In Photos: The Hot Rods and Customs of the 2020 Detroit Autorama Show

They call it “America’s Greatest Car Show.” Of course, it’s the promoters who call it that and they might be biased, but we can definitively say there’s no other hot-rod show like the Detroit Autorama. This is the Motor City, after all. And despite California’s impulse to call itself the birthplace of hot rodding, Detroit has deeper automotive roots than any place in the world. The Detroit Autorama proves it.

We recently spent four days at the 2020 Meguiar’s Detroit Autorama presented by O’Reilly Auto Parts (including Thursday’s pre-show move-in day) and feel like we barely had enough time to see the 800 or more hot rods, customs, muscle cars, race cars, trucks, and every other type of specialty vehicle on display. Even so, we managed to photograph just about everything at the 68th edition of the show—from the Great 8 contenders to the special exhibits, the Autorama Extreme show held in the lower level of TCF Center, special celebrities, activities, the Ridler Award winner, and every type of specialty car you can imagine. For a great idea of the automotive excellence on display, keep scrolling:

The most prestigious award at the Detroit Autorama is the Don Ridler Memorial Award, a.k.a. the Ridler Award. The winning vehicle isn’t announced until Sunday afternoon, but on the first morning of the show, the Detroit Autorama judges reveal the eight finalists for the award—the Great 8, as they’re known. Our pals at HOT Rod covered the whole 2020 batch here.

The winner of the 2020 Detroit Autorama Don Ridler Memorial Award was Brad, Brady, and Cory Ranweiler’s 1963 Chevy two-door station wagon, built at their shop, Show Cars Automotive Inc. in New Ulm, Minnesota. Read all about the impressive Chevy wagon—appropriately named “Impressive”—in this article from HOT ROD.