Moving works of art on display

When Rick Christopher fired up his 1931 gleaming Pontiac to pick up his first-place prize Sunday at the Concours d’Elegance car show in Huntington Beach, it was another in a string of awards for him.

Christopher bought the green Pontiac over the Internet in 2002 for $14,000 instead of the Cadillac he was looking for. He said he performs minimal maintenance on the two-door sedan, which is now worth $28,000. He’s won prizes in Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Newport Beach and other car shows.

The Pontiac won in the American Class Evolutionary Cars, from 1921 to 1931.

“This is another kind of a bird, but an expensive one,” said Christopher, of Huntington Beach. He’s a bird lover, with a parrot tattooed on each arm.

“You don’t see Pontiacs getting awards anymore, but this one’s truly deserving,” said Concours d’Elegance emcee duo Dick McAlister and Dale Hanson.

About 3,000 people came to the car show in Huntington Central Park on Sunday to swap stories, compete for awards or just look.

Visitors drove from as far as the San Fernando Valley, Thousand Oaks, Riverside and San Diego to look at about 450 vehicles, including Ferraris, Mustangs, Corvettes, Cadillacs, Thunderbirds and a Packard.

There was a 1918 Opel Phaeton that was discovered in a barn in Sweden and is the only remaining one in the world.

“I’ve always loved old cars,” Christopher said. “It’s something in the past that’s going away, and young people don’t know about them.”

Immaculately restored cars in red, maroon, yellow and orange sat on the grassy knolls of the library. It was a rainbow of automotive art ? a testament to all the sweat and hard work by their owners to restore them to their bygone glory.

A ’57 cream-colored Mercury Turnpike Cruiser stood with its majestic tail fins stretching into the background, dwarfing everything else beside it.

And when Gerhard Schnuerer of Newport Beach trundled down the road in his 1895 Benz coupe, everyone stopped to gape. He and his wife sat up front in the horseless carriage ? one of only two such contraptions still in existence.

Schnuerer turned the horizontal wheel as the wagon sputtered its way on wooden wheels to receive the first-place plaque in the antique models category. The category was for cars built before 1921, when brass plating instead of the current chrome plating was used to make headlights and other car parts.

This year, the show honored the Ford Mustang as the classic American car, and Ferrari as the import brand name.

But so many car aficionados turning up for the auto show meant brisk sales at the Deals on Miniature Wheels booth.

“The weather was great, sunny and beautiful all day,” owner Brad Kurian said, adding that the upscale show drew a quality crowd.

We had a quality crowd, as the show is an upscale one, Kurian said. The booth offered about 600 selections of miniature toy cars. He declined to say how many Hot Wheels he sold that day.

For the race car enthusiasts, there were Saleens, Ferraris and a Lotus.

“It’s just exposure for the dealership, and it’s a good cause,” said Josh Zenor, general manager of Ferrari of Newport Beach.

Proceeds from the show will be donated to the children’s section of the Huntington Beach Library at Central Park.

Bart McGrath, who founded the Concours d’Elegance event almost two decades ago, started the car show to combine his love of cars with the goal of providing the library’s children’s section with a steady source of income.

So far, the fundraising efforts have produced more than $300,000 for the library.

Besides 40 classes of cars, the auto show also featured motorcycles and vintage bikes.hbi.08-autos-2-cw-BPhotoInfoG51RNFTO20060608j0gunmncNo Captionhbi.08-autos-1-cw-CPhotoInfoG51RNFTS20060608j0gun6ncPHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER WAGNER / DAILY PILOT(LA)Above, Carl Miller, of Anaheim, checks out the classic Corvettes. Below, Chris Cho, of Cypress, looks under the hood of a classic 1970 Buick GSX.