January 2025 | Volume 193

REMINDER: Your 2025 AACA membership dues must be paid prior to

registering for any 2025 National shows and tours, including Convention.

Click here to renew your membership if you haven't done so already.

Four Hotel Options For Attendees to Choose From

Embassy Suites by Hilton Charlotte/Concord Golf Resort and Spa

5400 John Q. Hammons Drive NW, Concord, NC 28027

Room Rate: $159 + tax, includes complimentary hot breakfast buffet, Wi-Fi, parking

Reservation Link: AACA Annual Convention (hilton.com)

Reservation Phone: 704-455-8200 (mention AACA Annual Convention)

Reservation Deadline: January 16, 2025

Residence Inn by Marriot Charlotte-Concord

7601 Scott Padgett Parkway, Concord, NC 28027

Room Rate: $159 + tax per night; includes complimentary breakfast, Wi-Fi, parking

Reservation Link: https://tinyurl.com/AACAcourtyardresidenceinn

Reservation Phone: 704-454-7862 (mention AACA Annual Convention)

Reservation Deadline: January 26, 2025

Courtyard by Marriot Charlotte-Concord

7201 Scott Padgett Parkway, Concord, NC 28027

Room Rate: $159 + tax per night; includes complimentary Wi-Fi, parking

Reservation Link: https://tinyurl.com/AACAcourtyardresidenceinn

Reservation Phone: 704-453-2600 (mention AACA Annual Convention)

Reservation Deadline: January 26, 2025

Homewood Suites by Hilton Concord Charlotte

7300 Scott Padgett Parkway, Concord, NC 28027

Room Rate: $159 + tax per night; includes complimentary breakfast, Wi-Fi, parking

Reservation Link: https://group.homewood-suites.com/4aexxd

Reservation Phone: 980-313-3100 (mention Antique Car Club National Convention or Group Code 901)

ATTENTION REGIONS & CHAPTERS:

Your Reporting Forms Are Due TODAY!!

Renewal deadline is February 15!

HURRY! Don't lose your spots!!

Last year, in conjunction with RM Sotheby’s, we were able to obtain a discounted rate at the Hershey Lodge during the Eastern Fall Nationals which most simply refer to as “Hershey.” Thanks to AACA members who took advantage of this deal, we were able to sell out the entire block of 900 room nights. Selling out this room block is the best way we can ensure that the auction remains a part of our event. The auction is back in 2025 and we already have the block set up to take reservations. Please consider making your reservation now clicking here. This year’s rate is $299 a night. Thank you all for your support last year!

Your AACA membership runs on a calendar year

from January 1 through December 31.

If you have already renewed your membership for 2025, thank you!!

If you have not renewed your membership yet, please take a few minutes to do it now.

If you submitted your national dues to your region or chapter and received a renewal form with your January/February Antique Automobile magazine, please disregard the notice. 

REMINDER: Your 2025 membership dues MUST be paid in order to renew your spaces for Hershey. Your 2025 membership dues MUST be paid before you can receive registration information for any 2025 National Shows or Tours. Your 2025 membership dues MUST be paid to continue receiving your beloved Antique Automobile magazine. 

You can pay your 2025 membership dues online, by phone or mail...

Online:

• Go to the membership renewal page.
• Enter your membership number and PIN. 
• Review the information currently listed on your membership record.
• Make changes or corrections if needed.
• Click on payment.
• Review your information one more time.
• Click on credit card.
• Enter your payment information. We accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover.
• Verify your billing address.
• Click Pay.
• Your payment will automatically record to your membership record, and you will receive an email confirmation.

Your membership number and PIN are printed on the renewal form included with your most recent issue of Antique Automobile magazine. It can also be found on your membership card. If you don’t have access to a renewal form or your membership card, call National Headquarters at 717-534-1910 or email kwhite@aaca.org to get your numbers. Please DON’T try to pay your dues by using the JOIN AACA tab. This WILL NOT renew your membership – instead, it will create a new one.

Phone: You can call National Headquarters at 717-534-1910. We will be happy to renew your membership over the phone.

Mail: A renewal form was included with your most recent issue of Antique Automobile magazine. You can fill out the form and send it back to the office with a check or credit card information.

This year’s Annual Convention is just around the corner, and the librarians are ready to hit the road for Charlotte! We will be presenting two seminars: The Library & You: An Introduction to the Library & Its Services, and Women in Automotive History: A Collaborative Exhibition, so make sure to check the seminar schedule for the dates, times, and locations upon arrival. As always, we will be selling books in the Trade Show, and our inventory has recently been refreshed! Since we’ll be in Charlotte, we thought it only appropriate to have a nice selection of racing-related titles in the mix, so don’t miss the opportunity to grab a few books while at the Convention this year.

