For Bobby Hilton, Hot Rods Are a Passion

For Bobby Hilton, Hot Rods Are a Passion

By M.J. McAteer

Bobby Hilton and one of his latest hot rod creations.

Photo by M.J. McAteer

As grounds manager at Great Meadow, Bobby Hilton could be expected to know a thing or two about horsepower.

For almost 40 years, ever since Arthur W. “Nick” Arundel hired him to help turn a swath of land in The Plains into a premiere facility for equestrian sports, he’s been responsible for keeping its 500 acres in top form for prestige events such as the Virginia Gold Cup.

But the horsepower that Hilton loves won’t be found galloping across Great Meadow’s polo fields or jumping fences on its steeplechase course.

“I never rode horses,” he said. Instead, his beloved horsepower is located under the hood of a car--well, if the car even has a hood. Most of the nationally recognized hot rods Hilton has been building for the past decade don’t. Their gleaming engines are meant to be shown off.

Cars have always been front and center in Bobby’s life. Drag racing was the family business, and, by 16, even before he had a driver’s license, he was behind the wheel of his father’s Top Fuel car. Top Fuel dragsters are the fastest accelerating cars in the world and have been clocked at 335 mph. In 1974, at a short track in North Carolina, the teenage Bobby ended up with two broken arms after a tire shredded at 230 mph.

Undeterred by a long convalescence, the Cincinnati native continued racing and later drove for Jim and Alison Lee of The Plains. Although the Lees later fired him, he married their daughter, Diane, anyway, which eventually led him to Great Meadow. Since the early ’80s, he and Diane have lived on Old Tavern Road, right across the street. Arundel, who died in 2011, deeded the house to Bobby in his will.

Bobby gave up racing years ago, but his son, Tyler, continues the family tradition of driving top fuel cars. “It’s three generations of nitro,” his father said.

Meanwhile, Bobby’s love of all things automotive found a new outlet when he started building cars for friends for “play money.” What started off as a hobby morphed into a shop and, then, eventually, into Hilton’s Hot Rods, located behind his house in a garage large enough to hold a half dozen cars in various stages of disand re-assembly.

Parked in front of that garage on a windy spring morning was the latest candidate awaiting a makeover, a glossy black 1934 Ford that could have been the getaway wheels for Bonnie and Clyde. The handsome, old sedan cost Bobby $45,000, but he’ll be removing its hood and fenders, chopping or lowering its roofline and giving it a new engine along with doing a myriad of other alterations to turn it into a hot rod. Ford produced four million Model A’s in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, making them still relatively plentiful as the origin car of choice for hot rod enthusiasts.

“It’s like building a custom home,” Bobby said, explaining that a conversion can “take a year, or two or three.”

The end result is no longer play money, however. A hot rod can sell for as much as $250,000. “They’re like investments,” he said. “They hold their value,” and the hot rod he’ll carve out of that ’34 Ford already is spoken for.

Bobby’s cars have the classic stance of hot rods from the ’50s and ’60s and, unlike some rebuilds, they can be driven on the highway at 60 or 70 mph and not just put on display or babied on a track. Christine Gratton and her husband, Bob, have done a lot of long-distance drives with their Hilton hot rod. Christine said her husband has been into cars his entire life, and when he saw one at a show in Detroit some years back, he was stopped “dead in his tracks.

“Bobby’s hot rods look like they’re going fast, even when they aren’t moving at all,” she said. “I believe he’s going to be one of the famous ones.”

For Bobby Hilton, though, building hot rods is not about getting either rich or famous.

“It’s not a job,” he said. “It’s a passion.”