Look. . . it’s Mater!

Now, we are one of those procrastinators who don’t look at the details of anything until they hit us over the head. From talking to Larry Fechter of Iola Car Show, Inc., we had some vague idea that this year’s Iola Old Car Show (www.iolaoldcarshow.com) was going to have some new excitement.

We actually came up with the “Pace Cars and Race Cars” idea for a show theme, so we knew that Don Garlits was coming to sign autographs and we knew that Burton Brown was bringing his outrageous Bonneville Streamliner. We had also heard about the ’63 Chevy Impala with 11 original miles. Being into sports racing cars, we also knew about some rare cars that were coming like Lou Natenshon’s Cunningham, Shane Hanke’s Turner and John Slusar’s Singer.

Beyond that, we didn’t have a lot of event details in our head last Wednesday when we hitched up our Gunner’s Great Garage car trailer to go get the freshly painted body of a 1968 Triumph TR-250 that we’re restoring in the shop. The body was painted at another shop in Omro, Wis., so we were heading down Highway 10 towards that location when we saw another trailer coming the other way. On the back of it was “Mater,” the tow truck from the “Cars” movie.

Now, Mater is something you don’t see everyday. He and two other replicas of the famous cars in that movie were actually constructed by a talent who Old Cars Weekly knows well. Customizer Eddie Paul wrote three books for us on how to build and paint cars. Eddie made the Mater promotional vehicle from a Chevrolet pickup. He made Lightning McQueen from a Trans Am and a sectioned Porsche served as the basis for the Sally Carerra car.

It sure was a surprise to see Eddie’s creation heading for Iola. If we hadn’t noticed it, we might have missed taking a close up look at Mater in the “Teamed to Learn” tent at the car show. And next year we are going to pay closer attention to the upcoming attractions. The entire Iola Old Car Show staff is working hard to make every year’s event seem fresh, new and exciting.