By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

They can be seen driving their classics, hot rods and customs through town, in parades and at local car shows. They participate in charity events like Toys for Tots, too.

Last week they took their show on the road, all the way to the state capital.

Benicia/Vallejo-based Boyz Under The Hood made a showing at the 63rd annual Sacramento Autorama, and three members — Bob Morgan, Vern Kornbrust and Jerry Harris — brought some of their best examples of custom cars and restorations — and all three came home with awards.

Morgan’s 1941 Willys Swoopster was one of the first cars show attendees saw as they walked through the main doors of the show. The car itself, which won first in class and several other awards, was a rolling chassis when it came to Chip and Joel Pendergraft at Chip’s Auto Restoration in Dayton, Ore., in November 2011.

“The body was in black gelcoat still,” said Joel Pendergraft. That means no filler, no paint, just the fiberglass body in its raw state. The frame was in raw steel, too — a blank canvas for the father-son team to create Morgan’s Willys.

Morgan said to find a real steel Willys anymore would be prohibitively expensive. “A lot of these cars are fiberglass. They wrecked them as race cars back in the day,” he said.

Vern Kornbrust’s 1936 Ford 5-Window Coupe managed to gain some attention at the show, too, winning best in class for a custom rod coupe.

The car was already running when he bought it in April 2012. “It was done, it was a good driver,” he said.

It was the paint job that sold him on the car. “You can’t get a paint job done for what I paid for this car,” he said. “It’s all steel, which is kind of hard to find these days. That was another thing that sold me on it.”

Getting the car was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

Kornbrust, of Vallejo, had sold his 1956 Ford pickup in late 2011, and was hoping to get his 1956 Chevy wagon finished. “It wasn’t working out,” he said.

He called a friend who buys and sells old cars and learned of a coupe in Grass Valley. When he saw the pictures, “I couldn’t get to Grass Valley fast enough,” he said.

Jerry Harris’s 1970 Dodge Coronet R/T also put on a good showing at the Autorama.

“It is one of 97 made” with a 440-cubic-inch motor with three two-barrel carburetors and a four-speed manual transmission, he said. “It’s a rare car.”

Harris, of Glen Cove, purchased the Dodge last March at Kasabian Motors in Dublin. “The restoration was started in 2007 and completed in 2010,” he said. The previous owner only put 200 miles on it before putting it up for sale.

“In 2012 I put 2,500 miles on it. I drive it,” Harris said of the Dodge, which received a class award for the 1968-72 restored class.

Boyz Under the Hood has about 90 members from not only Benicia and Vallejo but “a big area for a local club,” Kornbrust said. “We’ve been in the Benicia parades forever.”