Resident shows labor of love at recent car show

For most, a vehicle is a means of getting from Point A to Point B; a machine simply used for transportation.

For a few people however, a vehicle can mean much more and is a culmination of months or years of hard work to get every tiny detail exactly right. They’re works of art on four wheels an in some cases, once-rusted shells resurrected to cruise the open road again.

At the 17th annual Sweetheart Car Show at Whisler Chevrolet Saturday, Green River resident Gus Mandros showed off his personal labor of love, a 1931 Ford Model A. The vehicle draws a lot of attention. Small groups of people admire the Ford and ask Mandros, who sits next to his pride and joy, questions or chat with him about how beautiful the car is.

“I pulled it out from the Bitter Creek,” Mandros said, pointing to two photos positioned in front of the car’s shiny chrome bumper. The photos depict the vehicle before Mandros got his hands on it. More of a rusted frame than anything else, the car was surrounded by sagebrush. Rust had eaten away two large holes in the car’s top while the vehicle’s windows were completely missing.

Mandros doesn’t recall exactly when he took the car out of the creek, saying he did it sometime in the early 1970s. He also doesn’t remember how long it took him to get his copper-colored beauty back on the road, saying it took “quite a while,” but hundreds of hours of work is clearly evident when one looks at the Model A.

Many classic vehicle owners don’t often drive their prized possessions, opting to haul vehicles to car shows, but Mandros likes to get behind the wheel of his car and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

“Boy, we’ve had it all over,” Mandros said, saying he’s driven it through much of the Western United States. “We don’t trailer it.”