Envy Frenzy Is Back: A 12-Member Mini Truck Club Packed Kingston's Waterfront After 14 Years Away

Fourteen years is long enough for a car show to become a rumor. Nick Baker said as much on opening day of Envy Frenzy, the custom truck show his club brought back to the Rondout waterfront in Kingston, N.Y., on Aug. 1. "It's pretty wild to me that after 12, 13, 14 years people even remember a car show," Baker told the Daily Freeman. People remembered. More than 350 vehicles registered on the first day alone, the paper reported.

Envy Frenzy is the work of Made 2 Envy, a Kingston club that, by Baker's count to the Freeman, has 12 full-time members and four prospects. It was founded in 2000, ran shows in town from 2001 to 2011, and then stopped so its members could do the things that end most car clubs' busy years: get married, have kids, grow up. This summer they decided they were grown up enough to do it again.

A mini truck show at heart

If you never lived through the mini truck boom, here is the short version. In the 1990s, compact pickups like the Chevy S10, Ford Ranger, Mazda B-series, Toyota pickup and Nissan Hardbody became a whole scene of their own, slammed on bags or body dropped until the rocker panels kissed the pavement, then finished with wild paint, graphics and interiors. Baker told the Freeman that Made 2 Envy specializes in that "mini-truckin" world, which he described as custom lowered compact pickups such as Rangers and S10s.

He was clear that the show would not stop there. Baker told the paper to expect lowered cars and trucks along with lifted trucks, hot rods, street cars and imports. "You'll see everything down there," he said. That is exactly how it played out. The Drive's Andrew P. Collins, who went after spotting the local paper's preview and wrote it up on Aug. 3, called it a lowrider meet and came away with a camera roll of chromed engines, airbrushed bodies and suspension plumbing that had been polished as carefully as the paint.

54 classes, a $1,000 prize and sparks at the beach

Made 2 Envy did not treat the comeback as a casual meet. The Freeman reported 54 judged classes and 25 "best of" awards, and Baker said ahead of the show that there would be more than 20 one-off specialty awards and a $1,000 cash prize for best in show. Registration was $60 to show a vehicle, and spectators got in free. The club capped entries at 500 cars, partly so the event would not swamp the neighborhood or the club itself.

"We're a rather small club, we know our limitations on what we can handle to be effective," Baker told the Freeman before the show. That sounds modest until you look at the schedule. There was metal shaping from Nick Colagero of Catskill Mountain Customs, a tire toss, a chocolate milk chug, a club tug of war, a Hi/Lo contest and a hydro jump and dance, all on top of the judging.

The best event was the one that would never pass at a concours. Baker described a Saturday night "draggin competition" at Kingston Point Beach, and he made sure the Freeman did not misunderstand it. It is not a drag race. The trucks drop so low that they drag on the ground and throw sparks out the back. If you want a single image that explains mini truck culture, that is it.

The crowd also got a monster truck crushing a stack of four junk cars by the center stage, which the Freeman said drew hundreds of people while judging went on.

Built low, driven in

The entries came from much farther than the Hudson Valley. Baker said trucks were coming from Maine to Georgia and from as far west as Indiana. One of those was Mike Dolson, 45, who drove in from Fort Wayne with what he described to the Freeman as "a 1995 Chevy S10, body dropped, a lot of custom interior, custom paint, custom chrome." Dolson told the paper his truck took first place for Best Mini Truck at Mini Truck Nationals this year.

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Everything looks better on the ground. That's just my opinion. Anything lowered looks a lot better.

He also gave the show a review that any organizer would frame. Dolson told the Freeman that Envy Frenzy ranked with some of the best car shows around the country, and that the setting helped: "I like the scenery around here. A lot cooler than just a field."

Collins, writing for The Drive, was struck by the same thing that makes this scene special: the parts most people never see get the most attention. He pointed to truck beds cut to clear differentials, body panels grafted together from different vehicles, homemade control arms and, in one case, a decorative spiderweb made from rebar standing in for a wheel well. He also noted a couple of tuner cars done up in the Y2K Hot Import Nights style sitting among the trucks.

Why Kingston cares

A small club bringing hundreds of custom vehicles to a historic waterfront is good for more than the people who own them. The show drew newcomers, too. Lucy Movrich, 24, came from Walden with her boyfriend and told the Freeman she is "not a car girl" but wanted to come back. "It's a really good community and you don't expect that," she said.

Even the competition was happy about it. Michael Mainetti, the Kingston attorney whose firm runs the Uptown Car Show, told the Freeman that the old Envy Frenzy was part of the reason his firm started its own show. "It's great to see such a great turnout," he said, adding that it helps Downtown the way his event has tried to help Uptown. With Envy Frenzy back, Kingston now has two shows on its calendar, the paper noted.

The bigger takeaway is for the culture. Mini trucks get written off as a 1990s fad. But a 12-member club in the Hudson Valley just pulled in laid-out S10s from Indiana and a crowd that included people who had never been to a car show. The scene did not disappear. It just needed somebody to set the date.