VILLAGE OF MINOA – This month saw the return of the annual gathering of orphan vehicles to Lewis Park in Minoa.
For the ninth year, the charitable event from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Aug. 19 highlighted marques produced by discontinued manufacturers to give those lesser recognized automobiles their day in the sun.
Examples of orphan cars include Studebakers, Hudsons and vehicles built by Saturn, a now-defunct subsidiary of the parent company General Motors.
“You might think these cars disappeared, but they haven’t,” said Victor Oliver, who organizes the event with his wife, Connie. “We bring them all together and it’s their day to shine. You get to see very unique vehicles that you would never see at a regular show.”
The cruise-in brought out a convention of milk trucks as the day’s special-interest showcase as well as classic cars representing the Oneida Lake Region of the Antique Automobile Club of America, owners of vehicles that qualify as orphans, and any other motor enthusiasts who wished to hang out in Lewis Park through the late morning and afternoon.
About 250 cars showed up for the Aug. 19 event, which raised more than $2,000 all in all. The funds raised will go toward Tunnels to Towers Foundation, which provides homes for injured military veterans and first responders, Gold Star families and those of fallen first responders, and homeless service members; the local Project Healing Waters program, which focuses on physically and emotionally rehabilitating disabled active military service personnel through fly fishing; and Minoa’s volunteer fire department.
Victor Oliver said the event went well despite the inability to park cars in certain spots due to rain-soaked grass.
“It went really well considering we had that inclement weather first thing in the morning and when we were setting things up, but the sun came out and the people showed up and there was a lot of enthusiasm,” he said.
Oliver thanked the car owners who participated, the day’s food vendors PB&J’s Lunch Box and Bob Barkers Famous Hotdogs and Coneys, volunteers like the members of the Mustang club who ran the public address system, Minoa Mayor Bill Brazill for his support of the event, and all of the attendees going back to the days when the orphan vehicle gathering was held on the Olivers’ sizable front lawn in East Syracuse.
The car named “Best in Show” was a black 1947 Playboy prototype convertible owned by Buffalo resident David Kaplan.
On the basketball courts of the South Main Street park that day, there were two rows of Divco-brand delivery trucks alongside a 1919 Walker LA-10 and a 1933 Thorne B2, two early electric vehicles used for similar stop-and-go purposes.
“The battery technology wasn’t what it is today, so some of those companies went by the wayside and gas-powered vehicles took precedent,” said Jack Mulherin, who was in town with a national club devoted to multi-stop vehicles and most especially Divco, an acronym standing for the Detroit Industrial Vehicles Company that operated from 1926 to 1986.
Though it tried to diversify as a brand and expand into parcel delivery and small bus production before it went out of business, Divco specialized in milk trucks with a safe cruising speed of around 25 to 30 mph.
According to Mulherin, the neighborhood trucks would bring not only fresh quarts of white and chocolate milk door to door but also bread, chips, orange juice, butter and other dairy products on a weekly or biweekly basis. At its post-World War II peak, the company produced roughly 6,500 trucks within a year, but as the end drew near, that number dwindled to about 100.
Mulherin, a resident of Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, showed off his 1967 squared-up Divco model with a typical snub nose front end for the orphan vehicle show. His father, a lifelong employee of a dairy, was the one who chose the exterior paint colors of Cadillac cream and mack red when the truck was restored in the 1990s.