Kings of the road A driving passion for classic car collectors BY RANDY SOUTHERLAND  Karl Peace remembers his first car very well. Growing up the son of an itinerate sharecropper in Southwest Georgia, he was just 16 in 1957 when he was able to scrape together $100 from picking cotton.
“I bought a 1948 Ford coupe with $50 and used $40 to have it repainted,” he recalls. “I tinkered with the car and, over the years, spruced it up, putting on fender struts, a sun visor and other things to make it more presentable, and I drove that car until I graduated from [college].” Today, he’s retired from a long and successful career in the pharmaceutical industry, and the specially built garage adjoining his spacious Baker County home has, at times, been filled with more than 50 antique and classic autos and trucks. Yet, the memories of that first auto are still vivid. “It really was a beautiful car,” he says fondly. His collection has ranged from the obscure ’23 Star Touring Car to a ’38 Lincoln Zephyr and several classic Corvettes. His favorite is a ’48 Chevrolet five-window pickup. Ask any car collector and he or she will likely tell you that their love of these machines harkens back to the teenage years when a car represented dreams of the open road, freedom and perhaps an affluence that most youngsters could only dream about. “I had several flat-head Fords when I was a teenager but sold the last one when I got married. I bought this one that I’ve got now after our youngest daughter finished law school and I could afford to do that,” says Atlanta resident Fred Lindquist, former president of the Atlanta chapter of the Early Ford V8 Club. “My particular interest is that I like old cars, especially the cars from the ’30s.” Peace explains his love of old cars by paraphrasing Will Rogers, “I never met an old car I didn’t like.” Many collectors would agree. Collecting antique or classic cars is a popular and diverse calling. Some like Peace collect on a large scale, filling their garages with the autos that they admired in youth and can now afford to buy—usually at hundreds of times more than the original price. Most have one or, at most, two models they keep in the driveway and devote loving attention on a smaller scale. Many also join clubs dedicated to a particular brand or era.  Lindquist’s organization focuses on the hot Fords with their powerful engines from the ’30s and ’40s. Others are made up of collectors representing the hundreds of car companies that have dotted the landscape of America over the last century. While nobody keeps count of just how many collectors there are in the state or nation since some cars are registered and others sit in garages unregistered, the number is large according to experts.
“It’s a huge, multi-billion-dollar hobby,” says Steven Moskowitz, executive director of the Hershey, Pa.,-based Antique Automobile Club of America, the nation’s oldest and largest car club with 60,000 members and 400 regional chapters.  “Collecting [cars] is one aspect, restoring cars is another, and operating them is another,” says Lindquist. “There is always maintenance that you have to do. My car was restored when I got it, but it was what you would call a touring car, it wasn’t a car that would score high on the concourse, because there were [modifications] done to it, but it is a great driver.”
Some collectors are sticklers for authenticity and strive to keep their cars just like they were when they rolled off the assembly line. Others modify them with modern safety devices so they can be used for touring. And, of course, some ancient models from the early part of this century truly are museum pieces that couldn’t handle modern traffic. A fully restored version of a rare collectible can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Others such as the Ford Model A can be had for a few hundred. The prices of all these antique and collectible cars has risen across the board as affluent baby boomers have gotten into the hobby in large numbers, according to Moskowitz. If the collector wants to do the restoration himself, lesser models can be had at a lower price, but the cost of replacing parts and restoring the vehicle to a pristine condition can quickly require a greater investment than the owner could ever realize from a sale. Collectors with money to burn can have a powerful impact on cost. Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan once tried to corner the market for antique models of Bugatti and Duesenbergs. “He was paying as much as $7.5 million dollars per Duesenberg at one point in time,” recalls Peace. “That is an example of where the price of those cars was very much overinflated by a very wealthy collector.” Fortunately, few actually pay those prices for their cars, making it a hobby available to a wide spectrum of enthusiasts. The quality they all share is a love for the auto in all its forms. Randy Southerland is a freelance writer living in Acworth.
