Vashon’s annual extravaganza of automotive splendor will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 17, at Engels Repair & Towing, at 22725 Dockton Rd. SW.

The vintage mom-and-pop gas station and shop — owned and operated by the Engels family since 1951 — is a picturesque place set next to an adjoining field edged by a graveyard of entropic old trucks peeking through blackberry bramble.

But on Aug. 17, that field will fill up to reveal the handiwork of mechanics who have busted their knuckles for years to keep their vintage vehicles rolling down the road.

For Paul Engels, the annual celebration of fossil-fueled finery is a labor of love. And although he’s lost track of the exact number of years the show has been held (more than 20, he’s sure), the elements involved have remained constant.

The non-competitive show, free to enter, always attracts participation from connoisseurs of both fine and funky machinery on the island and beyond. Rust buckets may sit next to meticulously detailed classics, hot rods, muscle cars and other automobiles described by Engels as “European exotica — giving the show an ecumenical feel missing in many other shows in the region.

But only one car a year has the distinction of being designated as the official Engels Show Car of the Year and memorialized on the the annual collector’s T-shirt for the show, designed by local artist, racer and founder of Wagons of Steel, Chris Barnes.

This year, that car is islander Randy Wallenberg’s rally red 1965 Chevy Impala Super Sport, looking as streamlined and stylish as the day it rolled off the assembly line.

Last week, Wallenberg, accompanied by his wife Cynthia, daughter Krista and son-in law Alex Nybo, rolled into the gas station for a photo op next to the Super Sport. As might be expected, the saga of the car is a family affair.

Wallenberg has owned the car since 1967, when he bought it almost new in the twilight of his teen years from his West Seattle neighbor for the then-pricey cost of $1,650. “It was the first car I ever had,” Wallenberg said, and he had driven it while dating Cynthia, before they were married.

“It was a flashy looking car, and he always kept it immaculate,” Cynthia said. “I was most impressed by the clockwork on the console — because it worked.”

The couple moved to Vashon in the mid-1970s, and in 1981, Krista was born — a life event that lead to a long hiatus for the Super Sport. With no seats belts in the back, the Super Sport couldn’t accommodate a car seat for Krista, so Wallenberg put the car in his garage — where it proceeded to sit for almost two decades.

Krista made it almost through her entire childhood without giving the old car much thought. And when she did think about it, she said, she wasn’t impressed.

“I thought it was disgusting,” Krista said, recalling her opinion of her dad’s collector’s item during her early teen years. “It had this kind of mildew on the seats, and it just looked like an old gross car. The paint had oxidized. I thought it was ugly and I kept bugging him to sell it.”

But that all changed in 1997, when at age 16 she became friends at Vashon High School with a few guys who had heard that her father owned a classic car. When they asked her about the make and model of the car, she said, ‘Oh, it’s an Impala Super Sport, ‘65.’

Krista recalls their reaction as if it happened yesterday. “They were like ‘What? That car is so cool. You need to get that thing fixed up and drive it.”

Suddenly, the best kind of peer pressure had opened Krista’s mind, and the gears of a great new plan shifted into drive.

“She told me, ‘Dad, we’ve got to get that car fixed — I want to drive it to high school,’” Wallenberg said, with a laugh.

Thus began his restoration of the car, with Krista by his side to help clean it up, change out spark plugs, hoses, filters and oil, and put a new battery in the car. After all that, Krista said, it started right up.

The car project “was a really fun bonding time for me and my dad,” Krista said, recalling how the two of them had tackled one of the Chevy’s thorniest problems — the key to the locked trunk had been long lost.

Her dad, she said, had taken out the back seat of the car so that she could wiggle through a narrow space into the trunk to unscrew the locking mechanism.

“I was just praying that there wasn’t a rat or anything like that like back there,” she said.

“I guess it would have been easier just to drill into it,” Wallenberg said, again laughing.

At that time, Wallenberg also got a new paint job for the car — but not before he shopped around for it, telling his daughter he wasn’t going to spend thousands of dollars on paint (and that he also had no intention of letting her drive it to school during the rainy season on Vashon.)

“I drove it over to Maaco and got their presidential special, for $750,” he said. The car still has the same paint job — now waxed to a high shine by Krista’s husband Alex Nybo, the former owner of Vashon Auto Parts. Nybo, since becoming a part of the family, has also added new tires and shiny wheels to the car, as well as doubled its horsepower by replacing its engine.

On Sunday, all the memories of the Wallenberg clan will mingle with the stories of others who have kept their vintage cars rolling down the road.

Another kind of blast from the past will also fill the air, as the house band for the car show strikes up several sets of high-octane rock and roll.

The musicians — Loren Sinner, Scotty Johnson, Jerry Toto and Brent Bacchus — were all once part of a storied island band called The Doily Brothers. The Doily’s front-man, Michael Spakowsky, died in 2014, but his spirit is still felt at the car show, said Engels.

In fact, Engels credits the entire concept of the car show to Spakowsky, who had come up with it one night as they were hanging out a local drinking establishment.

“He told me, ‘Hey, you should have the Doily Brothers play at the gas station, and cook some hamburgers and hot dogs, and get some guys to bring their hot rods.”

And that’s still happening, like clockwork, on the third Sunday of August every year.

This year, La Isla Mexican Food will provide street tacos as well as the event’s traditional hamburgers, and Emerald City Pet Rescue will also be on hand to give kids and their parents a chance to meet some of their favorite farm and fostered animals and learn more about their organization.