NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The annual Downtown Hutchinson Rod Run & Classic Car Show is an event that draws approximately 25,000 visitors to downtown Hutchinson the first weekend of October.
"Classic doesn't particularly mean old," said Jim Gruver with the car show. There's cars that have been restored, you know, and some of them, I think, better than the new cars. We accept all classes. We've got 19 different categories that people can put their vehicles in. Not just cars, trucks, motorcycles, anything on wheels, bring it on down."
The event includes a Show & Shine of beautiful hot rods, classic and antique cars, trucks and motorcycles, a Main Street Cruise, vendor demonstrations, great food & drinks all weekend. If you want to bring a car, though, they need to know right away.
"If somebody still wants to register, today's the last day to do registration," Gruver said Thursday. "The only place they can do that is Cabinet Connections downtown. If they want to stop in there and get pre-registered, that's one of the things nobody else does is we have designated parking spots for people to come both days and park in the same place and park by your buddy."
Another new thing this year is a poker run that will be part of the Cruise Main event on Friday night.
"We start our cruise Friday night at 6:00 p.m.," Gruver said. "That's always a fun thing. We just have kind of adopted a drag Main type event that evening. People can drag Main, they can go around town, do whatever they want to. Along with that this year, we're doing a poker pun. Anybody that's registered can join in the poker run and they'll leave the same time as the cruise. They'll drop off at 23rd and Main and go through the Fairgrounds. We have five different spots at the Fairgrounds that they can pick their cards up and see what kind of a hand that they can get."
The full schedule of events is available at https://www.downtownhutchrodrun.com/.