The vintage automobiles arrived gleaming yet ready for the road, with hoods open, engines on display, and owners leaning over fences as if sharing family photo albums. The eighth annual Route 66 Cars and Guitars Festival, held during the Mother Road’s centennial year, transformed several town blocks into a moving theater of memory—a reunion with an America that once saw its identity most clearly through a windshield on the open highway.
Ron Feldman of St. Peters, Missouri, stood beside his 1957 Chevrolet Nomad, a rare two‑door model of which only 6,103 were built that year. His first car, purchased at age 16, was also a ’57 Chevy wagon. Feldman has owned this Nomad for a decade and restored most of it himself, including the interior, which he worked on with his mother. He describes the hobby as a “total passion,” but he is quick to emphasize that the car is meant to be driven, not merely displayed. “I built this car to drive it,” he says.
As live music played—the “guitars” portion of the festival—that spirit echoed up and down the street. Stephanie Campbell of Webster Groves, Missouri, proudly showcased her 1955 Buick Roadmaster, a vehicle steeped in family history. When she was 15, her father unexpectedly arrived home in a Roadmaster that she and her brothers drove for years. After the car left the family, she missed it enough to spend roughly a decade searching for a suitable replacement. Now she drives her Roadmaster whenever she can. “I’m driving the value right out of it,” she says with a chuckle.
The automobile aficionados who gather at the Route 66 Cars and Guitars Festival remind us that America once imagined itself most clearly through a windshield on the open highway.
Route 66 has long amplified this American tendency to invest machines with longing. A car could represent a parent’s surprise, a first taste of adulthood, a prewar dream, or a postwar promise. It could serve as a means of escape or a way to return home.
Bob Worrall, who grew up in Kirkwood, still owns the 1968 Shelby Mustang GT350 he purchased in 1969 before being deployed to Vietnam. He recalls falling “head over heels in love” with the vehicle. Over the years he has assembled a collection of roughly twenty vintage cars—“I’m a gearhead!” he declares—but this Mustang holds a special significance for him.
A hundred years after Route 66 was first envisioned and constructed to span the nation’s heartland, the highway’s great promise is no longer defined solely by powerful engines and the open road. Its promise lies in recognition: that memory still carries chrome, that freedom sometimes wears whitewalls, and that the past, when carefully tended, can still turn over and run.
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<p>FAST FOOD: Ron Feldman displays his 1957 Chevrolet Nomad, adorned with a drive‑in meal tray.</p>
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<p>BACKSEAT TO THE FUTURE: Randy Mulcahy stands beside his 1981 DeLorean. He notes that passersby frequently inquire about the “flux capacitor” featured in the film *Back to the Future*, where a DeLorean functions as a time machine.</p>
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<p>CLASSY CHASSIS: A fully chromed engine is exhibited in the town’s center. The festival is among numerous events nationwide commemorating the 100th anniversary of the historic Route 66.</p>
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<p>IT’S HER RIDE AND JOY: Stephanie Campbell takes pride in her 1955 Buick Roadmaster.</p>
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<p>HORSE POWER: Ford Mustangs headline the muscle‑car segment of the festival.</p>
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<p>ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW: A hood ornament adorns a Chevrolet Bel Air.</p>
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<p>CAR BUFF: Steve Wagner polishes his 1959 Corvette Roadster.</p>
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<p>LEAN, MEAN MACHINE: A hood pin accents a Sublime Green Plymouth Barracuda.</p>
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