The librarians plan to attend as many of the social events as we can, so look for us at the Welcome Reception Pasta Party, Regions & Chapters Dinner, Casino Night, Awards Banquet, and around the hotel – we can’t wait to see and catch up with all of our favorite people!

If you plan to bring material you wish to donate to the library to hand off to us at the convention – please call to ask us about it ahead of time. Thank you!

Welcome, Jim Kapoun!

This month, the library welcomed an additional librarian to our team, Mr. Jim Kapoun. Jim has 40 years of experience in libraries and comes to us from the academic (university) library world. Jim lives in nearby York, Pennsylvania, but has previously resided in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Maryland. A seasoned researcher, Jim has a wealth of experience to bring to our library and we feel very fortunate to have a professional of his caliber in our ranks.

Though Jim is new to the collector car hobby, he is not new to collecting in general – he has long spent time accumulating a wide array of both stamps and coins. Aside from collecting, he also enjoys baking, gardening, and writing, and he and his whole family are Disney enthusiasts. An ambitious traveler, Jim’s goal is to visit all 50 states (he’s been to 47 so far!), as well as all of our beautiful National Parks.

Working closely with librarian, Matt Hocker, Jim will be helping us process donations and catalog items into our collection so that we can make new material available to our members more quickly. Although Jim will not be attending the Annual Convention this year, you can meet him on your next visit to the library, or at this year’s Hershey Fall Nationals. (It will be here before you know it!) Welcome, Jim!

The Legislation Committee has been working with the folks at SEMA to develop close cooperation on legislative issues that impact the enjoyment of our antique vehicles. We are pleased to announce that SEMA’s Senior VP of Government Relations, Karen Bailey-Chapman, will be presenting a seminar at the AACA Annual Convention. In addition, SEMA will have a booth at the trade show so please stop by, say hello, and find out what you can do to get involved to help preserve our hobby.   

Separately, we are carefully looking at the potential that the EPA will allow for E15 use year-round in some parts of our country. This could have a significant impact on our ability to purchase fuel suitable for our vehicles, especially if this fuel expands into states that do not permit the sale of ethanol free gasoline.

Please feel free to express your thoughts, suggestions, and concerns including any topics of interest, to Fred Trusty, Chairman, at bearcamp1988@gmail.com. 

It was the spring of 1967. The 1930 Model A coupe that I had restored and drove to school my senior year of high school had been replaced by a 1963 Falcon convertible. The Model A presented too many challenges as a college commuter car but served me well in my early surfing days.

In 1962, my interest in surfing was spawned from listening to The Beach Boys (especially the car songs) and watching "Beach Party" movies. You know, the ones with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. I drove the family's 1962 Comet station wagon until my Model A was finished the summer of '65. Now I needed a surfboard! I ordered a DIY kit from Popular Mechanics and when under construction made the family ill from the acrid smell of fiberglass resin wafting up from the cellar. With the board completed, now I was ready to "hang ten." I spent every spare minute at the beach teaching myself how to surf.

Back to the summer of ‘67, and I was in need of a summer job before starting college in the fall. I worked the third shift at the Bolta Products division of The General Tire Corp. in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where my uncle Pete was a manager. Here we made most of the vinyl-like upholstery for all GM cars and trucks. It started off as a perfect summer… surf all day, then hang out with friends, then work all night. Why waste time sleeping?

They called it "Naugahyde”, and I remember seeing commercials for it on TV and in magazines. Train cars from Naugatuck, Connecticut, would deliver the Naugas out back to be herded into large pens adjacent to the plant where these furless, chubby creatures with pointed ears and sharp teeth would give up their lives for the seats in a '68 Impala. After being humanely harvested for their hides, they were delivered to my department for processing. These little creatures rendered only a third the size of a cow hide, so it took at least six little Naugas to cover the seats on a new Cadillac. Eventually the "Naugahyde" was replaced with a synthetic vinyl ("pleather") due to their extinction resulting from the female Nauga always having a "headache" and refusing to mate. They were an indigenous species only to that area of Connecticut.

By mid-summer, the lack of sleep was getting to me and one night while driving to work from the beach I fell asleep at the wheel and hit a parked car on the side of the road. The next morning, I found my surfboard that was launched from the roof of my car in a field of tall grass across the highway. As summer marched on, I realized that sleep was a necessary commodity to function normally. I adjusted my schedule to allow for a few hours of early morning sleep before I started my day.

To this day, on our annual trips to New England, as we drive through New York on RT 287 and pass the exit for Naugatuck, I can't help but think of all those little Naugas and my "Summer of no sleep."

(This fictional story about the Naugas is based on the ad campaign from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but the rest of the story is completely true.)

We are always looking to feature articles from AACA members in Speedster. We'd love to share your personal accounts of tours and shows you have attended, restoration projects, unique vehicle stories and history, and any other stories you think other AACA members would enjoy hearing about.

