[PICS] Corvettes and More at the 2022 Detroit Autorama

Mar 10, 2022

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[PICS] Corvettes and More at the 2022 Detroit Autorama

Photo Credits: Steve Burns

Raise your right eyebrow, bust out your best Duane “The Rock” Johnson voice, and repeat after me: “Finally…Autorama has come back to…Detroit!”. (Insert wild crowd cheering sounds here!)

America’s Greatest Hot Rod Show returned to downtown Detroit last weekend after a 2-year hiatus thanks to our old friend Covid. It was also CorvetteBlogger’s first Detroit Autorama visit since 2019.

Pent-up demand was evident all weekend throughout the 723,000 square-foot Huntington Center nestled along the banks of the Detroit River. During our time at the show on Saturday, it was basically shoulder-to-shoulder down seemingly every aisle.

Detroit Autorama is billed as a hot rod show, but it’s home to much, more. There are roughly 700 fanatically restored factory-correct classics, racers, and rat rods spread across 2 levels. Virtually every niche of the collector car hobby can be found there. One of this year’s displays was group of Zingers. What’s a Zinger? Well, it’s basically a really fancy engine stand in the form of a small car with a cartoonishly giant motor in it. In most cases, the motor doesn’t even run, but they sure do look cool. In addition, various vendors sell their latest goodies and assorted services while countless sellers offer everything from Hot Wheels cars to automotive owner’s manuals in the Toy—o-rama area. There’s also a model car contest and a charity auction among other activities.

The Ridler Award is the main event at Detroit Autorama. Here, never-seen-before custom cars make their debut to complete for hot rodding’s ultimate prize. This year’s Ridler winner was an insane 1931 Chevy coupe called Sho Bird. You can check it out in our gallery below. We can’t even imagine how many man-hours went into building that thing.

On the Corvette side, all 8 generations showed up to show off. We even got our first glimpse of the 2023 Corvette Z06 in the GM Performance booth. The Amplify Orange C8 drew a consistently large crowd all weekend long. Be sure to catch it at show near you or on one of the Dealer Tour stops.

The selection of the Corvettes ranged from restored, stock C1’s up through highly modded C7’s and C8’s. Our favorite Corvettes of the show included a stunning Charcoal on red 1958, a custom 1959, and a slammed, white C8. CorvetteBlogger Honorable Mentions go out to a cool red 1960 gasser, a Superman themed C7, and a crazy C4 vette kart. If you’re ever in the Detroit area in early March, make it a point to hit up Autorama. There’s something for kids both young and old no matter if you’re into Corvettes or not. Our show gallery below features all the Corvettes we spied last weekend plus several of the “Great 8” vehicles that competed for the Ridler Award.

Have a favorite from Detroit Autorama? Give it a shout out in the Comments section below.