Archives for October 2010

The first ever Gas Guzzy 4×4 Off Road Truck Show Challenge was held to the delight of a massive crowd at the American Heritage Village in Auburn, Indiana. This event was the first of its kind as it celebrated the early history of monster trucks with nostalgia style car crushing, monster tank machines and even monster trucks floating across a 12 acre pond. In addition, a huge turnout of mud bog and obstacle course competitors were on hand to keep the action going all day long, along with a great assembly of beautiful show’n’shine machines.

The stars of the event were the “old school” monsters as monster truck veteran Allen Pezo brought out his newly restored original Predator truck, event organizer Jeff Cook had the newly completed nostalgia truck Shotgun Harry on hand and Andy Hoffman from just down the road in Huntington showed up with his Nitecrawler tank. Rick Romanini out of Michigan was a huge part of the event, showing up with a collection of old school machines including the original Duraliner Giant, now called Uncle Slam; the original Polar Bear which had been named Live Wire; the original Star Trax Tank now called the Iron Reaper; and the only mud truck that managed to defeat the deep bog all day, Johnny Law.

The nostalgia car crushing was incredibly popular with the fans, the monster tanks got them on their feet and cheering as Andy Hoffman blasted the mud bog in Nitecrawler and the highlight of the day was the 12 acre pond float where Predator, Shotgun Harry and and an old school style Chevrolet driven by Jeremy Hosmin all successfully floated from one end of the pond to the other.

The event was a blast from the past and the fans on hand were delighted by seeing how monster trucks got started – for some, it was reliving moments they had seen in person many years before and for others who were too young to remember or even not yet born, it was a chance to experience the glory days of monster trucks. Everyone walked away already anticipating the next event as it is sure that there will be other monster truck people dusting off old chassis and beginning to restore them just so they can be a part of the fun next year.

This Inaugural 4×4 Off Road Truck Show Challenge was an important test for promoter Jeff Cook and his Gas Guzzy Events & Marketing as after its huge success, now they can begin to slowly expand the concept and hope to bring a taste of nostalgia monster truckin’ to fans in more places each year.

TheMonsterBlog.com staff was out in force for the event as Ross Z. Bonar co-hosted the event with Jeff Perrin of Perrin Motorsports while Colby Marshall, Kaedon Berry and Chris Parrish filmed for episodes of TMB TV’s MT Unlimited and ActionTracks. Superphotographer Paul M. Harry captured all the action for a huge photo gallery. It was great to have nearly all of the TMB staff in one place again this year and it was a reminder of how lucky we are to have not only a very talented group but more importantly, a great group of people in our little family.

Stay tuned for coverage from this great event here on the site and on our Facebook page. A huge thanks to Jeff Cook and all his friends/family with Gas Guzzy Events for a historic event and to Allen Pezo, Andy Hoffman, and Rick Romanini for their great respect of monster truck history in keeping these old school machines alive.

Fans do us a favor and go check out and bookmark www.GasGuzzy.com and also www.WildmanJeff.com and stay tuned for all the developments they have in growing this nostalgia event.