(upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Braeden] Some people drive their car for work.

Some drive for fun.

(upbeat music) Some don't just drive their car, they love it.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) The automobile was first invented in Europe in the late 1800s.

(upbeat music) Here in Nebraska, Charles M. Fuller Jr. built his first car, known as the Fuller automobile, in 1898, at the Angus Automobile Company in Nuckolls county.

(upbeat music) Today, many classic cars from years past, live on.

(upbeat music) Like this one, but it's not quite driving ready yet.

This is my '28 model a pickup, Pops.

We hope to have him rolling soon.

I'm Braeden Tyma and I grew up around cars, going to car shows and swap meets with my grandpa and his buddies in Grand Island.

My grandpa photographed car shows, you could say I inherited that hobby.

But enough about me, I'd like you to see some one-of-a-kind classic cars and meet some Nebraskans, who will help explain why so many people are in love with their cars.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Today, we will hear stories of love...

It was always my dream to have a '57 Chevy.

[Jim] When I get back behind the wheel of that car, I'm 16, I'm 16 again.

(upbeat music) [Beth] We met on a blind date, but I loved his car.

[Braeden] We will hear stories of perseverance.

[Tim] I brought the car home in 47 boxes and took three years to put the car together.

[Braeden] And we will hear stories of family... That was really important to make that commitment to each other and to the car and to get it on the road and spend that time together in the garage... [Nick] And the steering wheel, just knowing that that was a steering wheel that grandpa had his hands on.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Think of the hands that have touched these steering wheels.

(upbeat music) If these cars could come back from the dead, imagine the stories they would tell.

(upbeat music) Okay, enough imagining, let's get to some cars that are still going strong.

And the stories that go with them, well, they're pretty good too.

(upbeat music and birds chirping) First, I'd like you to meet my homeboy, Matty Mattson.

Like a lot of people we'll meet today, his cars are an extension of himself and a connection to family.

(upbeat music) [Matty] Well, I'm originally from Los Angeles, California.

Half of me is Mexican and half of me is Swedish.

So on the Mexican side, all my cousins, they have Bombs, which are 1936 to 1954 cars.

They're just like an extension off of yourself to the Chicano community.

And then, my Uncle, John, my dad's brother, he had more of the Southern California hot rod to it.

A mixture of both of them, I try to put both of my tastes together and see what happens.

[Braeden] When Matty saw a rusty shell of a '47 Oldsmobile being used as a piece of yard art in Colorado, he fell in love.

It took some convincing, but eventually that car was his, and he got it driving down the road again.

[Matty] Outside of having a supreme paint job and chrome stuff, I would categorize this as a Bomb.

Most people would probably stare at it and call it a rat rod, but if you're going to dump 10 grand into a vehicle, you can't call it a rat rod, that's not a rat rod, that's a hot rod.

(car siren) [Braeden] Some special touches that make this car uniquely Matty's, are its siren, and Jesus, hand-lettered on the dashboard, an ode to one of his favorite bands, Clutch.

[Matty] I never see '47 Oldsmobiles at car shows.

I see a lot of hot rodders would take these grills and put them into Fords and stuff like that, but to see an Oldsmobile, it's pretty rare.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Now you've built everything on this car, so when you break down, you can pretty much find the problem.

[Matty] Yes, and you know it, the sounds, you just know it.

If you're a car person and you're into something that you started from scratch, you know all the sounds.

It's like hearing your own child scream or something, like you're in a store, and you hear, "Dad," and it's just, I don't know, you just hear that voice, it's like, "That's mine."

Wait a minute, somethings wrong, or something's clunking or something's loose.

(upbeat music) You just do, you just notice, you know it.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Matty loves this car.

He uses it for everything, -autocross, car shows- -Autocross, car shows, take the kids to daycare, pick them up from school, family night, go to dinner, I mean, load up the homies, we go cruise.

(upbeat music) It's pretty cool, I've been really happy with it.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] So as long as I've known you, -you've had another car.

-Yes.

-Penny?

-Yes, Penny.

Who is Penny?

Well, Penny actually is a vehicle that I bought, and it was going to be an engagement gift for my wife, but then I chickened out from that and just gave it to her instead.

So this 1953 Chevy 210 is my next build, and it will be my wife's car.

This is Penny, we brought our daughter, Faye, home, actually from the hospital in this.

It was an all original 235 with a Powerglide, six volt system and everything.

But that'll be changed, I'm going to update it to a 250 straight 6 with a 4L60E, so you can program the transmission.

I want it to be solid, I want it to be a turnkey, she just gets in it and goes, because before, one time it died on her and I wasn't around, and she had to push it, and she did not dig on that.

So with the Model A not being on the road yet, I've got a lot of cool Nebraska cars to go see.

-You care if I borrow Lulu?

-You got it, man.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music, screeching tires) [Braeden] One thing the invention of the automobile did, was spark outdoor recreation and encouraged the growth of tourism-related industries, like drive-ins.

(upbeat music) At one time, drive-in theaters were the place to be every weekend.

(upbeat music) We're on our way to meet brothers Jeff and Jim Karls at the drive-in theater that Jeff owns.

You must really love vintage stuff to bring this drive-in theater back to life.

I do.

I mean, you have to really love it to put one where there was never one before.

