Huge Gallery: Tri-Fives, Muscle Cars and Roadsters at the 2017 Grand National Roadster Show!

No car show in the country claims a longer unbroken run than the one that kicks off the West Coast’s season every January — and its nine-foot America’s Most Beautiful Roadster trophy has been chased by legendary builders for generations. What started as a tightly focused 1950 roadster show in Oakland has grown into an everything-under-one-roof event covering tri-fives, muscle cars, customs, and rat rods.

In California we really donâ€™t have â€œseasonsâ€ so right after our official car show schedule ends in December the new one starts in January and the kickoff event is a big one, the Grand National Roadster Show. Yea, the name implies a lot of street rods, but over the years the show has grown to include just about everything in the automotive spectrum. In addition to the aforementioned street rods there are muscle cars, customs, trucks, low riders, rat rods, gassers and woodys.

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No car show anywhere claims a longer unbroken run than the one that opens the West Coast’s season every January, and the nine-foot-tall trophy waiting at the end of it has been chased by legendary builders for generations. This particular show started life so tightly focused on one type of car that its founder actually worried “roadster” wasn’t a broad enough name to draw a crowd. Instead it grew into the exact kind of everything-under-one-roof event described in this gallery — tri-fives, muscle cars, customs, and rat rods sharing the same floor. How did a single-focus regional show become “the Grand-Daddy of them All”?

From One Weekend in Oakland to Hot Rodding’s Biggest Trophy

The first National Roadster Show was held January 19–22, 1950, at the Oakland Exposition Building, drawing more than 25,000 visitors over four days — numbers that convinced founder Al Slonaker he had something worth repeating. By 1962 the show had grown enough to add “Grand” to its name, and its America’s Most Beautiful Roadster (AMBR) award became hot rodding’s ultimate recognition for open cars, a nine-foot trophy that’s been claimed over the decades by builders like Boyd Coddington and Chip Foose.

Why ‘Roadster’ Barely Describes What’s on the Floor Now

Despite the name, the show has expanded well past roadsters to include street rods, muscle cars, customs, trucks, low riders, rat rods, and woodys — exactly the mix on display in the tri-five-and-muscle-car-heavy gallery from this 2017 event at Pomona’s Fairplex. The show’s move to Fairplex in 2004, after stops at several Bay Area venues, gave it the space to keep expanding that mix year after year, and it remains one of the few automotive events where a numbers-matching Tri-Five Chevy and a full-custom roadster genuinely compete for the same spotlight.

The AMBR trophy itself carries strict build-quality standards behind the glamour — cars are judged on craftsmanship, engineering, and originality of design, which is part of why the same handful of elite builders keep reappearing on the winners’ list across different decades. That same standard of craftsmanship carries over into the muscle car and Tri-Five entries filling out the rest of the show floor, even though those cars aren’t eligible for the AMBR trophy itself.

That’s the real appeal of a gallery like this one: on a single show floor at Pomona, seven decades of American automotive history end up parked side by side, all chasing a version of the same trophy.

The Trophy Builders Spend Careers Chasing

Winning the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award has become such a benchmark of craftsmanship that builders like Boyd Coddington and Chip Foose built entire reputations partly on AMBR wins, with some competitors returning year after year with increasingly ambitious builds specifically aimed at the trophy. Because judging weighs engineering and originality as heavily as appearance, an AMBR-winning roadster typically represents thousands of hours of fabrication rather than a car assembled from catalog parts.

What ‘Tri-Five’ Actually Means

Tri-Five is shorthand collectors use for Chevrolet’s 1955, 1956, and 1957 full-size cars, the run that introduced the small-block V8 to Chevy’s lineup and is widely credited with turning Chevrolet into a genuine performance brand. Those three model years remain some of the most heavily restored and hot-rodded cars in the hobby, which is exactly why a Tri-Five-heavy gallery fits naturally alongside muscle cars at a show built around craftsmanship.

Why Pomona Became a Hot Rodding Hub

The Fairplex grounds in Pomona host more than just the Roadster Show; the same facility is home to the NHRA’s Winternationals drag races and the Los Angeles County Fair, giving the site a packed calendar that keeps it constantly associated with car culture throughout the year. That concentration of automotive events in one place has helped Pomona build a reputation as one of Southern California’s genuine hot rodding landmarks.

More Than One Trophy on the Floor

While the AMBR award gets the headlines, the Grand National Roadster Show hands out awards across dozens of additional categories covering customs, trucks, motorcycles, and daily-driven street cars, giving builders outside the roadster class their own shot at recognition. That layered judging structure is part of why the show has been able to keep expanding its scope for over seven decades without diluting the prestige of its signature award.

A Show That Moved Around Before Settling Down

Long before its 2004 move to Pomona’s Fairplex, the Grand National Roadster Show had already relocated several times around the San Francisco Bay Area, including stops in Oakland and at the Cow Palace in Daly City. That history of moving venues as the show outgrew its previous home is part of why the eventual move to a permanent, expandable Southern California site was such a turning point for the event.

What Actually Makes a Car a ‘Roadster’

In hot rod terms, a roadster specifically means an open-top car with no fixed roof, historically built on a pre-1949 body, a much narrower definition than the broader mix of muscle cars, customs, and trucks that now share the show floor. That narrow original focus is exactly why the AMBR trophy stays reserved for true roadsters even as the surrounding show has grown to embrace nearly every other automotive style.

Muscle Cars Get the Spotlight Without the Trophy

Because the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster award is restricted to open-top roadsters by definition, the muscle cars and Tri-Fives filling out the rest of the show floor compete in entirely separate categories, giving owners of hardtop performance cars their own path to recognition without ever going head-to-head against a purpose-built show roadster. That separation is part of what lets such different kinds of cars share the same event without one category overshadowing the other.

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