Day one of the Hagerty Fall Classic is in the books, and wow am I exhausted!
We started the day at “Club Auto Tacoma”, located in the LeMay Classic Car Museum. Hagerty Collector Car Insurance hosted us for a morning registration with pastries, coffee and priceless collector cars. It was tough to decide whether to walk through the cars inside, or check out the entrants cars outside! Soon the driver’s meeting began, however, and all the attention was on the roads ahead.
…and wow, those roads.
On a typical CCA event we try and change up the road style during the day. You’ll experience tight twisties, flowing touring roads and back-woods B-highways. Today, though, once we left Tacoma the steering wheels never stopped moving. Driver’s were ecstatic with the constant left-right-left-hairpin into left-right-left-right. and so forth. We looked for the twistiest roads Washington had to offer, and boy did we find them!
Highlights of the day included visiting the blast-zone of Mount St. Helens, the excellent weather and the adventurous route book. One thing we noticed today was how much fun we all had together as a group. Throughout the day it seemed like we enjoyed a section of road with every single car on the event. And when we’d stop for breaks, each car was telling us how they had driven with every other car on the event. It was fantastic! Whether glued to the back bumper of a 2002 in the switchbacks, getting passed by a ’36 Ford Business Coupe or being swarmed by a pack of Mexican Minis…the variety was endless.
Tomorrow we hit some of Oregon’s best touring and b-roads, but for now here’s a selection of images from Andrew Snucins Photography:
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Robert and his team specialize in everything from simple maintenance, to full-blown restorations and even ground-up custom builds. Some customers arrive with no parts or car, just a photograph of some long forgotten piece of automotive history. Robert and his team can recreate those body panels using the english wheel, an entire wall of hammers and wizardry which we here at CCA don’t really yet understand.
Tear Down – Tear down of a restoration is much more then just yanking it all apart. This a job where detail-minded individuals find their calling. Nuts, bolts and washers must be tagged with their proper locations. Photographs, lots of photographs, are taken to ensure everything goes together correctly in the assembly stage. Teardown is also the part where all the hidden issues or unseen problems are found in a restoration. A tear down specialist is part-mechanic, part librarian and part Indiana-Jones. There is nothing more exciting then removing a structured assembly to find the grease-pencil signature of a factory worker in 1958. Come to think of it, with the number of project cars in boxes on Craigslist, we think the tear down specialist might be the most common type of enthusiast!
Mechanical Work – If you’re anything like Dave at the CCA office, your youth was spent borrowing dad’s tools so you could tear apart and rebuild whatever mechanical or electronic item you could get your hands on. Years of ‘mostly’ working toys taught you the careful skill of bolting things back together in the correct order. At RWM&Co mechanical work ranges from simply replacing worn bushings in a suspension overhaul, all the way to engine and transmission rebuilds. In this area of the shop, there’s room for folks of all skill levels…as long as they’re willing to learn. While rebuilding a Bentley wheel cylinder might not be an item currently on your resume, perhaps after being shown how to do the first unit, the other three won’t seem so challenging. If you were to end up working at RMW&Co, the mechanical work you’ll experience will be dependent on your skill level, and always under the supervision of Robert’s top trained technicians.
Before we release you to the entry forms, you might be interested to hear we’ve been hard at work all Fall planning the Hagerty Spring Thaw. This year’s version will combine many of your favourite things, along with a few new changes which are sure to excite you. “Changes,” you say, “you can’t change it!?!” Well, lets not panic too early! We’re not tossing out the carburetors for fuel-injection, or opening the entry list to 1990 Cavaliers. But we are, for starters, changing our sweep team. Our regular guests on the Hagerty Spring Thaw are all familiar with Nigel and Yoki, who have for years followed our event ensuring each and everyone of our guests has made it to hotel in the evening. Nigel is one of the most passionate classic car enthusiasts we know of, but he’s only ever experienced the Hagerty Spring Thaw from the very back of the pack. Wouldn’t it be great to have him running ‘in the pack’ with the rest of us?
