8/31/2009 3:30:00 PM Drive-in keeps spinning the '60s
Photo: Mark Trockman
Minnetonka Drive-In
Where: 4658 Shoreline Drive, Spring Park
Season: March 1-Oct. 1
Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily
Hot Rod Thursdays: Generally start around 5 p.m. and are weather dependent
Parking: On fair-weather Thursdays, the main drive-in lot fills up, and overflow parking is available across Shoreline Drive. However, visitors can still order from their cars even if the lot is full and ordering by foot is always an option.
By David Schueller
On a sunny Thursday evening at the Minnetonka Drive-In, Roger Dolliff and Sharon Nelson sat in what one onlooker called the "woodiest woody" he'd ever seen.
"It's a gorgeous night," Dolliff said. "This car, of course, being like a wooden crate, I don't take it out in the rain."
The rare '35 Ford woody station wagon with shiny wooden doors and a wooden ceiling was one of more than 70 fancy classic cars and hot rods to gather at what's become part classic car show, part throwback to the '60s - and 70 cars at once was a slow night.
When the weather's nice, Hot Rod Thursdays are on. So is the radio, as it was on Aug. 27: "Get around round round I get around," went the tune from The Beach Boys.
"We can get 300 cars in here on a Thursday night," said Dave Bennyhoff, who owns the place along with his wife Deb.
Bennyhoff, who started working at the drive-in when he was nine years old, said that after the repainting he did this year the drive-in looks just like it did in 1961, when his parents opened it as an A&W.
It runs the same, too. The car hops still take orders, and the frosted root beer is still served along with the burgers and onion rings. Most of what's on the menu is made from scratch.
"It's really an original '60s drive-in, when A&Ws were really at their peak," he said.
On Hot Rod Thursdays, the cash-strapped teenagers of the '60s who put all the money they had into rattletrap cars are still there, they're just a bit older and these days the money they put into their cars can make them worth six figures.
"They always identify with the car they had as a kid," Bennyhoff said.
As Bennyhoff told of how he was one of eight children in his family and the one who now runs the family business, he couldn't help but get distracted by the cars rolling in: an original Mini Cooper shipped from overseas, a shiny '37 Chevy, a "rat rod" pieced together from old parts and a Ford Model T.
"Boy that's just an old runner," Bennyhoff said of the Model T. "I bet you have to crank start that. Yup, it's got the wood spokes."
Nearby, gawkers looked under hoods and gathered to eat at tables on a far edge. A Dodge Neon waiting on an order looked downright timid compared to the beauties in the lot.
Directing traffic was Terry "Red" Tower, president of the Slow Strokes Auto Club and a friend of Bennyhoff's, who got Hot Rod Thursdays started with a gathering of seven cars. More and more kept coming as word spread.
"This is just everyone expressing themselves through cars," Tower said.
The drive-in is one of only a few left around the metro area. Another one in Delano belongs to Bennyhoff's uncle.
The Minnetonka Drive-In's season is from March 1 to Oct. 1, and runs seven days a week. Bennyhoff said business has been busier than he's ever seen it partly due to a steady stream of regional trail users stopping to see the cars or eat.
"What's nice about a drive-in is as a person, you can get right up next to the car," Dave said, comparing the event to car shows where cars are roped off away from viewers.
He's still planning for next year's 50th anniversary. For the 25th, he offered '60s prices, which led to cars lining up on Shoreline Drive for quarter hamburgers and 15-cent root beers.
As for Bennyhoff, he tells people who ask that he's content to gawk at other people's cars, including two Studebakers nearby.
"They ask me, 'What kind of car do you own.' I say I don't own a hot rod. I own a drive-in," Bennyhoff said.
Mingling near their Studebakers were Jerome and Amy Vanderlinde of Minnetrista - Amy's was a 1945 M-5 truck and Jerome's a '53 Champion two-door car.
"I got bit by the Studebaker bug," said Jerome Vanderlinde.
The two, who also visit car shows, stop by the Minnetonka Drive-In on Thursdays for the camaraderie, and of course, to represent the Studebaker name - a company that lasted until the '60s.
Despite the crowded lot, Jerome Vanderlinde said drive-ins could be a dying scene.
Like Studebakers, they're certainly rare.
"The people that drove Studebakers are getting older and older and there's not a lot of people taking up the hobby," he said.
