Bill Barbato’s 1933 Pontiac Sedan Is 2025’s Al Slonaker Memorial Award Winner

Brandan Gillogly

The Grand National Roadster Show has been crowning America’s Most Beautiful Roadster since 1950. However, the show is much more than that narrow niche of vehicles eligible for that honor. Every year since 1974, judges have bestowed the Al Slonaker Memorial Award to the top new build that is not a roadster. This year’s entries included a powerful Pantera, an immaculate 1935 Chevy coupe, a beautifully designed and fabricated VW Thing, and a rare 1938 Chevy with plenty of lowrider style and attention to detail. After the show judges made their cases and deliberated, they selected Bill and Angela Barbato’s sleek and polished 1933 Pontiac sedan.

Barbato had originally considered brandywine for the exterior color. The final color is a custom-mixed gold that he and the CAL Creations team call AuraBella.Brandan Gillogly

Barbato’s 1933 Pontiac sedan was already under construction when he decided on a new direction based on a design from Gary Ragle and Eric Black. The ambitious project was given to Andy Leach and the crew at CAL Auto Creations in Bennington, Nebraska, where the build took shape.

Brandan Gillogly

Barbato provided a 400-cubic-inch Pontiac V-8, ditching the inline-eight that would have originally powered the car. It’s topped by an 8-71 BDS supercharger and uses throttle-body fuel injection. It sends its power to a 4L80E transmission and then to a Heidts independent rear suspension that uses a Ford 9-inch center section, inboard brakes, and Ridetech coilovers. CAL Creations used the Heidts suspension geometry but machined unique lower control arms and uprights that fit the ’30s style of the build.

To get just the right look for the wheels, Eric Black took inspiration from a set of vintage Halibrands. The 15-inch front and 16-inch rear wheels were custom-machined. The rears bolt on, but the fronts are spindle-mount. The fronts also show off the first application of Steve Watt’s vintage-looking caliper that was first shown at SEMA 2023. To mimic the original Halibrand magnesium, Cal Creations gave the wheels a textured coating and finished them with paint that mimics the classic Dow 7. There’s just a hint of gold flake that complements the car’s finish. That lightly textured look worked out so well that the build team incorporated it into the engine bay and interior.

The Pontiac’s chassis components are as detailed as everything else on the car. While many of the trim pieces on the interior and outside of the car are nickel-plated, the mechanical bits were polished and painted to maintain tolerances.Brandan Gillogly

Like its Chevrolet counterparts, Pontiacs of this era used wood to reinforce the steel bodywork, and when that rots away there’s not much to hold everything together. So, while Cal Auto Creations started with a lot of original Pontiac sheet metal, the plans for the car were so involved that much of the car from the cowl rearward had to be fabricated. We spoke to Erik Hansen, a fabricator who’s been working at Cal Creations for more than a decade, who told us, “we ended up making both doors completely from scratch. The original skins weren’t worth using.” The garnish moldings were reused, but they had to be altered, as the top was wedge-chopped 2.25 inches in the front and 1.75 inches in the rear. Everything below the beltline from the B-pillar back is new metal because, in addition to a wedge section that took .75 inches in height from the cowl, the rear panel of the sedan was leaned forward three inches. CAL Creations also moved the rear fenders and the corresponding bead in the body up to match the proportions of the chopped and sectioned sedan.

The shape of the fender opening was modified, but those beads on the rear edge of the fender are original. The custom vents on the hood sides are functional.Brandan Gillogly

There’s a recurring theme of threes in the car’s design details. The three beads running off the trailing edge of the front fenders are original to the car and they were echoed in the custom machined hood vents. With a supercharged V-8 underneath, getting hot air out of the engine bay is a good idea. While the profile of the fenders and the bead details worked with the final goal of the build, an obvious problem reared its head. “As soon as you take the bumper off, it looks like it ran into a wall,” Hansen explained, noting that the leading edge of the fenders was reshaped to instill a bit of 1933/1934 Ford.

Bill Barbato, in the blue jacket, stands next to CAL Auto Creation’s Andy Leach holding the trophy.Brandan Gillogly

A few GM cars lent some pieces to better fit the sedan’s new proportions. Headlight buckets from a 1934 Oldsmobile, longer than their Pontiac counterparts, were fitted with Oldsmobile lenses which are more domed than a Pontiac’s. They’re a good pick to go alongside the Pontiac’s straight-eight-sized hood. Rather than using a thin trim ring held in place by visible screws, the headlight’s bezels are machined stainless steel that thread into the buckets. The taillights are constructed similarly but use 1934 Olds buckets and 1933 Cadillac lenses. Custom stanchions were built to mount all of them.

Brandan Gillogly

Inside, a rendering by Eric Black served as inspiration for Cato’s Custom upholstery in Salt Lake City to craft an Art Deco lounge. The original 1933 Pontiac dash remains, but it was upgraded with Dakota Digital gauges and seven layers of stacked acrylic and bead-blasted aluminum to create a unique lighting effect. The quilted leather upholstery on the door panels and transmission tunnel is mirrored on the headliner, where a concealed step along the perimeter hides diffused LED lighting.

This is the second time in three years that a CAL Auto Creations build has won the Al Slonaker Memorial Award. The 1960 Buick Invicta of Angie and George Eliacostas took home the trophy in 2023. The Grand National Roadster Show often invites past winners back, so you might be able to catch this beautiful sedan at a future event.

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