Fortunately some great friends have also wanted to give Nigel and Yoki a chance to experience more of the Spring Thaw for themselves. Robert and Jacyln, from RWM & Co. had so much fun joining us as sweep at the Fall Freeze, they asked if they could do the same for the Hagerty Spring Thaw. We couldn’t be more delighted! Robert has done more than a few road-side repairs for guests in previous Spring Thaws, and having a classic car restoration specialist at the back of the event is never a bad thing! 
Hopefully you’ll agree with us that our “big changes” for 2015 are a great idea, and will only change the event for the better. We’ve been very careful to stick to our recipe of Great Roads, Great Cars and Great People. Speaking of which, we should mention Dave Koszegi and Mid-Island Realty. Dave Koszegi (Dave K) is always the first person to approach us about supporting the Spring Thaw each year. As we sit writing this, it seems to us that it was at registration for the 2014 event that Dave K smiled his traditional huge smile and confirmed “we’re doing this again next year, right?!” Mid-Island Realty loads up our prize table each year like it’s a Christmas Tree for the whole event, helps to fill your schwag bag with items you really want to keep and use, and (most importantly) reminds us often how excited everyone is for another year of adventures. Whether you’re looking for a home on the island, or elsewhere, it would be wise to call up 
The radio is playing Christmas carols, the malls are packed and your shopping list seems never-ending…this could only mean one thing: Hagerty Spring Thaw registration is just around the corner! Yes, the Pacific Northwest’s favourite classic car event is returning for its seventh year, and we couldn’t be more excited. We’ve been scouring the maps, and spent the fall testing new roads which haven’t been used in any of our events. The Hagerty Spring Thaw will begin on April 24th, and finish April 26th. Registration forms and entries will be uploaded onto our website Friday January 2nd, with supplementary regulations ready on December 15th. Further details on the 
While road-trippng across the USA this past spring, we entered Colorado with the intention of “pushing through” to our final destination across the state. After 20min on our first b-road, however, the plans changed and we spent three days exploring possibilities for a new event. By the end of the three days we fell in love with Colorado’s roads, and when we mentioned to our friends at Hagerty that we were thinking of Colorado, they immediately agreed it was a “must-do” event. This new event will feature our famous blend of great roads, great people and fantastic value. We’ll be starting on May 15th, at the new Hagerty Classic Car Insurance office in Denver Colorado. We’ll finish up on May 17th, having completed approximately 700 miles on some of the best tarmac roads we’ve ever discovered. Registration forms and entries will be uploaded onto our website Friday January 16th. Further event details will be ready December 15th, and will be found on the 
The Classic Car Adventures Rush to Gold Bridge is our mixed Tarmac and Gravel event. For 2015 we’ve moved the event to the end of May, giving us better weather over remote mountain passes. 2015’s running of the Rush To Gold Bridge will feature a lightly-organized style of road trip, designed for the budget traveler looking for adventure. Open to 1989 and earlier classics, we’ll explore some of the best and smoothest gravel roads BC has to offer. Further event details can be found on the 
While we certainly love exploring the roads of British Columbia, we thought we’d take our blend of events a little further south into the great roads of Washington and Oregon. This budget-minded event follows the traditional style of our famous Spring Thaw, and is one of the best ways to close out the motor season. We also thought we’d have some fun, and ask you to help us name the the new fall event with a contest! We’re offering a 50% discount as a prize to the winner of our naming contest. Full details, and entry to the naming contest, can be found on the 
Traditionally at CCA we think of mountains as the ultimate source of twisty roads and fantastic views. Glaciers on the east-coast, however, created thousands of lakes which early road builders had to go around, and around, creating some absolutely fantastic twisty roads. The Muskoka Lakes, Canadian Shield region and the Laurentian Mountains each serve a unique blend of twists, turns and scenery. The history of Upper Canada and early cottaging has also created some fantastic resorts and destinations, all a part of this new event for CCA. Registration for the event will open this winter, with further event information found on the 
Sunday December 7th2pm to 5pm