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Hot Rod tour to pit stop in Charleston

Charleston Gazette photo courtesy of HOT ROD MAGAZINE About 1,500 cars are expected to be on Kanawha Boulevard Monday for day three of the Hot Rod Power Tour.
Charleston Gazette photo courtesy of HOT ROD MAGAZINE
About 1,500 cars are expected to be on Kanawha Boulevard Monday for day three of the Hot Rod Power Tour.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — About 1,500 cars are expected to be on Kanawha Boulevard Monday for day three of the Hot Rod Power Tour.
 Hot rods will line Kanawha Boulevard Monday, spanning the eastern part of the city’s main drag in a massive display of machinery.

The city of Charleston is expecting to host at least 1,500 “long haulers,” or vehicles that are making the cross-country trip with Hot Rod magazine’s 20th anniversary Power Tour, said Samantha Carney, Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau special events and sports sales manager. Local car clubs can also participate by signing up on site that morning, Carney said.

“This is going to be a great opp[ortunity] for our local car show to build on their attendance,” Carney said. “Maybe [visitors will] go ahead and say they’ll come back for another car show and stay for a few days.”

The CVB and Hot Rod magazine began coordinating efforts to bring the tour to Charleston about a year ago, Carney said. It started with a tour to see if the city was ideal for the event and went on to involve city departments, the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority, the Charleston Rod Run and Doo Wop committee, as well as local car clubs.

“If it wasn’t for all of our partners, this show would not be possible,” Carney said.

The tour is expected to give Charleston national and international exposure, as well as have about an $850,000 economic impact. That’s “a very conservative number,” Charleston CVB spokeswoman Jama Jarrett said.

 The CVB bases that projection on the number of cars expected and the number of hotel rooms booked. Eight hundred hotel rooms are already spoken for, and it’s expected the tour will pick up an additional 1,500 rooms.

“There is not a hotel … in downtown Charleston that has a room available at this point” for Monday night, Carney said.

Hot rod enthusiasts will be able to tour the capital city on day three of the week-long road trip from Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina to Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin. The tour takes motorists through seven cities in seven days…

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