Driven to Dream: Stockton’s Car Culture
Whether cruising the Miracle Mile or Charter Way, spending Saturday nights at the Stockton 99 Speedway or watching the Winter Nationals at Kingdon Drag Strip, proudly displaying that vintage vehicle at a car show, or busting one’s knuckles working on a street-legal hot rod, Stockton car enthusiasts embrace all aspects of America’s love affair with the automobile.
Driven to Dream: Stockton’s Car Culture, a temporary exhibition that opens October 3, 2013, will showcase more than nine vintage vehicles displayed throughout the museum’s galleries.
The cars on display include:
- 1912 Pope-Hartford touring car
- 1930 Ford Roadster
- 1931 Ford Model A-400 convertible sedan
- 1936 Galliano Marmon 4 midget racer
- 1948 Ford Thames panel van
- 1953 MG TD Mark II
- 1959 Nash Metropolitan
- 1960 Chevrolet Impala lowrider
- 2007 Crusader Formula First racer
Their owners all share an automotive passion fueled by a mixture of skills, emotions and memories. And their cars are—literally and figuratively—vehicles of socialization providing a mobile, highly visible means of interacting with others, through parades, races, road rallies and other events.
“Cars today are not eloquent as they were in the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and even ’60s,” says Delta College Instructor Larry Mariani, who led the efforts to restore the 1959 Nash Metropolitan. “That is the fueling factor to the collector phenomenon that is very evident around the world and in this area. Collector cars are being regarded as works of art and assuming prices that reflect the attitude of the car itself and the person buying it.”
The exhibition also includes a selection of pen and ink illustrations by Stockton Record illustrator and political cartoonist Ralph Yardley (1873-1961). These drawings capture the early days of Stockton’s transition from the horse and buggy era to the automotive age, a change that Yardley witnessed first-hand.
Driven to Dream is the third exhibition in the museum’s San Joaquin Roots Series, and is made possible by the Tuleburg Endowment, a permanently restricted fund established to underwrite exhibitions that highlight the unique history of our region, originally nicknamed “Tuleburg”. This exhibition will remain on display through January 5, 2014.