Cars are getting older,
but so are car collectors.
Just when were the good old days, and just how good were they?
By Mike Morrow, The Eureka Reporter
Five years ago? Ten? Thirty? Fifty? Seventy-five? For collectors of anything from comic books to baseball cards to giga pets, it's all good.
Especially car collectors.
"What we're noticing," said Frank Hizer, founder of the Fortuna AutoXpo, "is that people attending events like this are getting older. Their hair is getting white and they're not moving as fast, but they're just as fervent as they were when they drove those cars."
This year's event will be a good time for old friends to get together and remember. The event has grown from a small car showcase and swap meet to the largest display of vintage automobiles and trucks, engines, tractors and whatever else fits into the scheme.
Up to 20,000 people a day crowd into Fortuna on all three days of the event to look at all of the above plus the main attraction - cars, cars and more cars."
More than 20,000 people a day will crowd Fortuna city streets to gawk at the vehicles. That's what they do, too, and Hizer, who began the event with several friends in 1990 when some students at the high school wanted their help in creating a car show, is a big-time gawker, "I love these shows," he said. In just a matter of days, more than two dozen automobiles were on hand for that high school car show at Newburg Park. From that came the Fortuna AutoXpo.
"I've always liked cars, I've always been a bit of a rebel," Hizer said. "I prefer old stuff, like Ramblers and Studebakers. I had an English Ford with a Corvette engine in it. The Rambler had a V8. It's always something different.
That, he said, is much of the attraction of the show.