Stories should average about 500 words or less. And we love photos, so make sure to include some! Please send your photos and stories to Stacy Zimmerman at szimmerman@aaca.org. 

The Glidden Tour is always an annual event to look forward to for those of us who are involved with the touring side of the antique car hobby. It is arguably one of our oldest tours dating back to the first events being from 1904 to 1913. The purpose at that time was to demonstrate vehicle reliability and encourage improvements to roads. The tour started back up again after World War II and is now referred to as the Glidden Revival Tour. Most tours focus on vehicles of a certain era and the Glidden welcomes vehicles from 1942 and older.

The Glidden Tour is a three-way partnership between AACA, VMCCA and AAA. AACA takes the lead on even numbered years and VMCCA takes the lead on the odd numbered years. The 2024 Glidden Tour was hosted by the AACA Sugarloaf Region and was based in Fairfield, PA, just outside of historic Gettysburg, PA.

I have been doing tours long enough to know that pre-war cars take more prep and maintenance than post war vehicles. Therefore, I gave my 1935 DeSoto Airflow a fresh oil change, a tune up, a brake check and several “shake down” runs. I also greased the bearings on the car hauler trailer and purchased five new tires for the trailer as the others had aged out. I also pulled up the national weather forecast, and it said one day rain out of five.

So, with great confidence that I had checked all the boxes, I pulled out on Sunday morning September 22, 2024, for the run from North Carolina to Pennsylvania with an anticipated arrival at the host hotel of 3 p.m. Things went absolutely as planned for almost 75 miles. Yes, one of the brand-new tires on the trailer started to show signs of losing air. It took two more inflation stops before I knew that a change was required and being a Sunday, I was going to be doing that change myself with one of the two spares in the tow vehicle bed. So, I find a parking lot, pull out the jack, swap the bad for the good, and I’m back on the road after some time. Did I mention that road construction is also performed on Sundays? Did I also mention that accidents on I-81 do take place? Well, I finally got to the host hotel parking area just as the welcome crew was wrapping up for the day.

The beauty of a Glidden Tour is they historically are very well organized, and AAA furnishes sweep vehicles to help with any vehicle issue. No one wants a breakdown, but participants can feel confident that should one take place help is nearby.

The Monday morning started with the forecasted overcast and chance of rain. I had Dave Kontor in the right seat and Bob DeFreitas in the back, which supports the theory that a Marsh needs two navigators. Our tour book directions were clear, and we headed out to the first venue. The day went well, and the combination of Rain-X and vacuum wipers helped us get through the prescribed route. As we got back in the vicinity of the host hotel, we came upon a Sunoco gas station. Experienced tour people will tell you to start each day with a full tank. I therefore pulled in seeking the non-ethanol pump and did not see one. We rolled down the passenger window to inquire about ethanol free availability and were informed that there was none to be had. Just as we started to leave, we discovered that the glass had jumped off the regulator and the passenger window was now inoperable. This was about the same time we found out that the weather forecast had been updated to reflect 4 ½ days of rain rather than one. We took the DeSoto directly back to the trailer and then headed for the bar to develop an action plan.

Tuesday morning dawned with heavy overcast skies but no rain. The DeSoto came out of the trailer, and we proceeded to determine with wire and string that the window glass was capable of coming back up but only about two-thirds of the way. Bob found a gallon sized clear plastic bag and I laid my hands on some duct tape. Now when finished, it wasn't pretty, but we were back in action without getting rain in through an open passenger door window. Down the road we went, and a short way later pulled into the morning coffee break stop. Many of our host tour committee were at the entrance checking to see who was driving in as some cars would fall out due to weather or mechanical issues. They gave us a big cheer and suggested we would be considered for the jury-rigged tour vehicle recognition.

Yes, we ran each day in the rain with flapping plastic but completed the whole tour. When I got back to North Carolina, I pulled the DeSoto out of the trailer for some much-needed cleanup. My wife Cheryl pointed out that she had never seen such a dirty tour car.

I always find items on my vehicles that get put on the “I’ll fix this winter list” and the right front door window is definitely on the list.

Each tour builds memories of the places we see and the club member friendships we create and maintain. And regarding the car, well, they are made to be driven.

Will YOU Be Attending the First National Show of 2025?

April 3-5, 2025

Southeastern Spring Nationals

Charlotte, NC

Registration Deadline: March 7

Click here for brochure

Click here to register online

Click here to register online to judge

Click here if you would like registration information mailed to you (please specify Southeastern Spring Nationals)

The Hornets Nest Region extends a cordial welcome to all fellow AACA members attending the Southeastern Spring Nationals. April is a great time of year to visit Charlotte and we are especially pleased that you have chosen to participate in these events. The Spring Nationals are being held during the Hornets Nest Region’s Charlotte AutoFair at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Credentials for Charlotte AutoFair will be provided to each AACA owner registering a vehicle and to each registered AACA Judge.

