The revived BBC Tour will have two objectives when it rolls into Hershey, Pa., in May.
“We had a lot of people reach out to us over the last two years,” said Pat Gamble, the tour director, “encouraging us to consider doing tours again.”
The seemingly final BBC Tour was held in 2023 and by that time, what began as Brass in Bucks County and then morphed into Brass in Berks County had finally settled on Beautiful Brass Cars. Gamble had worked on the tour with its founder, Clay Green.
“Clay handed it off to me,” Gamble said. “He passed in ’19, and then we had COVID and we didn’t run a tour. Then in ’21, there was the Brass Era tour, but it was more of a Clay Green Memorial Tour. Then I did two more BBCs — ’22 and ’23 — in Gettysburg.”
In all of its forms, BBC had been a Horseless Carriage Club of America tour, but this year’s event will be sponsored by America’s Transportation Experience — the AACA Museum — from May 17 through 21.
“We thought it would be a good marriage to bring the museum and the Brass car people together to showcase that we’re about all cars and not just the more recent stuff,” explained Gamble, who volunteers at the museum. “We just want to make this all-inclusive, welcoming and open. You don’t have to be a member of the museum, you don’t have to be a member of any other club.”
“I think from the comments we receive that Brass Era cars are popular, because you don’t see them at typical cars shows anymore,” observed Jeff Bliemeister, the museum’s executive director. “Brass cars aren’t on the road that frequently. People who go to car shows are usually seeing cars from the ’50s on up and now, they’re getting to see stuff from the ’80s and ’90s and even the 2000s. One of the reasons that we wanted to do this event is because first, people don’t get to see them — they’re an anomaly — and second, people don’t get to see them running and performing. This is a chance for people to see them on our property, see them out on the road.”
BBC will be a first for the museum, as it’s hosted numerous car shows, but never a tour that will run for several days. It does, however, sponsor a regular event that goes beyond static displays or even shows.
“We run a Model T driving experience here,” Gamble said. “We do eight different schools throughout the summer months, and we do it all with Model Ts. People get to come and spend half a day here at the campus. We do a little theory in the beginning, the history of the Model T, we have a motor and transmission set up and we go through how they operate and function, and then they get to drive. We set up a route here and they get to drive several Model Ts from different eras for three laps around our campus. We have a speedster, which is Brass, we have a ’12 Commercial with the mother-in-law seat, which is also Brass. We also have a Brass Era C-cab, which is a ’12 that they can drive, and then we have a ’27 and a ’24. We have the Pep Boys ’22.”
Each session of the school sells out, and he said that its ongoing success was part of the inspiration for the tour. There is, of course, more.
“Having the Brass event here,” Bliemeister said, “brings that to a different level, because anyone can just show up and take it in. You’re probably not going to get a chance to ride in a vehicle, but it’s a different kind of immersive experience. It’s in our mission to do this.
“The tour just furthers our mission, so there’s actually no reason not to do something like this.”
Gamble said that the tour’s daily routes will range from about 50 to about 75 miles and among their destinations will be several private automotive collections.
“Not only is Hershey the home of the greatest auto show in the world,” he said, “it’s also home to a lot of cool private collections that are just a few miles from the show field. I’ll bet you half the people in attendance at the fall meet pass those collections multiple times throughout the week and don’t even know they’re there. That’s how close they are to the show field.”
Among the other scheduled destinations and activities are tours of the National Civil War Museum and the Cornwall Iron Furnace, a cruise night, a welcome reception and a closing banquet. The thinking, Gamble said, is to provide participants with opportunities to socialize.
“We’re going to do lunch every day,” he said, “so lunch isn’t going to be on your own. We’re going to be doing catered box lunches in pavilions, parks, more of an opportunity to be together as the entire group and mix-and-mingle rather than, ‘OK, we’re going to be in Hummelstown today. Lunch is on your own.’
“We’re going to have an ice cream social with a presentation by Jimmy Rosen with some books he wrote about local service stations. That’s going to be more of a mix-and-mingle. At the closing banquet, we’ll have a cocktail hour before the banquet to do some mix-and-mingling.”
As the inaugural event, Gamble said, the plan was to keep BBC to a manageable size and that translated to about 30 vehicles. Other tours in different areas will be underway, too, before, during and after BBC.
“But there are no Brass Era tours here in this region this year,” Gamble said, “and that’s what I had people telling me. That’s another reason why we decided to bring one back.”
For additional information, contact Patrick Gamble at 717-383-0360 or
Jeffrey Bliemeister at 717-919-4171.
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