(Words and Photos by Kaleb Kelley) This year was my second year on the Hot Rod Power Tour, but my first time with a respectable camera. The big reason I was excited for this was to harvest enormous amounts of content for my Instagram page, @ClassicsDaily, but that wasn’t all that it was about. Over the week, I took nearly 13,000 pictures of some of the coolest cars in the country and also met some of the coolest people in the country. I would have uploaded these much sooner, but I just recently became a contributor for BangShift.com and thought all you BangShifters would really like them.

The Power Tour is one of the absolute coolest automotive experiences. If you haven’t ever been on the Power Tour, you need to add it to your bucket list immediately. I will do everything that I can to hopefully do the long haul each and every year. This year me and my dad left from North Texas to Charlotte for the start in his numbers matching, Curious Yellow 1971 ‘Cuda 340. My uncle rode along in his daily driver 1956 Ford F100 pickup which is a driving project. He had a few problems along the way, but he ultimately made it. He even had to get his transmission rebuilt in Norwalk, Ohio and still made it on the rest of the tour!

At our hotel in Charlotte, I met one of my Instagram followers, Garrett Randall, and his girlfriend Megan. He has a really cool white 1970 El Camino with a cool pro-touring vibe. He’s done a few suspension mods to it, but plans to do more along with a motor swap and paint job. He’s currently struggling over the paint color before he dives into it, but plans on swapping a 6.0L LQ9 motor that he recently picked up. We rode out almost the entire Power Tour together and had a blast. This made for one motley crew with some interesting variety.

Between the three of us, there was a Mopar car, a Chevy car with a truck bed, and a Ford truck, so I think we covered all of the bases. I don’t think that the tour would be even nearly the same without a few good friends to hang out with on the coolest road trip known to man. Next year I hope to be taking my 1973 Plymouth Scamp on the long haul. It may be in bare metal at the moment with no engine, transmission, or interior, but I can see the silver lining already.

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