The first “cars” were patented 132 years ago, and their owners had to somehow drive them down the road without autonomous technology, ABS, or even satellite radio. Since then, there have been billions of cars made, each better – maybe – than what came before it, unless you like manual shifters, worm-and-roller steering and cost-efficient crank windows. While modern cruise-ins and rod runs celebrate automobiles from the 1950s to about 1973, and while places like Pebble Beach and Villa d’Est highlight the beautiful flowing fenders of the 1930s, cars from earlier eras are celebrated in places like Pasadena, Calif. at the Horseless Carriage Club’s annual Holiday Excursion.
It started out on Christmas morning in 1955 when a couple families piled into their then-not-so-old old cars to see what everybody else got for Christmas. It’s been going on for 63 years since.
The event is limited to cars from 1932 and older. It used to be 1915 and older, but even collector-car-rich Southern California doesn’t have enough of those left. Still, there were plenty of cars from what is known as “The Brass Era,” where flat, bolt-upright windshields, flimsy canvas tops and relatively sputtering top speeds were the norm. It was an age of elegance, to be sure, but also a time when people were amazed that these things really were faster and more efficient than a horse.
There were large luxurious sedans and touring cars from Pope Hartford, Overland, Pierce-Arrow, Stanley Steamer and Studebaker, as well as three Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts (Jay Leno drove up in his Rolls-Royce Merlin V12-powered Rolleresque custom-bodied gigantic roadster). But the most popular car onhand – by far – was the Ford Model T. Second-most popular was the Ford Model A. Henry Ford put the nation on wheels with 16.5 million Model Ts, and followed that up with five million Model As produced from that model's start in 1929 to the Horseless Carriage Club’s 1932 cutoff date.
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