BELLE — The Belle Community Betterment Association (BCBA) hosted more than 70 cars in its 6th annual car show on Saturday, including two owned by Tom Lawson of Bourbon.

“This one is a 1935 Coupe with a mailbox slot window in the back, which means it’s chopped as low as it can go,” Lawson said. “It’s got a 15-inch bed frame over an Oldsmobile rear end. It’s a 350 Chevy with a 350 turbo. It has a speedway front end with a blue jean interior.”

Lawson said the blue jean interior was an inspiration. He included a brown leather belt that belonged to his mother Renie, displayed through the belt loops.

“She passed away years ago,” Lawson said. “I had that and I said ‘I’m gonna put a belt in and I know just the one to put in it,’ so I put my mom’s belt in it.”

The Coupe has been in Lawson’s possession for nine years and includes a keg tap on the outside front dashboard.

“I bought it and redid the axles, tuned it, lined it up and rebuilt the transmission, drive shaft and rear running gear,” Lawson said. “Rebuilt the front end and wired it. It had the propane already. I shoot fire out the exhaust.”

Lawson belongs to a car club called Hooligans.

“We do burnouts and abuse our stuff a little,” he said. “It’s got two names —one is Sparky and the other we probably don’t need to say.”

Lawson’s second car, a 1963 Cadillac he calls Elvira, was parked next to the Coupe. Elvira was ground down and just received the all-clear to be painted.

”Right now it’s just a Caddy with no class,” he said. “She’s been ground down to be painted with no bondo. One of these days I’ll paint it.”

The car still sports the original green interior and has 89,000 miles on the engine. Grounded down, the car tends to pick up and reflect light in different ways.

“At night, the neon lights will turn this thing green and red and all kinds of colors with the different hues off the lights,” Lawson said. “Even the dusk-till-dawn light will turn it green, real bright grass green.”

Despite the car’s tendency to reflect green, Lawson plans to go with gunmetal gray when he is ready to paint and replace the chrome pieces with shiny black.

“Just to make it look longer and lower,” he said.

He hasn’t had Elvira as long. Lawson purchased the Caddy from a car show in St. Clair three years ago.

“I was sittin’ there puttin’ stuff on my car and it sounded real good,” he said. “I looked at my girlfriend and said ‘boy, that sounds good.’ She said, ‘I think that’s the Cadillac you’ve been lookin’ for.’ I turned around and looked and said ‘Yes, it is.’ She said, ‘I think he just put a for sale sign on it.’ I said, ‘yes, he did.’”

Lawson called his banks to arrange to finance.

“The next day I was driving it myself,” he said. “I like off-the-wall, different things.”