiles, Soreno and his shop delve in the metal arts. Depending on what he is working on, he uses scrap metal, pistons, rods, and pretty much any type of metal he can get his hands on.

One such project involves beautifying a restaurant at the Riverwalk Resort at Loon Mountain.

“A focal-point artisan metal tree in the middle of the restaurant, it’s pretty cool, and we’re building them a big sign for the wall,” he said.

Soreno and his crew are proficient.

“I’ve got four guys working for me. We crank out some work. We get a lot of our work from the New Hampshire Muscle Car club,” he said. Soreno had some advice for those interested in securing a muscle car for themselves.

“Call around and visit some good shops and see what they’re doing and see what they have parked out front. Talk to the business owners. They can steer you in the right direction. I do that with a lot of my clients before they buy a vehicle. I tell them to come get me and let me go with them. Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing yet, ’cause you can buy a headache,” Soreno said.

And Soreno knows what he is talking about as a lifelong innovator of all things connectable.

“I would not read the directions and I would just take all the parts and I would make stuff. Erector sets, Legos, various other things, and stick them together with the motors that I’d get for the electronic cars, just play with things … just gravitated toward it.” He bought his first car at 14 and worked on it until he could legally drive it out of his driveway. His number of cars has since increased. “Yeah, they’re fun, I’ve got a few of them.”

Soreno feels right at home in this world: “It’s a great big family actually, everybody is pretty nice in the club, we’re all here to help each other….”

Horsepower Farm
22 Shaker Brook park in Loudon
horsepowerfarmllc.com
572-4267

AK Rods and Customs

“We do classic American street rods, muscle cars, restorations and custom builds for customers throughout New England,” said Keith Lefebvre, owner of AK Rods and Customs, who was inspired to the trade by his father, who always included him in the action.

They have been a part of the New Hampshire Muscle Cars club since the beginning. Keith had done business with Phil and was one of the first sponsors of the club and their events. “When he reached out to me about the idea of the club, it sounded great,” Lefebvre said.

Keith graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts but left before receiving a master’s in education from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, to move to Laramie, Wyoming. He enrolled in Wyoming Technical Institute, placed in the top 10 percent of his class, and now has a waiting list that stretches over a year long.

His five full-time employees and his mother, who works part-time, like to cater to the antique and classic car world.

“We’re a family-run shop, so we take a lot of pride in our name, reputation, and the quality of work that leaves here,” he said. They even work on British imports like the MG, Jaguar, as well as German imports and others.

“Being a part of the club with Phil, kind of helping him create a club that’s in a similar fashion, where people look up to it and hold it to a high standard — I typically wouldn’t put ourselves out there to be part of something like that unless it was run by people that are of an upstanding stature for our community,” Lefebvre said.

“Phil and Virginia are good people to work with,” he said. Keith does not advertise except through events and word of mouth.

They’ll have a tent at the Club’s Season Opener where they’ll show off striping and custom colors and graphics. They will also be bringing in four vehicles: a 1956 Chevy Suburban; his father’s 1933 Plymouth Coupe, which his father’s started to work on when Keith was 4 and finished when he was 11; a 1978 Trans Am Firebird, and a 1932 Ford that has “a blown hemi in it, a pretty cool-looking vehicle but it’s not quite finished, but it will allow customers to see some of the fabrication work, some of our welding work, some of our wiring work, and some of the things in the raw before it gets covered up.” Customers who have had their vehicles worked on by AK Rods and Customs will make a showing as well.

Lefebvre’s shop is more focused on high-end models.

“I don’t mess much with drag cars or race cars. I started the business focused on the indoor show car crowd,” he said. “We definitely are like the guys that build the cars with the white gloves and they push the cars on and off the carpet to some of these indoor arenas and things like that. Some of our vehicles are in that stature.” He also works for ‘daily drivers’ or those who are looking to restore a muscle car, but typically “all of our work typically leaves here finished, painted, pretty, and all ready for a concourse-style show.”

A customer can give Keith a shell of a vehicle and he and his crew can custom build a whole new car within that shell with new technology and parts.

