On March 16, Helper local Mike James traveled to Salt Lake City for Autorama’s fiftieth annual Salt Lake City car show and award ceremony. He would be inducted into their Utah Hot Rod Hall of Fame. Autorama is a nationwide premier custom car show series, showcasing America’s finest hot rods, custom cars, trucks and motorcycles.
James got started with hot rods in 1959 when he looked out the window as a kid and saw a loud car backing out near his house. He got his dad to take him down to the drug store to buy a book about hot rods. When he got a bit older, he built a race jeep for the hill climbs, and from there things really got going.
Along the way, he and Jim Boyack founded the Helper Car Show and the Butch Cassidy Gang, which is their car club. It’s been 39 years since the first car show and it’s become a huge success. So big, in fact, that it was the very first car show inducted into the Utah Hot Rod Hall of Fame.
“I never had an inkling that this would happen,” James stated, “but it’s a real honor.” He’s been attending Autorama since 1985 and thinks highly of the event and all the vehicles that are showcased there; some of them are literally million-dollar cars.
“It was a real surprise when I got the message… I had to read it four or five times to make sure I was reading it right!” he exclaimed. He talked about how meaningful it was to be recognized amidst some of the other amazing people that are honored in that Hall of Fame.
After all these years and all this hard work James still loves it and keeps showing up to put on more events. He carefully crafts different aspects of his events, even down to the custom jugs that he hands out as awards at his shows. They also auction off custom painted refrigerators. When asked about why he chose to auction unique fridges, he said, “you can give a gun away, you can give a T.V. away and it’s just a gun or a T.V. But if you get a fridge like [these], that’s really cool.”
This year the car show will be held in Scofield on August 30. After nearly four decades of these events James reminisced on it all. With a chuckle he said, “I always threaten to quit, but it ain’t ever happened.”
Photos courtesy of Salt Lake Autorama and Mike James
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