Hershey Renewed; Pavement now rules.(Antique Automobile Club of America car show, Hershey, Pennsylvania)(Column)

Byline: JOHN F. KATZ

Anyone watching the last few years couldn't help but notice Hershey has been changing, with one major flea-market field paved and another moved to accommodate the construction of the new Giant Sports Center. This year, even the show field moved; that hasn't happened since the late 1950s, when the Eastern Division National Fall Meet of the Antique Automobile Club of America outgrew the stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and spilled out into the parking lot.

Now the stadium itself has been supplanted by the Giant Center (the name refers to the Giant Foods supermarket chain, which sponsored its construction) and the car show has moved into the new arena's fenced-in parking lot. The lot around the old stadium has been redesignated the Red Field flea market. That puts more than half of Hershey's 180 acres on asphalt. Traditionalists who miss the mud can still cross to the north side of Hersheypark Drive and find all they want in the reborn White and Blue Fields.

The mud was pretty mild this year, anyway, after a dry summer and fall followed by rain on the middle two days of the meet itself, which was held Oct. 9-12. Show day-Saturday, dawned gray and cloudy. A few cars stayed away, and while the clouds persisted, the rain never fell. The estimated 200,000 antique-auto enthusiasts who came were rewarded with the uniquely eclectic experience of Hershey: more than 1300 cars, from early one-lungers to the last of the muscle cars; from Model Ts and As to custom-bodied classics, historic race cars and foreign exotics.

One of the most outstanding early ...