“Hide all those modern amenities within the old facade of the original vehicle itself to kind of create a blend of new and old,” he said. It is like an individualized car factory with a keen eye to “coach-build our customers a custom whatever year, make, model vehicle, it is that they had envisioned. That’s really our corner of speciality in the market here in the New England area.” They will make the dream a reality.

Some jobs can take up to 18 months and possibly more. Keith and the crew from AK Rods spent sleepless nights to ready “Roxane,” a 1969 Dodge Charger with a 1,000-horsepower blown hemi priming the mechanical marvel. They built the fire walls, floors, frame rails, front and rear suspension and actually drove it to the Detroit Autorama in 2013. It won Best Pro Street Unlimited and Best Paint. “Which was a real big feather in the cap for some random New Hampshire boys to show up and do in the big arena,” Lefebvre said.

They even modified a ’69 Camaro for a customer in a wheelchair with an added hand-brake option to allow him the use of the brake system.

They only typically work on vehicles from 1984 or older, but will make exceptions for museum exhibitions or other special cases.

“Being a family-run shop, I’ve got some great guys that have worked for me for many years now. It’s nice to have a family-like community to work within and grow with,” he said.

All this hard work is worth it to Keith and the team at AK Rods and Customs to realize the vision of his customers and they’re overjoyed with the outcome. Some are impressed because customers will say, “that was my dad’s car and I never even got to see it on the road and we’re making grown, big burly construction men cry because we got their vehicles all done and they’re so happy that it finally looks the way they never thought they’d see it. It drives in such a way they never thought they’d be able to enjoy it. It’s a very appreciative line of work….”

AK Rods and Customs
1 Independence Drive in Londonderry
818-8264, akrodsncustoms.com

British Cars of New Hampshire

British Cars of New Hampshire operates with four councils throughout the state, holding monthly meetings in Manchester, Bristol, Portsmouth and Jaffrey.

The club was established in 1991 by six couples in the Manchester and Concord area led by the driving force of Mike Sweet. A similar club they had been part of in Massachusetts was too far south to attend regularly.

“It’s not just driving cool cars around, it’s giving back to the community, that’s our main focus,” said Sweet, who is also Prime Minister of British Cars of New Hampshire.

Their big charity fundraising car show is called Show of Dreams and will be held this year on Saturday, July 27, at the Alvirne Hills House in Hudson, with all proceeds to go to the New Hampshire Food Bank. Last year’s show earned over $20,000 for the Food Bank, amounting to around 40,000 meals that the organization was able to supply. This year’s Show of Dreams will be the club’s 27th with multiple trophies up for grabs.

Aston Martins are certainly allowed in the club, but James Bond cars are not necessary. Jaguar E types, Triumphs, MGs, Lotus, Morgan, pretty much any British ‘marque’ is included in the club. “These cars are the precursor to everything we drive today,” said Diana Stanley, who is a member along with her husband. They have a 1974 Triumph TR6, a 1980 Triumph TR8, a 1983 Jaguar XJ6 and a 2008 Jaguar XK. As with children, it is hard to pick a favorite.

“The problem is we love them all and we try to drive all of them,” she said. Their ’74 TR6 was purchased at a large British car show up in Stowe, Vermont, called The British Invasion that happens the third weekend in September and garners more than 700 cars from across the pond.

“They were the original sports cars. Most British cars were brought over after World War II, in particular the MG TD TC and TF, they were brought over by the soldiers….” These are the old-timey yet sleekly modern cars you see in a lot of BBC miniseries since their line was first produced in 1936. Soon they were being imported to the United States, and in Connecticut, where Diana Stanley and her husband are originally from, was a Triumph dealership.

Sweet first got interested in Matchbox cars and then James Bond.

“I fell in love with England and it was just a natural progression. My first car when I got my license was a 1972 MGB. That’s the way it worked out,” Sweet said. Along with the two-door sports car, Sweet has three Triumphs: a ’79 Spitfire, a ’76 TR 6 and a ’62 TR 3B. “It’s like therapy on wheels. If you’re having a bad day, all you’ve got to do is take the top down and take a drive,” he said. “There’s really nothing like being 4 inches off the ground and having the wind go through your hair and hearing a nicely tuned engine. It’s a lot of fun.”

Unfortunately, the driving season in New Hampshire is not the longest. The beginning of May is a typical starting point.

