TOP BRASS; AACA exhibit celebrates a bygone era of innovation and experiment.(Antique Automotive Club of America)

Byline: BOB TOMAINE

Aesthetics alone is reason enough to exhibit brass cars, but the AACA Museum assembled its show to focus on what their era represents.

"This is how the car got its start,'' said curator Jeff Bliemeister. "Without seeing these, you don't know the whole story.''

The Hershey, Pennsylvania, museum's "Top Brass'' exhibit runs through May 31 and represents the Brass Era with cars from an 1895 Chicago Benton Harbor through a 1914 GN Cyclecar. Of about 25 vehicles on display, only a few carry names in use today, a fact that reflects the industry's consolidation and growing conventionality in the decades that followed. A quick walk through the exhibit reveals that Brass Era manufacturers had various ideas about everything from body style to size to propulsion.

The four-cylinder, 10-hp 1904 Franklin runabout with a broad, gaping intake for its air-cooled engine resembles few other cars and looks nothing like the later Franklins with their Renault-type hoods. The Argo-built in 1912, the company's inaugural year-is interesting for having appeared in the electric-car field too late for real success. The 1912 Thomas 6-40 seven-passenger touring is from a well-known manufacturer, but it was not just the name that caught its owner's attention.

"It just inspired me when I first looked at it,'' said John F. Jones. He bought and restored it to have a car well suited for extremely long-distance driving, such as transcontinental tours. It hasn't made any of those trips yet, because it's still fresh and he has other cars, but the Thomas had convinced him even before its restoration was complete.

"When I first saw the car outside,'' Jones recalled, "and I walked around it on one of those nights where you spend 90 percent of the time looking at it and 10 percent working on it, that was when I really realized that I did a good thing.''