Truck Show Comes to St. Ignace This Weekend
Detailed Restoration, Crafting Skills of Local Hobbyists To Be Featured
By Ryan Schlehuber

Model truck builder Tim Ahlborn of St. Ignace displays the 1975 Peterbilt 359 model he built as a child. It is one of several models that will be on display at the 10th annual Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show September 16 to 18.

When one thinks of a truck show, images of huge, chrome-plated, brightly-lit, and creatively-painted tractor-trailer rigs come to mind, but St. Ignace’s Tim Ahlborn and Moran’s Christine Brown bring to the 10th annual Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show an allure of vehicle craftsmanship on a much smaller scale.

Since buying his first model truck from an Internet auction site, in 1999, Mr. Ahlborn’s collection has grown to hundreds of models, some he has not even put together yet. He has 250 of the trucks on display and plans to build a 16-foot by 16-foot addition to the room to house more of his collection.

Christine Brown of Moran poses with her award-winning restored pedal bike, a 1948 Indian carnival motorcycle, that will be displayed at the annual St. Ignace Truck Show. She has been restoring pedal cars for 12 years.

“I have enough in boxes now to last me into retirement,” said Mr. Ahlborn, a corrections officer for the Mackinac County Sheriff’s Department. He built model trucks as a child, but it became a serious hobby six years ago.

Ms. Brown started as a porcelain doll maker and, somehow, that led to restoring antique pedal cars, like the ones found at carnivals or fairs.

“I saw a 1941 Chrysler pedal car that I thought would go well together with one of my porcelain dolls,” she explained. “I just really got into restoring pedal cars after that.”

Her pedal car restoration skills are self-taught.

“I love these pedal cars,” she said. “They are my kind of size.”

Both hobbyists will be featured in the 10th annual Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show in St. Ignace Friday, September 16, through Sunday, September 18. Both of them were multiple category winners in last year’s Truck Show contests.

Ms. Brown’s 1948 Indian carnival motorcycle won best of show, best special interest, and best restored, her 1961 fire truck pedal car won the favorite truck category, and her 1958 Fire Chief pedal car won best original.

Mr. Ahlborn, who took 75 model trucks to the contest last year, won best display.

The Indian carnival motorcycle that Ms. Brown will display again this year has $2,800 in restored parts. With the help of her son, Ken, an auto body paint specialist, Ms. Brown filed, sanded, and repainted the pedal bike. She also made an exact replica of the vehicle’s Indian face light, on the front wheel, from a clay and rubber mold and made the leather saddle bags with fringe on the vehicle’s seat from scratch, detailed to their silver conchos with Indian faces.

Her pedal cars have won awards at pedal car contests around the state and several have been featured in the book, “Evolution of the Pedal Car,” and Good Wheels Trader magazine. In 1998, she won the Circus Maximus Toy Show contest in Kalamazoo with her restored 1955 Chevy.

Her most prized pedal car is the 1958 pink Plymouth, which took her seven years to restore. It is an exact replica of the vehicle in Stephen King’s classic horror movie, “Christine.”

In her living room is a large display case with the Christine pedal car and a 1961 Casey Jones train above it.

The display case comes equipped with display accessories from the movie and with a remote-controlled sound system that has a recording of George Thorogood’s song, “Bad to the Bone,” and a recording of a 1958 Plymouth engine revving up.

“I have a strange decor in my living room, I admit,” Ms. Brown laughed.

Mr. Ahlborn’s favorite model trucks are of Peterbilts, the truck manufacturer based in Denton, Texas. He has been invited by engineering friends of his to tour the headquarters, which he said leaves just enough time for him to return to St. Ignace for the truck show. He toured a Peterbilt facility in California when he was 14.

Mr. Ahlborn, who is regularly featured in the “Trucker’s Corner” column in Model Cars magazine, is now mastering the art of building background scenes to “make the trucks appear life-size in photographs instead of just taking pictures of them with a plain background.” The shelves in his display room are painted like roads and parking lots to give his models a more dimensional display.

His next project is building a Peterbilt 379X truck.

Ms. Brown will tackle a 1948 Pontiac station wagon. She hopes to rebuild it into a muscle car with flames and a small hula dancer for the dash, or into a vintage Good Humor ice cream truck.

INFO BOX

Richard Crane Memorial Truck Show

September 16-18

Free Admission

Friday, September 16:

Swap Meet - begins at 8 a.m., ends Sunday at 4 p.m.

Truck Show - street closed at 6:30 p.m.

Saturday, September 17:

Car Show - 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Toy/ Pedal Car Show: set up at 8 a.m.

Kewadin Pig Roast - starts at 2 p.m. at Kewadin Casino

Parade of Lights - begins at dusk

Sunday, September 18:

Car Show - 8 a.m.

Award Ceremony - 2 p.m.

Raffle Car - announced at 3 p.m.

6 p.m. - Open street