The Horseless Carraige Club of Southern California's 58th Annual Holiday Motor Excursion

As many crank start cars as you’re likely to see in one place at one time, nearly anywhere

Carwise, I’m an omnivore; in that I eat all automotive meats. I can usually find something to appreciate in nearly any sort, form, brand, or era of automobile. I love Bugattis and Ferraris, and old trucks too. I’m not stuck on rare, fancy, fast, high priced or otherwise usually desirable machinery; steam powered, stealthy, stylish or stupid, I, like you I’m guessing, just love cars of all manner and stripe. Although given my age, you’d likely guess that post-WWII-war stuff is my specialty. Which is generally true. So it was with an extremely open mind that I anticipated attending the Horseless Carraige Club’s annual pre-1932 car show and tour. This group has been gathering their antique and “brass era” cars every December for nearly 60 years, and going for an old fashioned Sunday drive with them.

See, they really ARE called Horseless Carraiges

The gathering place for this year’s run was the former Irwindale Speedway, now renamed the Irwindale Event Center, in the heart of — you guessed it — Irwindale, California; just West of where the Pomona Swap Meet is held, and not so very far east of my Glendale, California home. The tour itself is open to, or should I say restricted to, pre-1932 automobiles, but the gathering and de facto car show draws a wide variety of stuff, from pure stock antiques to hot rods to customs to all manner of strange automobile and bike. My kinda deal. Parking is $5, but there’s no other admission or ticket costs. Also my kinda deal.

See — kids of all ages still love to play dress-up. Many of the tour participants did so in period garb

So it was that a small posse of my friends and I gathered on December 29,2013, in Irwindale, to get an automotive history lesson of sorts, meeting the group and cruising the parking lot before the tour took of at 10:00 AM. I apologize that it’s taken me so many months to post these photos up for you; I’ve just been driving so many cars and attending so many great events that my blogging is a bit behind schedule.

Now you know why they call them “Brass Era” motorcars

And it was fabulous: Model Ts, Model As, Duesenbergs, Packards, and examples of brands you’ve never heard of or hadn’t thought about in a while, I promise.

Like I said, you’ll see cars here you just won’t find at most car shows

Check ’em out in these great photos by Kirk Gerbracht.

This spectacular Duesenberg Model J town car is absolutely original and unrestored, with the paint polished through in a few places, and all original chrome too. Maybe my favorite car there

…and of course Jay Leno was there. I don’t recall which among his fabulous collection of automobiles he brought and drove that day, but he always takes time to share his cars with other attendees, sign autographs, and pose for a few photos…my kind of car guy!