So this is all from scratch, even though some of it looks old, we brought in equipment from other closed drive-ins and stuff to give it that vintage DNA.

[Braeden] Well, it's an appropriate backdrop because both of you have cinematic stories -Sure.

-So Jeff, let's start with your '46 Sedan Delivery.

[Jeff] That was the street rod that I grew up in.

So that came home from Kansas, with dad, -in, that was the late 70s?

-'78, '79.

[Jeff] So that was what we went to Rod Runs in, and we might take two or three cars to a Rod Run, but that one would always come home with us.

And we sold it in 1985, so dad could finish the '34 Chevy that he was working on that time.

(upbeat music) After we sold the Delivery, our dad passed away.

So that was the last finished street rod that we had with him.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] And that was just the beginning of the story.

Several years after it was sold, Jeff and Jim's stepdad walked out of a hotel room at a car show in Indiana and saw it parked in the lot.

A decade later, Jeff ran into it, literally, at a car show in Ohio.

I was getting ready to take a picture of a Deuce five-window to send to him on my Blackberry.

I'm trying to back up to get it in the frame, and I backed into the corner of the Delivery.

I crawled all over underneath this thing, looking for stuff that...

I remembered when I was a kid, there's a little Sylvester sticker on the rear end on the differential cover that's still there.

Lots of little things like that.

It was like seeing a ghost.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Jeff stayed in touch with the new owner, and in 2013 he offered to sell it back to Jeff, who was about to get married.

His new love knew how much Jeff's old love meant to him.

(upbeat music) Jenny actually planned our honeymoon around going to get that Delivery and pick it up and bring it home.

And talk about dad keeping an eye out for us, because we were both pretty young when he died.

There's too many things in the story for them to be a coincidence.

For that truck to be outside of that hotel that morning, that hotel, how many hotels do people stay at Rod Runs, different places, different locations, for me to run into it again in Columbus, I didn't know they were there.

(upbeat music) The Mural's just too much fun.

There's a lot of stuff going on in those, (upbeat music) kind of tongue in cheek, (upbeat music) double entendre or just references to things that you wouldn't normally see cartoon characters in that situation, like he's got an empty bottle of wine, and he is a little bloodshot and pretty haggard looking.

And I think the expression on Granny's face, I'm not sure where his hand is at, but Coyote finally caught the Road Runner.

Most of the characters have balloons and things.

It's just an old, outdated 80s street rod to most people.

What I think a lot of folks don't understand about these cars is that there is so much deeper connection, even if it's outdated or ugly or has goofy cartoons all over it, that car means a lot to somebody.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Braeden] Jeff's story is a rollercoaster on its own, but by the time you throw in Jim's story about his '39 coupe, you might start to think these brothers should play the lottery.

[Jim] 1983, the Delivery was done.

I was 15 years old, and dad and I were at a swap meet in Atlantic, Iowa.

And we came up around this old raggedy '39 Chevy Coupe that used to be a race car.

And we'd been talking about what I... What do you want to do for a first car?

What are you interested in?

And I was really interested in the late 30s Chevy Coupes.

We managed to strike a deal on the car and brought it home and started working on it.

I'd been saving up some money.

Didn't quite have enough to cover the purchase of that car, but my parents were pretty good and took me right over to the bank and co-signed for a loan, so I could pay dad back and I had a loan for the whole $3,000, or whatever, I paid for this bones of a car.

In God We Trust, -everybody else was with cash.

-Everybody else pays cash.

Our dad didn't cut anybody any slack, including us.

He and I started working on it, and we got after it pretty hard the first year, got it rolling and got it where I could drive it, and I started driving it to school.

I actually took my driver's test, got my driver's license in that car.

There's a lot of firsts in that car, it's the first car I ever took to the drag strip and raced it up at Scribner, Nebraska.

First car I took to the drive-in, went on my first date in the car, took it to high school homecoming dances and whatever, drove it every day, pretty much every day when the weather was good to high school.

The only bad part of it is a lot of times, I had to take little brother with me and drive him to school.

So imagine, I was 15, he was in kindergarten, so I had to take the little kindergarten brother to school with me, but we've got some funny stories.

Talk about... Talk about a major buzz kill for a high school kid in a hot rod to have to sit outside the kindergarten classroom and wait to pick you up.

(soft rumble) [Braeden] When Jim and Jeff's dad passed away, Jeff sold the '39 so he could finish their dad's '34.

The man he sold it to eventually became his stepdad, and when he passed away, the car found its way back to Jim.

(engine rumble) [Jim] One of the things I tried to do when I got the car back from my stepdad, is not change everything that he did, but there were still things that he changed that I had it originally when I had it in high school that I wanted back the other way.

When I get back behind the wheel of that car, I'm 16, I'm 16 again.

(crickets chirping) (engine rumble) And it's funny, it's like people looking at a car with cartoons on the side of it and saying, "What's this guy's problem?

"This guy's 50 something years old, "he's got a high school tassel hanging "in his rear view mirror?"

(engine rumble) (engine rumble) They take you back.

(birds chirping) Today we're meeting people who love cars and appreciate them for who they are, rather than what they are, but that isn't always the case, sometimes they're just used and thrown away.

(upbeat music) That's not what Kelsey Bugjo's all about.

Her love for cars is so strong, she's only sold one her whole life.

And her dream car?

