(Words and Photos by Darr Hawthorne)
The Horseless Carriages Gather at Irwindale
While much of the United States is under freezing conditions and shoveling snow, SoCal is under near-perfect conditions for a year-end car show and road trip. Sunday, December 29, the Horseless Carriage Club of America staged the start of its annual Holiday Excursion at Irwindale Speedway over the weekend.
The Horseless Carriage Club of America showed off an incredible collection of turn of the century, member cars with hand cranking engines, gas lighted brass headlights, wooden spoke-wheels, wagons, roadsters, coupes and touring cars and the cars that drove the early roads of America.
This annual special run for classic pre-1933 motor vehicles, is one of the most unique and colorful automotive traditions of the LA Holiday season with roots back to the earliest days of the motorcar in Southern California. Some newer hot rods and Porsches showed up, but the Horseless Carriages were the show, with the likes of Jay Leno and car celebs like Bruce Meyer.
We got there early and the Horseless Carriages came rolling in later with their drivers and passengers, many of whom were dressed in period-authentic clothing matching the year of their vehicle. The Club hand picked the order of the cruisers and cut off those cars at 1934, as the cars left Irwindale Speedway the drivers were issued route books for a cruise of the area. They’ll paraded one-by-one out of the Speedway parking lot and on to the excursion route.
We have almost 200 photos from the event and will be splitting them into two galleries for you to enjoy. Click on the link below to see them all.
This event is an annual celebration of the living history of the automobile with hundreds of museum-quality machines all on open display before they take to the roads.
There were well over 250 pre-war cars of all description, with a few recent Concourse entries from this year’s Pebble Beach competition.
For more info on the Horseless Carriage Club of America check out http://www.hcca.org
