Events Coverage
Hershey Antique Auto Show 2003
By by: George Achorn
Feb 11, 2004, 00:01

The national fall meet of the Antique Automobile Club of America is a spectacle to behold. Each fall, the entire Hershey Park grounds and surrounding fields are converted into a small city of vendors, antique cars and enthusiasts who either sleep in hundreds of RVs on the show grounds or throughout local hotels, motels and campgrounds across several municipalities. Those who come are enthusiasts of almost anything you can think of as long as it’s automotive. This show, the largest of its kind in the United States, might be considered a wonder of the automotive world irregardless of what brand of vehicle that might enthrall you as well as a great learning experience covering both history and culture of America’s love affair with the automobile.

Originally held in 1941, the AACA’s fall meet moved to Hershey in 1953. They’ve been exhibiting and flourishing there ever since. Today’s event includes field upon field of auto-oriented flea markets, large corrals for cars that might be for sale, a gargantuan classic car exhibition and a Kruse Auto Auction held in the new Giant Stadium, home of the Hershey Bears minor-league hockey team.

This year, as a result of scheduling, we arrived in Hershey late in the evening. The grounds, the corral and the flea market are open all week and by Friday, the makeshift city of RVs and tents is built and thriving. Scoping the new layout Friday evening prior to Saturday’s main exhibition made sense, and what red-blooded auto enthusiast wouldn’t want to immerse themselves into the experience as soon as he or she passes into city limits.



What we learned by first going in during the evening was that this makeshift city doesn’t sleep. Walk through the fields and it’s hard to find a vendor who hasn’t thrown a tarp over his junk or treasures. However, you will find musicians performing on electric guitars with their amps hooked up to portable generators, fellows cooking burgers over an open grille or couples playing cards in the back of their RV. Wherever you find them, these people seem to live the show for a week, and they’re friendly as heck.

We wandered over by the Giant Stadium to find the Kruse auction in full effect. One could walk down amongst the buyers on the arena floor to scope out the line of cars waiting to go across the block. Wandering out behind the arena, we found the whole collection of vehicles scheduled to go up for bidding, and regretted we weren’t in the market to buy something.

If water-cooled Volkswagens are all you find time for in your lust for german cars, then maybe Hershey isn’t for you. As it is after all an antique automobile show, plenty of old air-cooled Volkswagens make it out to the show or the sale, including an incredibly clean Microbus in the exhibition, a Karmann Ghia funny car dragster and a very rare Brasilia model we found in the Kruse auction.

Several Porsches that share quite a bit of Volkswagen DNA included numerous 356 models, 914s and a stunning white 914 GT-6 with widebody fenders.



Other brands from the current Volkswagen Group portfolio can be found with a bit of exploration as well. While we couldn’t find any of the four-ring variety, several amazing Bentleys and just a few Bugattis were also found throughout the field.

The AACA’s national fall event in Hershey doesn’t have the wine & cheese feel of Pebble Beach or the racing excitement of the Monterey Historics. It’s very heavily oriented toward owners of vintage American cars, though its sheer size results in some seriously rewarding sights of automobiles from the European side of the pond as well. As with any great event of this type, we highly you give it a try sometime. It’s far from slammed compacts at an import show, or race-prepped cars lapping a racetrack, but it’s a major part of the history and culture of the world in which we automotive enthusiasts choose to live.

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