The muscle makes the car

Autos from their youth draw boomers to sale

RALEIGH -- As baby boomers gray and become more wistful for their teenage years, muscle cars are becoming increasingly popular at classic car auctions.

These powerful cars of boomers' youth are what rev that generation up today.

Hundreds of people up to speed on their V-8 engines, vintage cars, British classics, hot rods and rare trucks and vans crowded into the Graham Building and Exposition Center at the State Fairgrounds on Friday and Saturday.

Four private collections with more than 250 vintage vehicles were being auctioned as part of the Raleigh Classic Car Auction.

Willis Silver, a retiree who lives in Nashville, the seat of Nash County, has a Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue, special edition, that he treats like a child.

On Saturday, he had his eye on a 1957 Chevrolet Black Widow Convertible but was not sure what it would go for. So he was surveying the hundreds of other cars on display.

"It's just very nice tinkering with old cars," Silver said.

Some at the auto show liked to tinker. Others wanted a new garage queen they could roll out occasionally to reign over the road.

James Marshall, a Raleigh resident, drives a Ford Expedition during the week and pulls out his 1966 Pontiac Catalina on Saturdays and Sundays.

"I bought it to take the kids on weekend drives," Marshall said. "I was born in '68. My parents had an old Pontiac, and we'd go on Sunday drives.

"It's good family fun. It just sort of feels like it takes you back to simpler times."

Byron Williams drove up from Charleston, S.C., to look for a new old car that he actually plans to drive.

Williams, a doctor with Coastal Occupational Medicine, has been interested in old cars ever since he traded a truckload of cantaloupes -- maybe 300 -- for a 1931 Model A Ford pickup.

Williams said he will rarely pay more than $10,000. He said he usually drives an old car for a while and then puts a "For Sale" sign on it or an ad in the newspaper, trying to make back what he paid -- and perhaps the price of his trip to the auction, which, in this case, was $2,000.

"This is just a hobby of mine," Williams said. "I don't buy anything I can't drive."

Jim Lore, a lawyer in Cary, watched from the sidelines as an auctioneer, in his rapid-fire sing-song cadence, sold car after car Saturday morning. Lore is a muscle car collector who has noticed a decline in interest in very old cars.

"People are interested in the cars from when they were young, when they were teenagers," Lore said. "That wave of people is dying off."