Well, she ain't ever selling that.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Now, you've had an affection -for this car for a long time.

-I have.

How far back does your love for the '57 Chevy go?

Oh gosh, probably back to the time when I was in high school and I won a poster at a fair of a '57 Chevy, and from then on it was just always my dream car.

[Braeden] Tell me about the restoration process and what was involved with that?

[Kelsey] Well, it did not look like this when I bought it, so a lot of work, blood, sweat and tears went into restoring it.

Has new front fenders, new door skins on the doors, new quarter panels, a new floor underneath these beautiful seats.

So lots of body work.

When I purchased it, the engine had already been rebuilt.

It is a numbers matching '57 Chevy, so it has a 283.

So I haven't done really anything else to the engine because it was already rebuilt and ready to go.

When I bought the car, it came with all of these classic Chevy magazines in the back, which is, I think, significant, because they detail basically how to restore the vehicle.

(upbeat music) So my dad did a lot of the work.

We were out there, tearing the whole thing apart, bagging and tagging every single piece, so that we knew what it went to, because it was restored original right down to every single nut and bolt.

One of my goals was to take it to a Good Guys show in Des Moines, once it was finished, because I wanted to enter the Young Guys category.

And so it took about ten years to completely restore the vehicle.

When that was done, then we trailered it to Kansas City and just like taking a victory lap around there.

(upbeat music) As you know, it was always my dream to have a '57 Chevy.

I wasn't 16 yet, but one Christmas there was the little scavenger hunt that led me to the garage.

I really thought I was getting a '57 Chevy Bel Air that Christmas, and this radio awaited me, so it was a fun present from my parents because they knew it was my dream car.

[Braeden] Show me what some of the unique stylings -of the '57 Chevy are.

-Sure.

I mean obviously, the iconic fins, I think that's what everybody thinks of when they think of a '57 Chevy.

This particular model is a Bel Air, and so I think that's unique.

I love this, a lot of people don't know where the gas goes in on a '57 Chevy because it's pretty unique, it's actually hidden right here.

I love just the gold on the Chevy symbol, I think that's beautiful.

The interior, I just like the two tone fabric, the texture, the buttons, the color.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] So do you think you'll ever sell this?

No, yeah, no.

(upbeat music) Nope.

[Braeden] Well, cool.

Well thank you for keeping maybe, arguably the most iconic American classic car on the road and all original and rocking it around the tree.

[Kelsey] Yeah.

Nebraska's early roads were barely more than a trail.

It wasn't until after World War I that state and federal governments began coordinating state-wide highway system.

This next pair knows a little bit about driving real fast down one specific Nebraska road.

(tires screeching) (engine racing) (upbeat music) Lyle and Nick Ekberg are a father/son duo, who like to keep thinks all in the family.

Lyle owned an auto parts store, along with an auto repair shop and salvage yard.

Over a decade ago his son, Nick, moved back to town, bought his dad's businesses and expanded them.

They also have a 1965 Corvette that's been a project for over forty years.

Let's go check this out.

Lyle and Nick, I don't know what half the stuff is on this car, can you walk me around and show me a few things?

Yeah.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Lyle] Basically it's a 1965 Corvette, and (upbeat music) It's not stock anymore.

It's got a full roll cage in it, it's got 537 horsepower, it's got aftermarket five speed transmission in it.

-Really lot of fun and loud.

-A lot of go-fast.

[Nick] Yeah, got a lot of safety stuff in it too.

What's all these gauges on the dashboard?

[Lyle] We got two switches on the electric fans.

If one circuit goes bad for some reason, it's got a second one that goes on.

I got two switches onto fuel pumps, two separate sets of wires, so if for some reason a fuse blows or something.

[Nick] And we've got a couple different gauges on the passenger side too, so when the navigator's sitting over there in a race, they can watch it too, just to make sure we're not getting too hot or just keep an eye on what the driver's doing, too.

[Lyle] It was junk when I bought it, didn't run, had a whole cutting hood, been spray painted black inside, one of the fender wells was tore off of it and so I don't know how many years it took me, probably four years, I put it all to original.

And then I would do some Corvette auto crossing parking lot stuff and Corvette drag racing.

And it snowballed, one thing led to another, another, another, until you see an actual full-blown race car now.

It's not very fun to go a ten mile cruise in it anymore, but to go racing, that's where it's at now.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] When we visited Nick and Lyle, they were preparing for the Sandhills Open Road Challenge, (soft rumble) a weekend of car festivities in and around Arnold every summer.

The Ekberg's are one of only four teams to race every year since it started in 2001.

Lyle Ekberg, what a guy.

Lyle's terrific, good guy.

Lyle was one of the first people to sign up for the SORC.

He and his boy, Nick.

Nick was I think, 17, 18 at the time.

They show up faithfully every year.

(engine rumbling) It is by far the loudest car that's ever been there.

He fires that thing up, you can hear it in Dunning, I think.

(engine revs loudly) But it's quite the automobile.

[Braeden] Joe Shown dreamed up the Sandhills Open Road Challenge and is another one of the original racers to come back year after year.

(upbeat music) (engines racing) (engines racing) [Joe] The road here, I always thought would work quite well if you could close it for a road course.

And in the year 2000, I bought my first Corvette, and I drove the road, and I thought, well, that would be really cool to do this.

