Windshield wipers have never been the sexiest hot-rod accessory. But their presence, or lack thereof, became somewhat critical early Saturday at the fifth annual Rev It Up! Hot Rod Hullabaloo in Lawrence.

Event organizer Stephen Chronister’s wife, Michelle, drove the family’s “Rat Rod,” a rebuilt Buick with a nude, green “zombie woman” painted on its trunk, in the early morning hours to pick up some donuts. As rain began to beat down on Lawrence, Michelle Chronister figured that as long as there weren’t any headlights approaching her, she had no problem with the rain-soaked, wiper-free windshield.

“It also doesn’t have turn signals,” she said. “I did have to stick my arm out of the window to make my turns. There’s no hood and there was water coming through the back. Did I mention that?”

Nonetheless, the rain wasn’t much of a deterrent to the event along a closed strip of Massachusetts Street at South Park. Besides, as the Chronisters’ daughter, Nicholina, confirmed while paging through the radar on her phone, the weather would clear up by afternoon. A stage was being set up for live music and whatever food wasn’t sold to raise funds for the Ballard Community Center in Lawrence would be donated to its food pantry. “They’ll walk away with a lot of goodies one way or another,” Stephen Chronister said.

Saturday’s focus wasn’t what was absent on cars so much as whose personal imprint was on each vehicle. For the Chronisters it’s been a family project: Stephen and Nicholina worked together reparing and customizing a beat-up 1953 Buick into a hot rod that they take to vintage drag races and showcase at events like Saturday’s Hullabaloo.

As many as 300 cars turn up on a given year. Among the regulars are members of the Geery family. John Geery sat with his wife Erika and sons, Kirk, 11, and Johnny, 4, on Saturday in front of two customized Dodge hardtop sedans. John, who manages a pawn shop in Northwest Lawrence, has tinkered with car designs “since I could crawl.” He found his first Dodge in Tennessee, sold by a man who found it in a barn.

Geery turned that car into the turqouise-and-black “Drag Stripper.” All cars had a name in the drag-racing heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, Greery explained, along with the driver’s name on the door and the logo of an autobody shop. He designed and painted the “Drag Stripper,” using techniques learned as a Kansas University student, only needing help with the goldleaf touch on the title. A raven-haired, lingerie-clad woman inspired by 60s- and 70s-era comic books rests along the car’s doors. Tucked next to the “Drag Stripper” was the “El Toro,” a silver-and-black 1963 Dodge that spent 36 years below a highway overpass in California.

Part fundraiser, part chance to catch up with old friends — many of whom have assisted one another with a host of custom car jobs — Saturday’s Hullabaloo provided a damp, fuel-scented showcase of community.

“I just have a million, some people would call them hobbies, to me it’s just stuff that’s necessary to do,” Greery said. “Or else why live life?”