Los Angeles’s annual celebration of the automobile-as-art has wrapped up, with the 2026 Grand National Roadster Show delivering some stunning debuts and some popular winners of the major awards, including the America’s Most Beautiful Roadster gong and the Al Slonaker Memorial Award.

The Slonaker is named for the event’s founder, which he established in 1974 to give non-roadster owning entrants something big to shoot for.

This year’s Slonaker winner is Dennis Troggio’s 1955 VW Karmann Ghia, built by Type One Restorations. The car features a stack of body mods, including lowering the headlights and modifying the front guards to suit. Also, check out how the character line that runs along the top of the front guards and into the doors have been elongated and tightened up. The guard openings have also been reshaped and smoothed and the rear was tubbed to fit fat rubber.

The dark green over olive green duco (with a touch of gold pearl) certainly helps to accentuate the KG’s newfound swoopiness. Inside is a stunning trim by Tracy Waver of Recovery Room Interiors. And how cool are those brake rotors!

Under the bonnet is an exquisitely-detailed, 300hp 2400cc VW four banger. Oh yeah, the whole car is held together by custom-designed fasteners. Yum!

The AMBR winner this year was Nicole Baird’s killer ’32 roadster built by Doug Jerger’s Squeeg’s Kustoms. The trad-styled stunner runs a stunningly-detailed Hilborn injected Buick Nailhead and had fans of traditional rods cheering across the globe.

Squeeg’s Kustoms scored a stack of attention at the GNRS all round, this year including for the the paint on Jason Wolfswinkel’s Matt Tomb-built ’33 Ford AA/Fuel tudor and Doug’s insanely awesome ‘Back Burner’ Dodge A100 – designed in conjunction with Jimmy Smith and again built in conjunction with Matt Tomb.

Also in the running for the Slonaker was Adelaide’s Peter Andresen with his stunning 1958 Corvette, freaking out the yanks with its right-hand-drive format and outstanding build quality by Fast Eddie’s Race Cars.