And luckily there were enough people that helped me and glommed onto the idea and supported it, and we got it done.

(engines rumble) [Nick] There's three events out there, so we do a Loup to Loup race, that's a shorter road race.

We go from Halsey to Purdum on a little county road.

(engines rumble) It's a short race, but it's really windy and hilly, just like the Arnold race is.

(engine rumble) And then we do a mile shootout on Friday, which is a standing mile, you try to match your speeds.

And then you go into Saturdays, the main race in Arnold.

(upbeat music) [Joe] The Sandhills Open Road Challenge is what we call an open road race, 29 miles up close to Highway 2, 26 miles back.

It is a time division, and it is not a wheel to wheel race.

So you select a time bracket to be in.

Let's say you enter the 110 mile an hour class, the goal is to average closest to 110 miles an hour.

So the winner is the driver that gets closest to the average.

And I can tell you that generally, if you are more than a half second away, you have no chance of winning.

Many times, it'll come down to thousandths of a second.

(upbeat music) The course that they're going to drive on is a county road from Arnold to Highway 2.

Has lot of twists and turns, that's what makes it fun.

And it, unfortunately right now, is a pretty rough road, but the faster you go, the smoother it is.

(engine racing) [Announcer] Car number 65 up next.

This is Nick Ekberg and Lyle Ekberg.

That sound is all you folks are going to hear as well because there's no point in me trying to talk over it.

So here we go!

(engine revs) (engine racing) [Lyle] That Sandhills road, it's a hilly, windy, (engine racing) not very nice road, but we love it, it's a challenge.

(engine racing) [Nick] This one's loud, and you sweat, and you got to scream at each other to hear each other.

And this is a challenge to keep it on the road and not wreck it.

And you get in that newer Camaro and, I mean, it just glides through the corners, and it's quiet and you can turn on your air conditioning, and this is a more fun experience, I think, than sitting back and relaxing and playing with your radio as you're running the course, this one, you're going to fight the whole way.

(engine racing) (engine racing) [Lyle] It's just fun, it's just adrenaline, it's just, man, it's just... (drum beat music) Funnest thing I've done is that open road race.

(engine revs) (engines racing) (engine racing) [Braeden] As the race comes to a close, Lyle and Nick feel pretty good with how their day went.

[Nick] We're a couple seconds slow going up, and then coming back we got as close as we could with our timing equipment we got, so we're pretty happy.

We had to be a little nicer to the car this year, our rear end's got a couple issues, so we had to take it a little easier than we normally do.

[Lyle] It's going clunk, clunk, clunk, but we made it.

I know a guy who can fix it, that's me, of course.

[Nick] It's always good when you can drive the car to the trailer when you're done.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] With technology, familiarity with the course and experience of the drivers, it gets harder to make it into a top spot.

In this year's race, the Ekberg's competed in the 105 mile per hour class.

The first place finisher was one thousandth of a second fast.

In the 105 mile an hour class, in third place, Nick Ekberg and Lyle Ekberg, with a speed of .484 seconds slow.

(clapping) There's nothing wrong with third place.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Back home, Nick's ten-year-old son, Virgil, is waiting in the wings for his turn to race.

[Nick] He'll gladly come down here and work with his papa rather than go to the repair shop and sweep floors with me.

It's good for him to learn, and he's picking up a lot.

(upbeat music) [Lyle] Nick tells me, I'm 72, Virgil's got six more or eight more years before he can drive it.

(upbeat music) Nick says I got to last til then, I wouldn't bet on that because I'm going to be damned near 80, but we'll see.

[Braeden] Odds are, Virgil will be another generation of another Nebraska family with an inherited love of their cars.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Braeden] As I travel down Nebraska's highways, I think about all the hard work that goes into keeping classic cars on the road.

(upbeat music) Sometimes modified, like the Ekberg's, (engine revs) and sometimes restored back to original.

(upbeat music) Tim Haith has a collection of cars that fit into both of those categories.

(upbeat music) This guy's invested decades finding cars he loves and building them into art that you might just see pulling into a car show near you.

Hey, what's up, Tim?

[Tim] Hey, Braeden, how are you?

Good, you got a lot of nice cars here.

Well, thank you.

Let's talk about first loves for a second.

You've had this '74 Corvette since you were 17?

Yes.

I was dating my wife when I bought this car.

She went away to college and we went our separate ways, and about 10 years later we ran into each other and we got married after that, so this car's been around a while.

(traffic noise) [Braeden] When Tim buys a car, it's only the beginning of his journey with that car.

He then goes into total rebuild mode.

And with the exception of the interior, he does all the work himself, even the paint.

(upbeat music) [Tim] Well, this is the third paint job it's had and actually only the second set of tires.

Went through the motor and put lots of calipers on the car.

These like to leak, brake, calipers, so just got to keep on that.

I'm the second owner of the car.

I still have the window sticker and other paperwork with the car.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Now, a lot of people dream of owning one Stingray, but you own two.

[Tim] Yeah, I found this.

I brought the car home in 47 boxes and took three years to put the car together.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) I did the paint, the body and the interior.

I rebuilt the motor, the transmission, the rear end.

Went completely through the car.

It's a frame-off restoration.

[Braeden] Where did you find this car that it would come to you in 47 boxes?

[Tim] I worked with a guy, he started working on the car.

