Last weekend we went to perennial Hoon favorite show, Seconds Saturdays in Oakland, CA. For a few years now, the show has been a staple of the weird-car loving community, and was graciously hosted by Hanzel Auto Body Works. Unfortunately for us, Mr. Hanzel has retired and the shop has closed its doors after 97 years in business [Yes, you read that right. Family owned for almost a century.] However, the torch has been passed along to a couple new hosts. From now on, the show has been moved to alternate month to month between Alloy Motors and the Rat Hacks shops. This month was the first of those, and Alloy Motors was the first up. We decided we’d take Rowdy the Audi and go check it out. The venue may have changed, but it’s lost none of its amazing-ness. Hit the jump for more photos and words.

 

The rain wouldn’t go away, but the show went on anyway. Luckily, the inside of their shop has a lot of room for standing around chatting and drinking coffee. We took our 20 year old 200k mile Audi to the show, and then continued on to Los Angeles for the Luftgekühlt Porsche show before returning home to Reno. 1300 miles, and the old girl never stumbled. What a ride. I love it dearly.

This shop has the right vibe. It’s just so cool to see the old-school charm and high-quality work that comes from a shop like this.

Shop dog is bored with your shenanigans. She will continue to stand guard, however.

Don’t even think it , n00b. Fite me IRL. You won’t.

Shop dog has a sheetmetal counterpart.

This lovely little Honda was driven in by one of the show attendees. It has been converted to electric power. Apparently this car was recently stretched with sheetmetal from a wagon so that it could fit more batteries. What a cool little piece.

Some lunatic showed up in his LS-swapped Miata. The work was done by Flyin’ Miata, and looks like it’s freakin’ factory. The fit and finish is spectacular. Apparently 400 horsepower and wide sticky tires require trepedation to go for a drive in the rain.

This is a little Furrin’ job with a big ‘ole American V8 up front. Perhaps the Shelby-stripes are apropos. Modern-day Cobra, anyone? Also, California Black Plates.

I love these Ronals. The Jag is cool, too.

This was probably my favorite car at the event. The rain kept some of the less adventurous folk away, but some really neat automobiles still showed up. #ItBelongsInAMuseum

There is nothing wrong with a clean E39 M5. I’ve always wanted to park one of these next to my Audi S6 and an old Merc 500E in a three-bay garage. Old German sports sedans FTW.

This guy used to work at Hanzel’s shop, and is apparently quite the master of paint. Being that it’s Saturday, he dropped by the shop to respray an old pedal car for his unborn daughter.

A good sanding and a skim of mud will make any paint look good. It’s all in the prep.

Good times with good people and even better cars.

This Valiant was just plain awesome. According to the owner it’d been in the family since new. It was almost finished up, just some final tuning and it’s back out to terrorize the streets.

This is the shop DART. I’ve seen it a handful of times now, and every time I do it scares me a little.

But I’ll be damned if that paint doesn’t shine like a mirror, and the body panels aren’t as straight as an arrow (or a dart, I suppose?)

This old beauty had been poorly mended by some other body shop. The frame rails had apparently been “repaired” with a few pounds of bondo. Alloy should be able to make this look like new again with some work.

This old Buick is hella-rad. The paint is looking great, just a bit of final prep. Apparently it has a full Art Morrison chassis underneath. And I’d be surprised if it didn’t have a motor to match. I’ll bet it rips.

Exige clamshell?

Camaro in the paint booth.

Everyone needs a Cool Truck. I think this was my wife’s favorite thing in the whole shop. She’s strange, but I still love her.

OMG, it could be like a replica of the General Mayhem! Just kidding, this Charger is going to be restored. Hey, that rack came from Hanzel’s shop, too! It’s like the venue never changed!

The Ford GT

No, this car technically isn’t a real Ford GT. That doesn’t make it any less cool, though. According to Alloy, they put in a lot of work to make the body panels fit together right and paint them up nice. Now they’re working with the owner to help build up some proper patina by actually driving the thing. A few rock chips had just started to show themselves on the front nose cone, but it’ll look so much better when a few hundred more join them.




[All photos ©2016 Hooniverse/Bradley C. Brownell, All Rights Reserved.]