1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s WWELCOME TO THE WORLD of classic car collecting, where
the automobiles are not just machines, but beloved friends, com-panions,
and even children with their own names.
“I bought my ’67 Austin-Healey about five and a half years
ago,” Bruce Allcorn says. “I hate to admit this, but for the first
two months I’d just go out in my garage and sit there and look at
it. I kept telling myself, I can’t believe I bought this thing.”
There are at least a few hundred antique automobile aficio-nados
in the area, based on the membership rolls of the Cape
Fear chapter of the Antique Auto Club of America (AACA), the
British Motor Club of the Cape Fear (BMCCF) and the Sun
Coast Cruisers.
They own cars that are more than 100 years old, and ones
made as recently as 1992. (An antique is commonly defined as
anything that’s at least 25 years old.) They drive mainstream
marques like Ford, Chevy and Buick, and exotics and rarities like
Duesenbergs, Packards, Marmons and Hupmobiles. They are
people who appreciate the history and the heritage of the auto-mobile
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WBM december 2017 PHOTO BY SIMON GONZALEZ
in American culture.
“We’re basically custodians,” says Ashby Armistead, president
of the Cape Fear AACA. “We want to preserve a piece of history
that may put a smile on somebody’s face, and hope that whoever
ends up with it after you will also preserve it and take care of it.”
They take their classic cars to major shows, like the AACA’s
spring event at Independence Mall that attracts as many as
175-200 cars, the Brit’s annual get-together that’s been held at
the Wrightsville Beach park the past few years, the Sun Coast
Cruisers’ Bash at the Beach, and Rims on the River in downtown
Wilmington. There are lots of smaller shows: Leland Under the