IF you like vintage race cars, this is an event your not going to want to miss.
The Elegance At Hershey is a celebration of a bygone era when the automobile stirred our imaginations and quickened our hearts.
Today people both young and old marvel at the extravagances of the cars of the past. From the race cars to the street cars that were not about pure performance or conveyance but also incoporated artistic design, a symphony of sound and sensory overload worthy of the finest wines. Cars were not just about transportation they were a statement.
The Elegance At Hershey will bring the finest of race cars and show quality collector cars of the pre-World War II and immediate post-World War II period together for a weekend celebrating the automobile. But, this is so much more than a celebration, it is also about causes. Raising money for charity is the ultimate point of this event and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the AACA Museum and AACA Library & Research Center will benefit.
Amateur sports car racing was booming in post World-War II America and a form of racing called the hill climb was a very integral part of this scene. The idea was simple; one car at a time would storm-up a preset course laid out on a mountain road. The drivers test their skill and nerve while taxing the ability of the car in a race against the clock and the times posted by all the other drivers in the event.
The Hershey Hill Climb began innocently enough in 1958. Founded by the Appalachian Sports Car Club, it was one of many hill climbs in Pennsylvania. In this era Pennsylvania was a hot bed of this kind of racing. Hershey would grow to be the crown jewel of the Pennsylvania Hill Climb Association (PHA) yearly circuit. By the mid-1960’s the race was being held at the beginning of each season and again at the end of the season, often as the definitive race for final standings. The event was so big, it often drew in excess of 200 cars, it was deemed the largest hill climb in the world.