Word: customs
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Once the state fair was the big event. Now the same kind of popcorn festivity animates the custom auto show. There will be nearly 70 such exhibitions this spring, from Medford, Ore., to Worcester, Mass. Last weekend alone, hot-rod shows were held in Fresno, Youngstown and Cedar Rapids. They are drawing large crowds too: 40,000 in Dayton, 50,000 in Louisville. After a look at the recent International Speed Custom Cycle Auto Show in Chicago, TIME Correspondent David Wood sent this report...
John Muzik, a tall, amiable 34-year-old toolmaker from Flint, Mich., built the car in his garage, spending more than $9,000 to produce a vehicle worth $20,000. The prize money that he wins for best custom car at the shows (roughly $500 each time) pays most of his expenses, and he has the car booked for exhibitions almost every weekend through June. "But the real joy is building the damn thing," says Muzik, running his polish rag over a thumbprint on the body. "It sure is a beautiful machine. I don't race it too often...
...little body work. Some $6,000 and "a helluva lotta hours" later, he hitched up the truck behind his station wagon, packed in his wife Bernadene and their four-year-old daughter Zandra and entered the exhibition circuit. In Detroit he picked up an award for the "Outstanding Custom Pickup," but the prize money-$90 -hardly paid his expenses. "All this traveling to auto shows gives me great ideas for my body shop," says Pearson. His wife adds with a smile: "Sitting here is okay when the bands are playing. It goes along with our marriage." Like Pearson, most...
Twenty years ago, Strasbourgers would have found it impossible to seek better-paying jobs in the neighboring German river towns of Kehl and Offenburg. Even vacation trips across the Rhine involved complicated visa forms and meticulous custom searches. The Common Market has changed all that. "A lot of young people in Europe take open borders for granted," said a French customs official at the 13-year-old Europe Bridge that connects Strasbourg and Kehl. "They seem to think it was always this...
...best-known America watcher: "The French are, of course, ignorant of American society in any case. They live a continual ambiguity. On the one hand, they are unconsciously seduced and fascinated by American life, and they love to imitate it. On the other hand, it is almost a national custom to reject U.S. actions and disparage American institutions out of hand...