On a sunny Monday afternoon, local car collectors Carol and Dennis Schick pulled up the main door to one of their garages and grabbed a seat to talk cars with longtime friends — and fellow car enthusiasts — Ron Gadd and Loretta Marcil.
It’s not usually an uncommon sight, car collectors talking shop with their gleaming autos in the background, except that with COVID-19 making car shows impossible, it has become somewhat of an uncommon sight this summer.
Both Schick and Gadd have been collecting classic cars for a long time, almost as long as they’ve been going to car shows, but the pandemic cancelling most of those events has really changed the way the pair get out to appreciate cars.
Car collectors at heart
For both Schick and Gadd, car appreciation is more than just a hobby. It’s something they’ve been doing for most of their lives, and the pandemic hasn’t quashed their enthusiasm for well-taken-care-of vehicles.
"We've always had cars, over the years," said Schick, who shared that he bought his first car as a teenager.
The Schicks have a handful of classic cars in their possession, including a 1954 Mercury Sun Valley with a green plexiglass roof and a 1960 Thunderbird with almost entirely original parts and a convertible top, which are affectionately known as “trailer queens” because they’re not really meant to drive the highway.
They also have a 2005 SS Monte Carlo from the Tony Stewart Signature Series, created to pay tribute to past NASCAR champions and one of only 1,020 ever made.
Gadd, on the other hand, estimated he has around a dozen cars in his collection, including the 1966 Charger he bought as a teenager, a 1959 Fargo, and a 1929 Essex street rod, among others.
Both Schick and Gadd agreed that for them, and many other car enthusiasts, part of the draw of classic cars is the nostalgia of reliving teenage dreams of owning certain models.
"A lot of people want what they couldn't have when they were sixteen years old, when we had no money and no time [for cars like these],” said Gadd, adding that he would describe his relationship with cars as “infected and addicted.”
The Schicks agreed, sharing that they bought their Thunderbird because it's just like the one Dennis was driving when the couple first met and their Mercury Sun Valley because it’s just like the one Dennis owned at sixteen.
The great thing about car collecting, the pair discussed, is that there’s almost no limits on what you can be interested in — whether it's wild custom builds or original restorations right down to the exact factory bulbs, the car community is welcoming of all interests.
The Schicks were just some of the local car enthusiasts who brought their impressive wheels out to the recent Rolling Car Show on Canada Day, including their 1960 Thunderbird.COVID and the car show scene
The two couples are regulars in the local car scene, attending shows in Saskatchewan as well as across the border in the United States each year. Feelings seem to be mixed about the state of affairs this year, as car shows are being replaced with no-contact cruises or cancelled outright.
"We did [feel like we were missing out] at the beginning, but its actually turning out for the better, in my opinion, because we're actually having really good turnouts for the cruise events we've had,” said Gadd.
Gadd is one of the many car guys who have taken part in the popular birthday parades that swept through Moose Jaw this spring, and he and Marcil have also taken a number of other long-distance cruising trips around the local area.
The new no-contact cruise trips still have the social aspect, said Gadd, with the added bonus of spending more time behind the wheel.
"We're doing things we never did before, because we're not supposed to be however-metres together, so we've been cruising and driving instead, to all kinds of different little towns," said Gadd. “In my opinion, it's more enjoyable to drive these cars than to sit and look at them. I've really enjoyed that we've gone somewhere, travelling 100 miles, 200 miles is an interesting outing for the day."
Schick, on the other hand, is missing the car shows themselves, as he spends a lot of time perusing those events — in some cases, more than he does driving his collection of “trailer queens.”
"It depends on what you like doing. If you just like to go to a show, not drive around, then there's less of that happening," said Dennis.
The Schicks travel to Minnesota each year to attend the Back to the Fifties car show in Minneapolis, one of the biggest shows in North America featuring only cars from the 60s and older — a trip the couple won’t be taking this year with the border closed, much to their disappointment.
Both auto owners have seen the car scene shift over the years, as people become more interested in resto-modified cars and custom rat-rods, but they agreed that the mentality of car enthusiasts has mostly remained the same.
"Different people have different things they would rather do, in the car world," said Schick. "One thing you can say about car shows and people, you never see people getting into arguments [at events].”
“The community is pretty accepting of one end of the spectrum to the other, for the most part," said Gadd. “Very seldom does anybody criticize too much. You might criticize your friend, 'oh, that's not my cup of tea,' but people don't generally insult each other or their cars."
They also agreed that Moose Jaw specifically has an impressive number of classic cars in the city, and that there’s a high calibre community of car enthusiasts and restoration experts within the province.
The Schicks and Gadd and Marcil all participated in the recent Rolling Car Show on Canada Day, which they felt was a positive way to adjust to the regulations that have cancelled so many of the usual car shows in the area.
The idea of cruising rather than gathering might not entirely replace the experience of attending a car show on a hot summer afternoon, but both couples agreed that the car community is doing a pretty good job at keeping spirits up this year.
For now, car guys will just have to be content to sit on lawn chairs in their own garages to talk about cars and wait for the day they can do it at a show instead.