It was in his garage for six years and he decided to get rid of it.

Tim, clearly you like to build things, and you have a '33 Ford that you found is just a shell?

-[Tim] Yes.

-How'd you find that?

[Tim] I found the '33 Ford three-window coupe at a swap meet here in Lincoln.

When I saw the car, I knew I had to have it, and I ended up buying the body.

The body had both doors, the deck lid, a dash and a windshield frame.

And it took me 10 and a half years to find all the parts to put it back together.

And I chopped the car two and 9/16s inch.

(upbeat music) When I bought the car, I knew it was going to be black, I knew it was going to have tuned port fuel injection, and I knew it was going to have Halibrand sprint wheels.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] What made you decide to chop it at such a specific measurement?

[Tim] They're too tall.

Hot rods have to be chopped, (engine rumble) otherwise they kind of look like a phone booth.

(upbeat music) They look so much nicer when they're chopped.

(upbeat music) You can tell it's a '33 by the arced louvers in the hood, where the '34s, the louvers are straight but slanted, '33 hood is arced like a banana.

And also, the grill on a '33 Ford, is a lot narrower and it doesn't have the trim bead around the inside of the grill.

Would this come factory with suicide doors?

Yes, yes.

Suicide doors are factory on '33 and '34 Fords.

Well now, it didn't come with all that chrome.

No, it sure didn't.

This is a small block Chevy 327 with tuned port fuel injection.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] And of course, Tim also has a '34 Ford.

(upbeat music) this one is a roadster.

(upbeat music) (Braeden whistles) And this is the '34 Ford Highboy Roadster.

This thing is super clean.

[Tim] It has a 454 Chevy power, (upbeat music) TH350 9-inch Ford.

(upbeat music) It's got vintage heat system in it.

This is all black leather.

(upbeat music) I bought this car, it was a complete car, but it was a mess.

I tore it clear down to the bare frame and went through every nut, every bolt on the car.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] It may have been a mess when he bought it, but Tim added some features to make this ride a true piece of art, and a fun toy too.

(engine revs) (engine revs) [Braeden] All right, so you've got four, five, six cars, what's next?

[Tim] Bigger garage.

I am out of space, so I would have to get some more space, or get rid of something, which isn't going to happen.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Wow, that was an impressive collection, with such unique stories.

Now I'm headed to meet these two.

The twins in this photo are Jess and Jen MacKichan, coming home from the hospital in 1982.

And you see that sedan?

Well, if you can't, I'll get you a better look.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) -Hi.

-Hi.

-Jenn- -Yes.

-And Jess?

-Jess.

Right on.

I am stoked to hear about these hot rods, but first, I need to know, what's it like being a twin in the same hobby?

Well, it's something we've always just known.

It's a normal thing to us to be twins, identical twins.

Always had a best friend by our side, and it helped us through all of life, really, not just the hobby, but marriage and kiddos and all of that.

[Jess] And then our dad always had two sets of hands (chuckling) when we were in the shop.

[Braeden] How did we go from riding home from the hospital to owning and driving the car now?

[Jenn] Our dad bought the car, and our mom was very pregnant with our older brother, who is three years older.

He had had his eye on this car, and he had found an opportunity to buy it.

And then he brought our brother home from the hospital in it, after he upgraded the seatbelts and all the kind of stuff because nurses were very skeptical of the whole thing.

But then since then, he was able to bring us home in the hospital, so it became a family tradition.

So then fast forward to 2011, my husband and I were adopting, and we thought, well, what better way to ingrain Charlie into our family history than to bring him home from the hospital?

[Braeden] So having a car this long, there's a whole lot of memories with it, what are some fond memories you have with this car?

[Jess] I had fallen asleep on the running board.

-[Jenn] Near probably five.

-Probably five, yeah.

Everybody else was out of the house, and I couldn't go down to the shop for some reason, so I took a nap on the running board, and each of the siblings posed with me, sleeping.

[Jenn] I always remember, whether it was in our parents' garage or whether it was in the shop, it always was this very striking voluptuous car, and it had this Greyhound hood emblem that was very... That signifies my childhood, a certain scents bring you back to childhood, certain scenes, and this car is one of those things.

And it's great to look back through photos and through memorabilia.

(upbeat music) I drive it, I park it in parking lots.

I don't worry about parking so far away from the building because there's nobody out there.

It's a car that is recognizable because I just drive it around, and that I don't have to worry about too much.

I mean, there's beauty marks on it from driving it.

[Jess] It's not precious, it's meant to be driven, on gravel roads or whatever.

[Jenn] We always knew that the Sedan was going to be mine and the '33 was going to be Jess's, (upbeat music) but what's changed for me is that I wanted the badass car, I wanted the car that you could put flames on and put airbag suspension on and all that kind of great stuff, and my dad was like, just cool it, just wait, just take a breath.

And now that I'm older and trying to honor its history, trying to honor my parents and our memories of it, I don't want it to change.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Speaking of that badass '33, (upbeat music) (upbeat music) it's got a history of its own.

(upbeat music) [Jess] This is our '33 5-window Coupe.

My dad bought this body from a man in Hebron, Nebraska, in 1982.

And he put it up in the attic as a future project.

(upbeat music) I was always a helper in the shop, and so when I was 10 or 11, kind of an impressionable age, we walked up to the attic, and he pointed at it, and he said, "You and I are going to build that someday."

