By DEB GRUVER

Staff writer

Lonnie Hamm bought his own retirement gift — a matador-red 1968 Chevelle SS with black vinyl top — and showed it off Saturday at the fifth annual Tampa Trail Fest.

Its frame-off restoration, which he finished in April, took Hamm six years. He modified the car with “all the latest technology.”

“I looked for 30 years to buy one to replace my high school car,” Hamm said as festivalgoers perused raffle items, took turns in a bounce house, and cooled off with snow cones.

Hamm entered his first car show in April in Inman. It rained all the way from his home south of Hillsboro to Inman, but the Chevelle still took best of show.

This weekend, he parked his shiny car on Tampa’s main street next to a 1967 Chevy Impala owned by Bob Lorson of Hope.

Lorson’s wife’s grandparents ordered the Impala from the factory in 1967. When they bought a 1976 Pontiac, they kept the Impala because they didn’t think a dealership offered enough for a trade-in.

“We bought it 50 years later,” Lorson said.

Trail Fest attracted young and old with activities ranging from a corn-hole tournament and climbing wall to a cake walk and hog roast.

Tampa Pride, a civic group, organizes the event.

“We try to do things for the kids in the community,” Bethany Hajek said.