BLOOMINGTON - After 35 years apart, Gene Howard was surprised to see that one of his first loves still looked almost as good as the day they first met.

The red 1950 Buick Sedanette he had customized had only a few scratches and a crack in the windshield since the last time he saw it.

"It's not so much the hard work (that goes into customizing a car), but the memories," Howard said with tears in his eyes. "They become a part of your life."

Howard, who has been doing custom work on cars since 1950, was reunited with his beauty Saturday at the Rock 'N Rods on Route 66 Festival at the Interstate Center in Bloomington. There, he also received a lifetime achievement award for his years of work.

Show promoter Larry Tarontolo said about 500 cars were on display. He is expecting 6,000 to 10,000 people for the two-day event, which continues from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today.

On Saturday, Howard stood beside his car talking with interested passers-by.

"This car took me three years to complete. I finally sold it in 1971 to a guy who lived out on the East Coast," he said.

Tarantolo found the car's owner living in New Jersey. The car had remained untouched in the man's garage for almost four decades.

"I didn't even know if I wanted to see it," Howard said. "But they did a beautiful job of cleaning it up."

Famed customizer Gene Winfield of Mojave, Calif., will restore the car. It will then be put on display in an Oklahoma museum.

Winfield, in attendance at the event, has been building cars since 1946, when his first garage was a renovated chicken shack. His work gained him popularity, and soon he was customizing cars that were used in movies.

Winfield built the DeLorian in "Back to the Future 2," as well as cars in "Blade Runner," "Robo Cop," "Sleeper," "Alien" and "The Mod Squad," among dozens of other TV shows and movies. He constructed the first Klingon spaceship in "Star Trek." One of his cars was made into a Hot Wheel collectible car.

More recently he painted a car for the TV show "Rides" and occasionally does work for Jesse James, host of the Discovery Channel show "Monster Garage."

Winfield said a lot of the cars he builds end up being destroyed in movies they appear in.

"I don't mind watching them get blown up as long as I get paid ahead of time," he said.

Winfield is still building cars, and he also travels all over the country to do custom painting.

"I just started playing with cars in high school and didn't really know what I was doing," he said. "But by my second car, I got a little bit better."