“Not all who wander are lost.” That’s a fitting description of the day I spent trolling for treasure at the Portland Swap Meet. The largest event of this type on the West Coast, it has over 4,200 vendor booths and attracts more than 50,000 gearheads. But that’s not the end of it. Right next door, Portland International Raceway simultaneously hosts another swap meet, with an additional 1,000 booths arrayed around the entire race track. So you’re faced with over 5,000 vendors, all hoping to make their junk your jewels. Each year, I vow not to return to this Neanderthal way of […]
“Not all who wander are lost.”
That’s a fitting description of the day I spent trolling for treasure at the Portland Swap Meet. The largest event of this type on the West Coast, it has over 4,200 vendor booths and attracts more than 50,000 gearheads. But that’s not the end of it.
Right next door, Portland International Raceway simultaneously hosts another swap meet, with an additional 1,000 booths arrayed around the entire race track. So you’re faced with over 5,000 vendors, all hoping to make their junk your jewels.
Each year, I vow not to return to this Neanderthal way of buying and selling parts, and each year, there I am, seeking and searching like an automotive archaeologist in the midst of a giant automotive landfill.
I’ve written before about swap meets being icons of a time gone by, representing an era before the Internet, before blogs and before email. In fact, the six car clubs that put on the Portland Swap Meet are indicative of the demographics of the event. They are the Historical Automobile Club of Oregon, the Horseless Carriage Club of Oregon, the Vintage Chevrolet Club of America, the Model A Ford Club of America, the Early Ford V-8 Club of America, and the Rose City Model T Club.
No Pagani Zonda User’s Group or Friends of McLaren F1s in this bunch.
I came away from this year’s event with a slightly different, more thoughtful perspective. But that’s probably because after six hours of meandering around with the purposefulness of a blind cave fish, I scored.
Enter the SCM Cruise-In Special
My wife Wendie and I have embarked on our first SCM restoration project together. While wasting time on Craigslist one night, I came across a listing for a 1964 Chevy Nova wagon, a relatively rare factory 283 small-block car with a column-shift 3-speed. I’d like to say that I’d always wanted one, but in fact, Novas were somewhere just below Pacers on my list of automotive must-haves. But the allure of the iconic Chevy V8 and small-car packaging was irresistible.
I’m sure a Nova geek somewhere will be able to tell us just how many ’64 Nova wagons with a 3-speed manual, V8, and chrome rooftop luggage rack were built, and we’ll give him a free SCM cap when he does.
Here’s our vision for our Chevy Speciale: We’re converting the tranny to a floor-mounted Saginaw 4-speed with Hurst competition linkage and a white cue ball, of course, at the end of the chrome shifter. We’re going with a pair of buckets, which was the primary reason we were at the swap meet.
An Edelbrock Performer manifold and four-barrel will be the only underhood modifications, and the finished package will include a pair of Flowmasters and a set of 15? x 7? Torq Thrust mags.
My wife connected me with her good friend Jeff Leonard, owner of Classic Industries, and his company has been a terrific source of parts. The stuff they don’t repop, like the side spears, rear drip rail, and rear taillight assemblies, have caused us to become on a first-name basis with the surprisingly numerous vintage American-car wrecking yards in the area.
Kicking tires, again
Just to make sure all our rabid SCMers don’t break into a cold sweat and worry that we’ve gone over to the dark side-of giant pistons, spaghetti-noodle suspensions, and anemic brakes (i.e., classic American cars), the Volvo 544, Mercedes ponton, Land Rover 88, Porsche Boxster S, and Alfa Giulia Spider Veloce remain the center of the extremely unfocused SCM Collection. (And then there’s the two-wheeled amalgamation, led by our 1973 Piaggio Ciao moped and our most recent acquisition, a 1964 Newport Ferrari-yes, Ferrari!-tandem bicycle.) Quite simply, the Nova represents a combination of quirkiness, affordability, and a chance to dabble in the American car world.
The restorer of the Nova, Brian Ross, and I had been walking up and down the aisles for hours, in a fruitless search for trim, a tachometer for the center of the SS gauge package, and the bucket seats. For someone accustomed to typing in a couple of phrases in Google and having relevant responses pop back in seconds, the sheer chaos of a swap meet is frustrating at best and infuriating at worst. I always wonder why swap meets can’t have a central web site login where vendors who wished to do so could list some of the types of stuff they will be bringing.
Ross and I were chatting with a fellow who had a pair of 1965 GTO seats for $400, and he was “pretty sure they would fit into a Nova.” As we walked away, a gentleman came up to us and said, “Nova seats? You want Nova seats? I’ve got Nova seats! Just follow me.” Like hounds who had finally found a scent, we trailed him across the lot.
The seller, Dean Sprecher, of Corvette Specialties Inc., turned out to be an SCMer and a Corvette Market advertiser. The seats were in rebuildable condition; for no good reason, I immediately posted a picture of them to my Facebook account.
Two-hundred dollars was the friendly price, and they’re on the way to the upholstery shop now.
In the end, swap meets today are a way to spend a day or two running into old friends, kicking a few tires, and maybe hauling something home. They’re not efficient, and especially if you don’t find something you’re looking for, they can be real time-wasters. But with my buckets in the back of my truck, I drove away a happy guy. And ready to come back next year-driving the SCM Nova.