And I thought, that's cool.

So right then and there, I fell in love with '33 bodies.

And when I turned 21, we swung it down from the attic and started working on it.

And by 2008 we had it on the road.

It was timeless.

It was the best way to spend my college and after college years, is with my dad in the shop.

That was really important, to make that commitment to each other and to the car and to get it on the road and spend that time together in the garage.

[Braeden] Beyond family bonding, life lessons were learned in the shop over all those years, Lessons that are remembered to this day.

[Jess] We were raised to be strong, independent females by our mom.

(upbeat music) -And reinforced by our dad.

-And reinforced by our dad, yeah, because it didn't matter if you're a girl or boy, you could be in the shop, you can get dirty, you can get sweaty, you can work on the thing, you can learn, because one day you'll have to do it.

(upbeat music) [Jess] When I'm on the road and something goes wrong, I can generally fix it, and I can do it on my own, and that's super huge.

The first time that happened, I was just so happy and I was giddy and I called my dad right away.

The steering arm came loose, and I had the bearing in my hand, I had so far torn down to get the steering arm put back in.

And we got it done, and I was like, "Look what I did."

I didn't know I had learned all of that.

Gosh, It just means the world to have this car and the story behind it.

And it's the time with my dad that I think is the most precious.

The cars are our legacy, it's our dad's legacy, it's our family's legacy, they'll be our legacy one day.

(upbeat music) (birds chirping) (upbeat music) [Braeden] Now we're headed to the city to learn about a culture with roots in 1940s Los Angeles.

(upbeat music) Richard Medina grew up around lowriders in Colorado and established the Nebraska lowriders club as a way to share cars, music, and love across the state.

Rich.

Rich Dollar Sign.

Rich Homie.

[Richard] What's going on, man?

What's the deal?

-Lowrider problems, brother.

-Lowrider problems.

-What's going on with it?

-Went to...

Still trying to figure it out.

I think I've got a loose power wire somewhere, but when it comes to lowriders, man, it could be a variety of different issues, so it is what it is, you kind of just take the good with the bad.

You think you're gonna have this done for your lowrider show?

I think so, I think so.

Usually, that's typically how it goes, right before the day that something really important happens, it's prone to break, whether it's going to be your engine or your hydraulics, something always happens.

And it's a very common saying, we just say, "Lowrider problems."

All part of the game.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Before Rich towed his car to his buddy's shop, he showed us how the hydraulics work.

It's a simple system of you have your hydraulic switches here, so you hit the switch, it's a two pronged switch that allows it to either raise up or come down.

Got a power wire that shoots the back of the trunk where all the hydraulic components are located.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] These are all batteries.

[Richard] These are all batteries.

They're called group 31 batteries.

They're batteries that you typically find in diesels because they're meant to be charged and drained constantly without ruining the battery.

So what does Creeping on a Come Up mean?

Means I'm slowly getting to the top, just creeping on the come up, so that's what it means.

The creeping is kind of going slow, and then, on the come up, means just trying to rise to the top.

[Braeden] And tell me about these wheels, because they're smaller than anything you see on a normal vehicle.

[Richard] So of course, the game is called low riding, it's in the name, and it's to always go low and slow.

So one of the variety of different ways that they used to make the car lower, is smaller tires, so these are 13-inch tires.

You used to put sandbags in the trunk, blocks of concrete in the trunk, heat your coil springs, anything that you could do to make the car as low as possible.

And of course, that's going to be the first step to doing that, is just putting smaller tires on there.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] As Richard's '82 Oldsmobile Cutlass was being towed, we went to check out his '49 Ford Shoebox.

And on the way, he talked about why it was important for him to get the Nebraska lowriders club up and running.

(engine rumble, clanking noise) [Richard] I started Nebraska Lowriders Club because there was people here doing it before me, it's always been around, I didn't reinvent it, I didn't claim it like this, I've just brought it to the forefront with social media.

And a lot of people wanted to be a part of something... Have been embarrassed to be from Nebraska, per se, so I wanted to bring it to the front and say, "Hey, this is who we are.

"We're from Nebraska.

"We don't claim to be anything we're not.

"We're authentic, we're original, we're from Nebraska."

I like lowriding because it's just part of my culture, it's just something I grew up with.

Through music videos and movies that low riders are gang bangers or dope dealers, or that sort of thing like that, man, but I think that's false, we're business owners, we're family men, we're community leaders, and that sort of thing like that.

It's just the era or the culture we grew up in, it's just our style of car.

(thumping music) [Braeden] We've talked a lot, we've learned a lot about nostalgia and the fun you have with cars, but you and I just talked about lowrider problems.

So do you have lowrider problems with this car too?

[Richard] I have lowrider problems with this car too.

So I was pulling it out at the beginning of the season to go for a ride, and the hood latch failed on it, and the hood actually flew open while I was driving.

So now I'm in the process of getting a new hood replacement and a new paint job for the car.

Going to be switching it over here over the wintertime and bring something out new next year.

What's your favorite thing to do with this car?

Just cruise it.

This car makes me feel cool, like the Fonz, you know what I mean?

When I get in this thing and I turn on some oldies and I just roll down the windows and I go for a ride, I forget all my woes.

