It is a hot Wednesday night, and there is virtually no plastic in the west parking lot at Chicago`s famous Rock `n` Roll McDonald`s, 600 N. Clark St. The cars here tonight, dozens of them, are made of steel. They are heavy and high-powered; they guzzle gas, and they gleam. Some of these cars were built six decades ago, when there was no plastic.
They all appear to have come fresh off the assembly lines in Detroit, even Russ Scholl`s 1949 Ford panel truck, whose deep-blue finish, Scholl says, is a 1986 Toyota paint. On the sides, Scholl, a professional airbrush artist, has painted montages of relatively late-model 1956 and `57 Chevrolets. You would hardly recognize the vehicle as the Forest Park Concordia Cemetery flower car it used to be.
Most of the cars in the lot date from the 1950s and early `60s: a rich dark green 1952 Pontiac four-door sedan, heavy with chrome; a light green 1965 Buick Grand Sport, hood up to exhibit stainless-steel engine parts; and a dozen late-`50s Chevies, very hot cars in their day. But many were older cars, hopped up, restyled, refinished, the hot rods of the `50s and `60s.
Here, too, are cars that weren`t yet on the drawing boards in that era. But no one quibbles that they are too new for this night of nostalgia; the point is that they have been given the same loving care. Besides, the car-restoration hobby is very much alive in the `80s. Nothing has changed except the prices.
”Unfortunately, the hobby has become a big business,” says Dan Leahy, whose good fortune it has been to forsake a career as a project designer for General Motors to found his own company, GM Muscle Car Parts Inc., a supplier of discontinued parts for car collectors.
The lot is crowded with people and cars, and they, too, appear to have stepped out of the past. You see ponytails and poodle skirts, leather jackets and saddle shoes. They`re jitterbugging and twisting to the classics-”My Boyfriend`s Back,” ”Hound Dog,” ”Twist and Shout”-and admiring the cars. An ancient Ford convertible, a radically altered relic of the early `30s, rolls into the lot. The driver, in white T-shirt and jeans, cuts the engine, jumps over the door, turns and lifts his sleek, blond, ponytailed
”girlfriend” out of the car; she may well be his wife and the mother of teenagers. But everyone is a teenager here tonight.
This is Cruise Night at the Rock `n` Roll McDonald`s, a weekly Wednesday night revisit to the `50s and `60s, when drive-in restaurants were the place for high school kids and ducktailed dropouts to see and be seen, where the hottest cars attracted the hottest girls.
Cruise Nights, which will continue through August, were an experiment at the Rock `n` Roll McDonald`s last year-a natural extension of what the restaurant`s brochures call its ”blast from the past” theme. A McDonald`s like no other, the interior is a riot of 1950s and 1960s memorabilia: hundreds of colorful old posters, photos, knicknacks, game and gumball machines, Elvis Presley paraphernalia, four life-sized statues of the Beatles, the original
”Superman” TV series telephone booth, a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox stocked with the hits of yesteryear, a 1959 Corvette parked in a dining room-theater called the Sky Hi Drive-In.
It is easy to see from the size of the crowd that Cruise Nights sell a lot of Big Macs. It is this kind of thing-and there is always something going on at the Rock `n` Roll McDonald`s-that has made Angelo Lencioni and Kathy Connelly the proprietors of the ”largest-grossing McDonald`s in the world,” Lencioni says. ”That`s considering price differentials, because in Rome it costs $4.65 for a Big Mac. I could be very rich selling Big Macs for $4.65 here.”
Even selling them at $1.75, Lencioni is rich enough to be a car collector. Ferraris, no less.
Making his way among the cars is Tom Lima Jr., for 25 years a body-and-fender repairman until he quit to devote all his time to Chicago on Wheels, 1933 N. Sedgwick St., the company he founded in 1970 to package and promote
” `50s and `60s car shows, rod & custom shows and automobile swap meets.”
Lima is judging the cars for $50, $30 and $20 prizes, nominal sums against the honor of winning. He looks for ”cleanliness, detail, body finishes, stuff like that,” he says, and he has found the winner. It`s not a rock-era car but a rich-red 1972 Chevrolet El Camino, an odd combination of passenger car and pickup truck, though this one scarcely resembles the production model.
”All right,” Lima says, as he starts to explain why this is the best car on the lot, ”it`s chopped (roof lowered to less than half the original height), the hood is louvered, it has GTO taillights, lots of body
modifications, engine all done in stainless steel, the bed done in wood, interior completely redone. It`s got a TV, a digital dash, a homemade steering column, which is a tilt.
”There`s money in this car,” he goes on. ”That`s the name of the game. The guy who`s got the most money in the car is the guy who`s going to win, no matter what kind of car it is. Why do they do it? It`s a hobby, and it`s an ego trip for a lot of guys: Who has the best car? And these cars are just as powerful as they are good-looking.”
There is, literally, money in this El Camino. The lid over the bed of the truck is covered with about 3,000 coins embedded in hard plastic. ”Silver dollars, Susan B. Anthony dollars, half-dollars, quarters . . . seven different kids of coins,” explains the owner, Melvin Thornton, who operates Mel`s 1 2 3 Car Wash at 123 E. 111th St. He won`t say exactly how many coins there are because that would spoil a guessing game he sometimes runs as a car- wash promotion.
”When I bought the car, it was a junk,” says Thornton, a man of 46 who could be Flip Wilson`s twin. ”This is all leather,” he says, opening the door, ”and that embroidery (a detailed picture of the car) is 42,000 stitches. The steering wheel I can take off and carry it into the house with me wherever I go.
”Don`t ask how much money I`ve got in it. I told my son: `You want to know that, go count up the bills, but don`t tell me-I might be scared to drive it.` ”
That would be terrible.
”There is no other car like it,” Thornton says. ”Whenever I go for a drive, people automatically look at it. That`s the kick.”
Kathy Connelly, a teenager in the late `50s, has this scene all figured out. ”The cars are more of a machismo thing for the guys,” she says, ”but what the Cruise Night really does is take you back to a fun era in your life, even if it`s just for a few hours. Myself, sometimes I`m standing out there and I`ll hear `Love Me Tender,` and all of a sudden I`m in the back seat of a car at the 66 Drive-In again.”