Collector shares his legacy with the public While most car fans keep their treasures in their own garages, one of the state’s most prolific collectors created a legacy that is available to everyone. Tommy Protsman’s collection of 35 rare autos is featured in the Stone Mountain Antique Car and Treasure Museum. A traveling salesman, Protsman started acquiring classic cars in 1949. He was talking with a friend about an old car his father had long wanted to buy. “So my father [Tommy Protsman] went over and saw the car and bought it and drove it back home to Atlanta,” explains son Bobby, who took over management of the museum following his dad’s death in 2000. “He caught the [collecting] bug and soon found another one owned by a Ford dealer and bought it, and all the spare parts, fenders and running boards.” He even got into producing parts for the antique vehicles he was adding to a growing collection. When he needed a muffler he found a manufacturer who could produce 50 for him. “He was quite an entrepreneur and finally, after his collecting had gone on for several years, he had run out of room to store them,” says the younger Protsman. “He had a 10-car garage and it was full, and everybody that he knew that had an empty garage had one of his cars.” Then a friend told him the state was planning to build a park around Stone Mountain. He contacted a member of the new park’s board of directors who agreed to assist him in constructing a building if he provided his collection to furnish it. After an expansion that more than doubled its space, the museum is still packed to the rafters with the fruits of Protsman collecting. Visitors can wander by impeccably maintained vehicles that are a virtual history of car-making in America. There’s the one-horse cutter sleigh from 1900, a 1910 wicker-back surrey buggy, and then the creation of motorized vehicles that range from the utility of a 1902 one-cylinder Oldsmobile runabout to the luxury of a Rolls Royce Phantom III town car. The ’23 Ford Model T roadster once owned by the late Gov. Lester Maddox sits alongside a rare 1948 Tucker featuring a center headlight that turns with the front wheel; nearby are muscle cars such as a ’66 Ford Mustang V8 and a ’69 Chevy Camaro convertible. Bobby Protsman says that his dad’s taste for collecting ranged far beyond just autos. The museum features a wide range of other antique treasures such as player pianos, hand-cranked movie viewers, electric trains, Tiffany lamps, jukeboxes and toys of every variety. “He would find somebody who had a certain thing for sale and he would say, ‘How much do you want for all of them?’ and he would buy a whole collection, when he could afford it, and he usually could,” he says. For more information on the Stone Mountain Antique Car and Treasure Museum, call (770) 413-5229.
So you think it’s a collectible?  While words like collectible, classic, antique and so on are often bandied about and frequently used interchangeably, these and other terms refer to specific cars from particular eras. Here is an abbreviated list of some of the more commonly used auto terms:
Horseless carriage—turn-of-the-century autos with slender, tall wheels and carriage-like bodies Antique—built prior to 1925 Brass era—pre-1914 autos that used brass in the production process Classic—fine or unusual foreign or domestic motorcars built between and including the years 1925 to 1948, including Duesenberg, Pierce Arrow, Rolls Royce and Packard Milestone—cars from 1945 to 1971 that meet rigid criteria set by the Milestone Car Society Muscle—large-engine, high horsepower mid-sized cars built between 1964 to 1973 Pony—Ford Mustang and its competitors including the Barracuda, Camaro and Firebird
A few car shows in the state: March 23-29— AACA Historic Savannah 2007 Spring Tour; (912) 897-0050; www.aaca.org March 24—11th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival Mustang and Classic Ford Show, Macon; (478) 751-7429; cbfmacon.com March 31—3rd Annual Cool Car Festival, Stone Mountain Park; (770) 498-5690 in metro Atlanta area or (800) 401-2407; www.stonemountainpark.com April 21—10th Annual Horsepower at the Park Car, Truck & Cycle Show and Swap Meet, Conyers; (678) 957-6749; www.horsepoweratthepark.com May 5—15th Annual Orphan Vehicle Celebration, Snellville; (404) 288-8222 May 5—Coastal Corvette Gathering at Tybee Island; www.coastalcorvettes.com May 5-6—8th Annual Peach State Chevelle Show, Oakwood; (770) 532-0823 Oct. 13-14—Apple Country Auto Club’s Apple Classic Car Show, Ellijay; www.clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/applecountry
If you want to start collecting …  Check out the price guides. A good one is The Gold Book owned by Manheim Auctions(www.manheimgold.com) that features an easy-to-use Internet search engine. Another good source is Hemmings (www.hemmings.com) that features thousands of classified ads for classic cars.
Do a thorough inspection of the car. Put it up on a lift to get a good view underneath of any rust, oil drips or other damage. Look at areas not clearly visible, such as the underside of the trunk emblem, and then pop the trunk for rust or damage from water collecting around the trunk rim. Do a similar inspection around all windows. Pull up carpet to inspect the floorboards. It’s helpful to carry a screwdriver and gently tap for any weak or damaged areas. And, of course, crank it up and notice how it sounds idling at higher revs. Look at the paint job. It’s easy to get a car that looks good three feet away, but a close inspection may reveal bubbles produced by oxidation in the metal below the paint.
Some sources: For more information on car collecting, visit these sites. Some have local and regional chapters.  Antique Automobile Club of America—www.aaca.org
Classic Car Club of America—www.classiccarclub.org Milestone Car Society—www.milestonecarsociety.org Hemmings Motor News—www.hemmings.com | 
