Hot Rod Power Tour coming through Rayne, Acadia Parish

This Sunday morning along U.S. Highway 90, residents may notice the rumbling of engines coming through town for a couple of hours.
The 22nd running of the Hot Rod Power Tour will take participants right through the heart of Rayne.
The group will begin leaving the Baton Rouge/Gonzales area at 8 a.m. on Sunday en route to Baytown, Texas. They should begin hitting the Rayne area between 9:30 and 10 a.m., following U.S. 90 eastward through the city — and the show could continue for a while.
The Hot Rod Power Tour is touted as the largest road trip in the world, with several thousand cars traveling to seven cities in seven days.
This year’s Power Tour is from June 11–17, starting in Gonzales/Baton Rouge and ending in Kansas City, Kansas, on a route that includes highways and winding backroads.
Though the Tour will not be making a stop in the Acadiana area — like the Great American Race did when participants lunched in Crowley in 2013 — the sight of the cars, which could number over 1,000, rolling through the city should be quite impressive, according to Rayne car enthusiast Roland Boudreaux.
“You can expect to see quite a few exotic automobiles,” he said.
Boudreaux said he plans to join the Tour when it comes through Rayne, but he probably won’t be making the trip all the way to Kansas City.
Boudreaux said he will be driving his Chevrolet Chevelle.
“It’s a new route every year. They pick up where they left off last year — or close to it,” Boudreaux explained. “The ride last year was from Madison, Wisconsin, to Mobile, Alabama. What drew them to Gonzales this year was the Lamar Dixon Expo Center (the starting point).”
Also joining in this year’s ride from Acadia Parish will be Mike Libby of Crowley.
Like Boudreaux, Libby said he will be taking part in the ride, though he will not make the entire trip to Kansas City.
Libby will be driving his new Mustang along the route for a short while just to be part of the experience,he said.
Asked why he chose the Mustang from the variety of cars he owns, Libby laughed, “The air conditioner works best in that one.”
Gearheads can join in at any point along the way; the exclusive Long Haul Gang includes the people who take the entire Power Tour route along with the staff of Hot Rod Magazine.
Participants can sightsee, explore, and show off their cars in towns along the way and in each participating city, hordes of local spectators will take part in the event as well as they welcome the massive Power Tour cruise to their city.
Last year, the Tour saw a record number of participants. In fact, 6,095 drivers met at stops along the 1,500-mile journey, with 2,120 of those drivers and cars making it on the Long Haul Gang for the entire week.
An estimated 116,000 spectators walked through the stops throughout the week.
After the Baytown stop Sunday, the Tour will make stops on:
•-June 13: Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas;
•-June 14: Traders Village, Grand Prairie, Texas;
•-June 15: Remington Park, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
•-June 16: Kansas Pavilions, Wichita, Kansas; and
•-June 17: Kansas Speedway, Kansas City, Kansas.

(Crowley Post-Signal Managing Editor Howell Dennis contributed to this story.)