“As soon as the snow goes away and most of the salt is off the roads,” Stanley said, is when one is able to hop in the Jaguar for a ride. Depending on the weather outlook for snow the season can last until November. “The club is a very fun club,” she said. “We have a lot of activities.”

The drive on Saturday, May 18, starts at the Prime Minister’s residence in Weare; they will drive out to the western region of the state and return back, totalling about two hours.

Each of the four council groups will host rides to allow members to cruise around their region. Some drives feature different themes, such as waterfalls or covered bridges, but as long as the road is paved they’re good to go. A lunch or dinner is an aspect of the journey.

Although Aston Martins, MGs and Jaguars are high-performance cars, “they really wouldn’t be classified as muscle cars,” Stanley said.

“They’re fun roadsters but they’re not rocket ships,” Sweet said.

British cars definitely played a huge part in sports car crazes.

“The British held the market from the early ’50s right up until the late ’70s. … I’ve got old magazines here from 1952, 1953. People were just in love with these things. They’re racing them and it was just a way of life,” Sweet said.

British Cars of New Hampshire will have its Show of Dreams car show fundraiser at the Alvirne Hills House Field in Hudson, now the home of the Hudson Historical Society. New Hampshire Food Bank will provide volunteers to help park cars, sell raffle tickets and greet spectators.

The show’s “Piccadilly Square” area will hold vendors along with a food truck from the New Hampshire Food Bank and Lick’s Ice Cream from Litchfield, and there will be a DJ playing live music as well as emceeing the event. British car part suppliers in the state help with the show via donations, items for give-away, or items for the raffle at the event or at the silent auction. Car admission is $30, two cars makes that total $40, but if registration is day-of, registration is $40 for one vehicle.

Spectator entry is free and there is a Mini Cooper with an open moonroof with a sign that reads, “Throw the money in the Mini” as a suggested donation.

“We prefer to have families come and we want kids to see these cars, we even allow children to sit in our cars. It’s a fun day for everybody,” Stanley said. Participants will also be allowed to tour the historic home.

“We don’t really own them,” she said of the cars. “We steward them, because somewhere along the way it’s going to get sold to somebody else who is going to take care of it and then hopefully it’s preserved and people won’t forget where their cars that we drive now came from.”

British Cars of New Hampshire
27th Annual Show of Dreams
When: Saturday, July 27, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Alvirne Hill House Field, 211 Derry Road, Hudson
Info: bcnh.org

Working Dog Foundation

A police academy for man’s best friend helps keep the career open for dogs by training them for police departments across New Hampshire and in Maine. Working Dog Foundation will be holding a demonstration at the New Hampshire Muscle Cars Season Opener at Deerfield Fairgrounds on May 18 and will be the charity that the event is fundraising for. More events can be found on their website.

Jeremy Wirths, chairman of the board of the Working Dog Foundation, said the organization was started by a small number of dog handlers in 1995 to assist police departments in and around the Granite State whose budgets were too small for a K9 program. It is also attached to the larger police dog training unit that is the New Hampshire Police K9 Academy.

At one point the Foundation supported close to 60 police departments. It is currently working with Milford, Alton, Bristol, Rochester, Barrington, Keene, and Wells, Maine.

“A dog’s nose is incredibly powerful,” Wirths said. “Working K9’s are … a less lethal option for the police officers to use for apprehension and as well as presence detection…. When they are on duty but not actively working in one of their disciplines they are comforting as well.”

“The work the dogs do is amazing. They’re keeping our communities safer. It’s just great to see the demonstration,” said Jamie Rich, Development and Outreach Manager of the Foundation.

A crowd favorite is the ‘controlled aggression’ part of the demonstration, where the police K9 takes down the fake perp in the bite suit. “It’s a pretty cool thing to see,” Wirths said. “Or using a small piece of clothing to be able to go track down and find somebody is always impressive to see as well.”

Wirths has played the decoy before. “Every time I get into it, it’s a bit of an adrenaline rush. I know that the dogs are highly skilled and good at what they do but it’s always still an adrenaline rush knowing that there’s an animal chasing after you to bite you. And as far as the actual bite itself, it’s a lot of pressure.”

Featured photo: Featured car is a ‘69 Camaro. Photo courtesy of AK Rods and Customs.