Check out this 4-minute video to learn more about AutoFair and the Southeastern Spring Nationals.

Overall Schedule:

Thursday, April 3: Charlotte AutoFair Opens

Friday, April 4: Race Car/Bike Condition Run, Judging School, Team Captains School

Saturday, April 5: Southeastern Spring Nationals & Awards, Judges’ Breakfast, Judges CJE, Youth Program, New Owners Clinic, Picnic

Host Hotel: Embassy Suites, 704-455-8200

5400 John Q. Hammons Drive N.W. Concord, NC 28027

Show Chairman: Phillip Cole, 704-577-8576, lakeholme@att.net  

Registration Chair: Ken Gilmore, 704-841-1990, hornetsnestregionaaca@windstream.net

REMINDER: Your 2025 AACA membership dues must be paid

prior to registering for any 2025 National shows and tours.

Who’s Ready to Dual in the Desert?

By Roy Ireland, Tucson Region, rlireland@aol.com

May 1-3, 2025

Western Spring Nationals/

Special Grand Nationals

aka, Dual in the Desert III

Tucson, AZ

Registration Deadline: April 15

Click here for brochure

Click here to register online

Click here to register online to judge

Click here if you would like registration information mailed to you (please specify Western Spring Nationals or Special Grand Nationals)

The Tucson Region is looking forward to hosting our third Dual Nationals. Online vehicle registration is now open – just click here. Take note that your AACA membership must be current to register.

A featured part of this event will be a Welcome Party on Thursday evening at the Rolling Thru Time Auto Museum. This will include transportation from the Casino in vintage busses and pizza or sub sandwiches to enjoy.

This museum has recently opened to the public and is a must-see while you’re in Tucson!

Plan to come early and stay later to take advantage of the many attractions and points of interest in Southern Arizona! Special group rates apply for 3 days before and 3 days after the event. Note: Extended stay dates must be booked by calling the Reservation Desk at 855-765-7829.

Host Hotel:

Casino Del Sol Resort & Casino, 855-765-7829

5655 W. Valencia Rd, Tucson, AZ 85757

www.casinodelsol.com

Special AACA Rates:

The Casino Tower features luxury deluxe king and queen rooms at a special group rate of $169/night. Rooms are also available in the Estrella Tower adjacent to the Casino for $149/night.

Contact the Resort at 855-765-7829 for reservations. Online registration will be available soon. See instructions at tucsonaaca.org/registration.html.

Group name: AACA National Meet/Grand National

Use group code: 8385

Questions?

Event Coordinator: Dave Green, 520-904-7325, alpgavegr@msn.com

Western Spring Nationals Chair: Andy Neal, 520-405-5490, nihoto560@gmail.com

Grand Nationals Chair: Tom Mulligan, 520-325-7247, tmulligansr@aol.com

Registration Chair: Roy Ireland, 520-591-1140, royireland802@gmail.com

Tucson Region Website: tucsonaaca.org

REMINDER: Your 2025 AACA membership dues must be paid

prior to registering for any 2025 National shows and tours.

Double Your Grand National Pleasure in 2025!!

Enter your Senior car in the show in Tucson and then in July head to Dayton, OH. This is a rare year with two Grand Nationals to serve the East and West. Conceivably you could get your First and Senior Grand National both in 2025! Plus, what a neat opportunity to see more of our great country.

Can't find something in the online store? You can always call AACA Headquarters to place your order as well (717-534-1910, M-F 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.).

Below are several exclusive deals on live events including concerts, sports, shows and more. Check out these and more deals by clicking here.

Sesame Place - San Diego

Busch Gardens - Williamsburg

Buy 2 Days, Get 2 Days Free - Universal Orlando Resort

Six Flags Fiesta Texas -

San Antonio, TX

Disney After Hours at EPCOT®

Hamilton - New York

Disney On Ice

Billy Joel

Hot Wheels Monster Trucks

Live Glow-N-Fire

Would your AACA region or chapter like to visit?

What about any of the other car clubs you belong to?

If you are planning a tour or day excursion for a group near the Hershey area, why not include a stop at our building as part of your itinerary?

If you would like to book a tour, please reach out to Amoi Goldman, AACA Reference Librarian & Outreach Coordinator, at 717-534-2082 or agoldman@aaca.org.

Antique Automobile Club of America

AACA.org | 717-534-1910

America’s Premiere Resource for the Collectible Vehicle Community

The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, is the country's premier resource for the collectible vehicle community. Since its formation in 1935, the Club, through its national office, publications, and membership, aids individuals, museums, libraries, historians and collectors dedicated to the enjoyment and preservation of automotive history.