The people driving in this year’s Hot Rod Power Tour spent Monday showing off some of the best muscle cars in the country at the Route 66 Raceway. By Tuesday morning, several of them woke up to smashed glass and empty parking spaces. Thieves had followed the cars back to their hotels and gone to work overnight.
This is the kind of story that hits enthusiasts right where it hurts. These are not throwaway commuter cars. They are Corvettes, Camaros, and other builds that owners pour years and serious money into, and a crew of thieves treated a hotel parking lot in Joliet, Illinois like a shopping list.
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What Police Have Laid Out So Far
Here is what police have laid out so far. The Power Tour rolled through the Route 66 Raceway on Monday afternoon, and that evening many of the drivers checked into hotels around Joliet. Sometime overnight and into the early Tuesday hours, thieves moved on those lots. At the Holiday Inn on Rock Creek Boulevard, three Chevrolet Corvettes and a Camaro were taken. A Chevrolet SS, a Dodge Challenger, and another Camaro at the same property were damaged but left behind. Over at a nearby Comfort Inn on Commerce Lane, a Dodge Charger was hit too, and officers found broken glass at the scene. Police believe the incidents are connected.
The numbers depend on who you ask, and that gap is part of the story. Joliet police, speaking to ABC7, described four vehicles stolen and four seriously damaged. Local news radio station WJOL put the total higher, reporting that nine vehicles were taken from three different hotels in the area. Either way, this was not a smash-and-grab on a single car. It was a sweep.
This Looked Like an Operation, Not a Joyride
That’s where things change from a random theft to something more organized. Sgt. Dwayne English of the Joliet police said it became clear quickly that this was an operation, not the work of one or two people. Investigators with the Tri-County Auto Theft Task Force believe they are dealing with a relatively sophisticated group that knew exactly what it was after. These were high-end vehicles, and English noted that’s precisely what made them so appealing to the people who took them.
There may have been a planning stage too. Police said they are looking into whether the thieves scouted the cars earlier in the day at the raceway, sizing up targets before tracking them to where their owners would sleep. If that holds up, it means the people on this tour were being watched while they were doing nothing more than enjoying their cars in public.
The Human Cost
One of the stolen Corvettes has already turned up, and not in good shape. Investigators learned it had been recovered after a crash in nearby Dolton. No driver was found at the scene, which tells you something about how fast these cars were moving and how little the thieves cared about what happened to them.
The human cost showed up online almost immediately. A Facebook post from Tammara Frank said her husband’s Arctic White 2017 Corvette Z06 was among the cars taken, stolen alongside several others from three different hotels that same morning. Her message carried a warning to other owners that came down to a grim joke about sleeping in their own cars to keep them safe. For someone who put years into a build like that, the loss isn’t just financial. It’s personal.
Not the First Time for This Tour
And this is not new for the Power Tour. The event has dealt with thieves targeting participants before, which makes the latest hits feel less like bad luck and more like a known risk that keeps finding the same vulnerable moment, the overnight stop. Thousands of cars travel this tour every year, following Route 66 on a five-day run that stretches all the way from Illinois toward Oklahoma. That kind of rolling showcase draws crowds, and it apparently draws criminals who see a parking lot full of valuable metal sitting still for the night.
The investigation is active, and police say they intend to pursue the people responsible aggressively. A hotel guest reportedly captured video of the thieves on her phone and handed it over, which gives investigators something real to work with. The bigger question is what an event like this does going forward, when the people who make the Power Tour what it is can’t park their cars overnight without becoming targets.