In November of 1950, Sacramento businessman Harold “Baggy” Bagdasarian decided to have a local car show to determine what the best custom build was. He was president of the Capitol City Auto Club Thunderbolts, and held the show at the Capitol Chevrolet Company dealership in downtown Sacramento.

To avoid getting involved in the Federal Amusement Tax, they charged a penny less than the 75 cents that would have changed the show’s status, and at 74 cents a head with over 500 spectators, they took in $262 in just two days with 22 cars entered.

The winner of this year’s King of Customs, John D’Agostino’s 1958 Packard Sportster. Beautiful car!

They tried it again at a different location, this time hoping to break even, at least. The April car show for 1952 brought in 32 entries and the spectator count grew to over 1,000. The Thunderbolts were onto something, and by 1954 attendance grew to over 9,000 spectators.

As attendance grew, so did the need for larger venues, and by 1970 Bagdasarian moved the Autorama into three buildings at the Cal Expo in Sacramento, and there were 175 entries and tens of thousands of spectators.

The Joe Bailon Award was picked up by Joseph Cusumano with this glowing orange 1954 Mercury 2 Door Hard Top.

In 1991, a special award was created to honor the founder of the Autorama, and the “Harold Bagdasarian Award for the World’s Most Beautiful Custom” was presented to a car from 1936 to present that has a custom or modified look with a silhouette change – such as chopped, channeled, or sectioned bodywork.

This year’s winner of that award picked up a couple of others, and if you’ve been attending or following show winners, then it’s no surprised that Bruce Wanta’s Mulholland Speedster was this year’s pick for:

• 2017 Custom D’Elegance Award
• 2017 H.A. Bagdasarian Award – World’s Most Beautiful Custom
• 2017 Sam Barris Memorial Award

The Mulholland Speedster, of course, is a high-dollar build that broke out the big check, hiring Hollywood Hot Rod’s Troy Ladd to do the honors of putting together this beautiful speedster. It’s based on a 1936 Packard 1401 coupe, but other than some cues from things like the grille, wheel emblems, and instrumentation, that’s where Packard left off and Ladd began this build.

Other award winners include Best Rod, Best Restored, and Best Truck, and each was well deserving of that distinction. It must be a very difficult choice when presented with the task of selecting a vehicle for each of these categories.

The Best Custom award went to another lowrider, this time it was Chris Roark’s insane 1958 Chevrolet Impala.

There are eight buildings that form a sort of spiraling staircase off from the main buildings, and in one area we found an assortment of Tri-Fives, while a couple others brought us the lowriders, which also found another award winner for Best Custom. You can see some of those in our musclecar coverage yesterday.

We’ll have several other articles forthcoming, with our Top Picks, Top Three Features, and you can find our Musclecar gallery posted yesterday. For now, enjoy the huge gallery below of some of the best street rods and hot rods from the 67th Sacramento Autorama.