Saturday, October 9, 2010

Hershey Pa. antique car road trip

Apologies for the long drought between posts again.  Work has had me on the road a lot this year.  So what do I do when I get a day off work?  Hit the road!

A friend and I spent the day Friday at the annual Antique Automobile Club of America annual fall meet and flea market at Hershey Park.  The weather was beautiful, and there were acres and acres of parts, automobilia, old bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, minibikes, and plenty of miscellaneous too.

You can find a lot of stuff that's not car parts, and if you like to people watch or want to get ideas for dialog for your next feature film or novel, go there!

Here are a few shots I took.


Mercury made this unusual "glass-topped" Sun Valley model in 1954 and 1955.

You see people carrying the wildest things.

All kinds of wheeled vehicles show up for sale, including this fire truck.

My big expenditure was a trickle battery charger to use on two of my old cars to keep the batteries from dying from lack of use.  There's some twisted logic in spending $100 to keep car batteries from going south before their time, but I get tired of having batteries die on me.  With this thing, I can maintain a very low charge to the batteries between starts.

We looked at cars for sale in the "car corral" and there were some real beauties.  My favorites are the 1957 Ford Thunderbirds - the last of the two-seater variety, and only that year had tail fins. (I just realized I didn't shoot any 57s, but here's a nice 56 in the corral).

I have a couple shots of the headlights and taillights on an early 60s Chrysler Imperial, which was immaculate. I love the beautiful details on these old cars, and the Imperial was among the most outstanding for detail inside and out.

Notice how these Imperial headlamps are not molded into the front tend but appear to float?  Very cool and unusual.  Sorry I didn't get more photos, but the owner wasn't there and it was too early in the morning to get decent images.

My best find of the day?  Tough call.

This autographed Miss Teen Detroit photo is cool (check that dress!)

 From what I know, the winner of Miss Teen America in 1967 was given a new Mercury Cougar.

These Esso Tiger bumper stickers must date from either 1968 or 1972 as they look like they were distributed around the time of a presidential election.  I love old decals, and I'll probably use one of these on my 1967 Cougar.


Another Cougar item was this unused contest flier - pretty cool unusual item.




Somewhere around here I have one of the plastic give-away cars shown here.

My other great find was this 1964 Mercury towing specifications brochure - it will be helpful when I finally have my 64 Park Lane convertible back on the road, because I want to use that car to tow the Shasta camper.

Here's a selection of photos from the day:

I didn't find it among this collection of auto emblem...

but I did find the Mercury script I was missing for the hood of my 63 Comet wagon with another vendor.

Somebody had welded this Mustang fastback's doors and front end into a single piece and made a funny car out of it.  Very unusual, because funny cars used a lightweight fiberglass version of the body.

A Datsun 260-Z

A very cool van owned by one of the vendors


This old van was huge, driven from Quebec!

I love the old Caddy's with chrome Dagmar bumpers

And since it was Hershey, there was the Kissmobile




If you made it this far, the Uncle(?)  sends a kiss your way...











3 comments:

  1. OKAY, I'll break the ice on comments...I LOVE OLD CARS! I'm amazed at all of the Cougar items you have come up with. I love the emblem wall..and all restored classics. I have been to Hershey back in the day, when I lived in MD. I remember touring the factory but I never saw a Kiss Mobile! How Cool! Great post! Show us your old cars too! :-)

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  2. Thanks Amber, I always appreciate your comments! I'm old enough to remember the original Hershey factory tour where they took you on the factory floor, the smell of chocolate was so strong it was almost sickening. I think the Kissmobile is recent, it looked new. And I promise, I will give the grand tour of my old cars, such as they are.

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