[Braeden] Speaking of woes, I'm happy to report that Rich Dolla Sign got his Cutlass running again before his car show.

(thumping music) We checked in with him and his lowrider crew, getting right and getting tight.

(upbeat music) (soft rumble) Cars have a way of being so much more than bolts and sheet metal.

We've learned they bring back memories and become part of traditions.

(latch clicking) (creaking door) They give us entertainment and build bonds, like they're part of the family.

In the case of Larry and Nate Elias, their '68 Cadillac convertible does a bit of all of that.

(upbeat music) [Larry] Dad bought the car in 1970, I was 14 years old, and that was the car that I learned to drive when I got my license.

Most of the guys my age were driving Chevelles and GTOs and I didn't really want to drive a Cadillac convertible to school, but when I found out that the girls liked it, it was pretty cool for me.

So that was the first car that I drove before I owned my own car.

And then he passed away in 1989, he was only 52 years old.

Mom kept the car for five or six years and then as she was getting older and she didn't drive it, so she decided to sell it.

(upbeat music) [Nathan] I really only have two memories of my grandfather, one of which was in and around this car.

So I remember when grandma was talking about selling it, because again, it functionally didn't make a lot of sense for anybody to end up with.

And I remember even at that point in time being 11 or 12 years old, thinking, what if I bought it?

But obviously even as an 11 or 12 year old, it's like, well what are you going to do with it?

I remember at one point in time, one of my cousins was sitting in the car when they were little, and they accidentally bumped it into gear and it started going down the alley, and Uncle Mark had to jump in and throw it back into park.

(upbeat music) A couple of years ago, [Braeden] Nathan asked Larry if he knew who bought the car those 25 years ago.

Larry was able to find out and track him down.

[Larry] I said, "Are you interested "in selling the car back to us?"

And he called us back and said, "I think we'd probably sell it back to you "if you guys want to buy it back."

(upbeat music) [Braeden] I think every car person I know has a car that they sold and they just wish they could track it down.

What kind of condition was it when you found it again?

Well it wasn't great.

Nathan and his brother went up to look at it, they had it stored in an old machine shed and they actually had the top down on the car, so you cannot imagine the dust and inside the car and some rust on the outside, and it wasn't running at the time, it was like, there's going to have to be some work done here.

It was about 100 miles away is where they lived.

And they drove it down to us on a trailer and we were shocked because they actually started the car and drove it off the trailer, because they did a little bit of work on it to get it running, and so that was a real pleasant surprise.

(upbeat music) I think he was really excited to be able to sell it back to the family that he had purchased it from, that was a big day for him too.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] It was in homecoming parades, and they even found a picture of Nate, standing on the hood when he was four or five years old.

But one story stands out to Larry above all the others.

(upbeat music) When I first drove that car to school, maybe the first time I took it to high school, I drove it back to town after school, our high school was consolidate out in the middle of the country.

And I dropped the kid off at his house, and then as I got back onto the highway, I got on the gas, spun the back wheels and it went off the side of the road, into the shoulder and onto the grass, and I over corrected and actually put the And my life flashed, they say, "Your life flashed before my eyes," well, that happened to me.

Fortunately, no big damage on the car and I didn't get hurt, but I drove the car to my dad's grocery store because I had to go to work, and I parked in the back, I had decided that I wasn't going to say anything to my dad.

And then I went into the store and I started feeling guilty about that, and I told him what I had done.

And I took him out and showed it to him, and he had this...

He tried to act like he was mad, but he had this little grin on his face, he knew I was being a kid, but I was glad that I had told him.

And not more than 10 minutes after I told him, into my dad's store came a young guy that had witnessed the accident and just burst out and said, "Hey Larry, I saw your son put the car in the ditch."

And I was so glad that I had told my dad that I had done that because I knew I'd be in more trouble if I didn't.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) [Braeden] Nathan doesn't have many memories of his grandpa, so this restoration is a way of paying hommage to what came before him.

[Nathan] But really to restore it back to its glory of what it looked like when grandpa had it, that was really the goal.

And so we're doing new upholstery, we're going back and doing body work.

Grandpa had a pin stripe put on it, that wasn't natural, but we're putting that back on too, it's got to look exactly like it did.

The one thing that I probably won't touch on the car, is the steering wheel.

And the steering wheel, (upbeat music) just knowing that that was a steering wheel that grandpa had his hands on, that's something to me that I don't want to mess with, we're going to leave that just as it is and not replace that part.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Maybe next time I see Nate, he'll be driving with the top down, letting the wind blow through that sweet mustache.

Beth Janacek loves driving with the top down.

She's got a lot of convertibles and a love for Studebakers.

(upbeat music) Did you know the Studebaker company was founded in 1852 and originally produced the covered wagons used by early settlers coming to Nebraska?

It was the world leader, in fact.

Studebaker's first electric automobile was produced in 1902, followed two years later by its first gas powered model.

(upbeat music) The last Studebaker model rolled off the line in March of 1966.

[Beth] This is the first scrapbook we ever had, and it's of the Avanti.

We bought it in December 1982.

And I remember Larry coming home and saying, "I'd like to buy this car, "it's a Studebaker Avanti, they want $6,500 for it."

And I said, "You want to pay $6,500 for a Studebaker?"

And he said, "Yep," and so we did.

(upbeat music) And then we cleaned it up.

And that's me, I did all the cleaning.

(upbeat music) Larry wasn't picky enough.

(upbeat music) So I did most of the detailing.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] This scrapbook and this car bring back memories for Beth about when she met her late husband, Larry.

First car he had, that I knew of, was a '64 Chevy.

(upbeat music) I think it was a Super Sport with Baby Moons.

We met on a blind date, but I loved his car.

(upbeat music) And so we always were involved with cars.

He loved them, and I did too.

(upbeat music) We were first in the Studebaker Drivers Club for a long time because all we had were Studebakers.

[Braeden] Beth and Larry had two sons, Joel and Matt, who grew up going to car shows with their parents.

[Beth] this is a picture of Joel receiving the trophy for the Avanti at one of our car shows.

And then this a picture of Matt with a trophy.

They were always involved in everything.

(upbeat music) They knew that was just part of what we did.

We took a lot of vacations, going to car shows, and they were great with that.

And now as they're older, we still have all of those cars, and at some point in time they will be theirs.

(upbeat music) They still have a lot of special meanings for them because it reminds them of growing up and good times from that.

[Braeden] When I heard about Beth and her cars, I knew I had to see them for myself.

First up, that Avanti.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) And this is the Avanti.

Now, Studebakers are known for being a little quirky looking.

Yes.

Describe the design of this car.

Well, this one was Studebaker's answer to the Corvette.

It's all fiberglass, and I can attest to that, because I backed into a tree.

(upbeat music) Studebaker only made these in 1963 and '64.

And the way you can tell the difference between the two of them, is the headlight.

(upbeat music) This a '63, and they're round, '64's are square.

[Braeden] So what are some of the unique interior features of this car?

[Beth] These panels up here are the lights, and when those are on, it's just like an instrument panel, like an airplane's instrument panel.

That's kind of cool.

(upbeat music) It does have air conditioning, which wasn't in a lot of cars, but it comes with it, and that's kind of odd too, that's what those little pull things are, that's the air conditioning and the heater.

You can get to the back seat, or to the trunk, through the back seat, which my kids did that several times.

What do you look for in a car when it comes to colors?

Well for example, the Avanti came in black, white, and there's a rusty color, and a red, and this one.

And if you put all of those next to each other, the first one anybody looks at, is not the red one, it's not the one that's rust color, it's not the black, it's this one.

(upbeat music) And that's what drew me to this, I love this color, I would never change this color.

(upbeat music and soft rumble) [Braeden] The '63 Avanti is cool, but what Beth really loves is convertibles, and she's got a few.

While checking out her rides with the top down, her friends Ruth and Cliff stopped by in a convertible of their own.

Ruth, you drive an '07 Corvette, and I heard you just got back from a big trip, what was that trip?

[Ruth] Oh, it was to go on Route 66, which was a dream trip of mine from the time I was a little girl, because I would watch Route 66 whenever it was on.

And my dream was to have a Corvette and drive Route 66, so my dream was fulfilled.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Both Ruth and Beth are active in the High Plains Auto Club.

So tell me a little bit about the comradery with the guys in the car club.

(soft peppy music) Well, I can tell you from personal experience, that if you need something, all you have to do is call one of them.

My husband passed away five years ago, and those guys have been great.

In fact, they came and worked on the Avanti.

(soft peppy music) One of them came and changed a battery in my car.

Whenever you need something, all you have to do is ask, they're always there.

[Braeden] It's nice to have friends you can count on when the old cars break, but that's what happens when you drive them, which is what Beth does with her '69 Impala.

(soft peppy music) What do you do with this car?

Well, what do you think we do with it?

You tour with it.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] How often do you have the top up versus the top down?

(upbeat music) Top up, no.

Top down, yes.

And you can't have the windows up either.

People who drive convertibles, if you're a real convertible person, you don't put the windows up.

What kind of convertible is this?

[Beth] Well, this one is a 1960 Studebaker Lark.

And it was the second car that we bought, classic one, so it's always been very special.

My son and his wife used this for their car when they got married.

I think a Lark is a cute little car, it looks like a box on wheels.

But the Studebaker name, I think, is what makes this something that is collectible.

(upbeat music) It's hard to drive because these old cars don't have power steering, they don't have power brakes.

(upbeat music) [Braeden] Even though Beth's corvette isn't a classic, it's still a special edition car with special memories.

(upbeat music) So now, tell me about this Corvette.

This is a 2003 Corvette, 50th anniversary edition.

It has to have the right interior, the right color, the right wheels to be really called the 50th anniversary one.

And it does have a specialty plate on it, it says BJVET, because it's mine.

(soft rumble) This one makes me think of Larry.

(soft rumble) He loved this car, and we took it different places.

We went with another couple to South Dakota, and we visited Devil's Tower, it was a wonderful weekend, and that was in October, and six months later, both of our husbands were gone.

So that was a special time in this car.

(wind rustling) With any convertible, it's just like when that wind blows through your hair, it's just you and the good Lord.

(wind rustling) (wind rustling) Thanks for taking this trip around the sun with me and getting to know some cool Nebraska cars that are still on the road, or will be soon.

(soft rumble) It's because of the love from their owners, who had the foresight, and in some cases, the luck to keep them going.

Maybe soon, Lulu and I will see you cruising down the road in a car you love too.

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