Honoring Veterans with Classic Cars: A Bastrop Tradition with Bill Szelag

Welcome to another In Wheel Time podcast, a 30 minute mini version of the In Wheel Time car show that airs live every Saturday morning 8 to 11am central.

It is the In Wheel Time car talk show Coming up.

We're going to talk to Bill Zilag about a big Veterans Day car show that you can plan for it's coming up.

You'll want to go.

Bastrop Town gonna host that thing Beautiful downtown Bastrop it is.

It's a very cute place.

Conrad has this week in Auto History.

We'll get you caught up on the stories making car news this week.

Howdy, along with Mike out of this world, mars down there in his studious position, king Conrad DeLong in the middle position.

He's the cream and the cookie and then we have over here the cookie and outside of the cookie.

It would be we need more.

Jeff Seekin, I'm Don Armstrong.

I'm down here opening the oven door.

Thank you so much for joining us today and welcome back for me.

I was wondering where that was going.

I wound up in Wisconsin a week ago today, but you were heading to Arizona.

Yeah, I just made a wrong turn, that's all.

But I had a great time my cousin's birthday and great big birthday celebration.

All families good up there.

Little I have left and lots of liquor.

Oh, this is Wisconsin, brother.

Yeah, there's a tavern on every corner.

Yeah, so just saying All right, tavern not bar.

Well, there's taverns and there's bars, and I don't know what the difference is.

They all sell liquor.

That's all I know.

Anyway, bill Zilag, he's been with this before and he is with the Bastrop Area Cruisers.

Bill, good morning.

Good morning to you guys.

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Well, what you didn't know is that we had a kind of a round robin here about who you look like, and we've all voted in the fact that you look like Roger Pinsky.

I've been told that several times.

To be honest with you, I have Well, that's a good thing.

Do you sign autograph?

Do you sign?

autograph.

Where's the money?

I wish I had the money.

Yeah, yeah, no kidding, go in the bank and get it.

You can sign autographs.

Just put that hat on and I think away you go.

Okay, well, thank you, appreciate that.

Well, Bill, it's good to have you here.

Bastrop Area Cruisers.

How long I didn't know there was a Bastrop Area Cruisers.

So how long has Bastrop Area Cruisers been around?

We're going to be celebrating our 25th year next year.

We lived in the area of 17 years, my wife and I, so we've been the members of the club.

So 25 years and we've got about 160 members, which is pretty large for a relatively small town, growing like crazy, though.

So you survived the fire, we did.

Yeah, we're, luckily we're on the.

We live on the east side of I'm sorry, on the west side and most of the fire was on the east side.

Yeah Well, how's this?

Yeah, how's the recovery going?

I'll tell you what when you, when you cross that bump in the road out there coming into the Bastrop, and to see all of that forest gone, it just kills me every time.

There's quite a, quite a bit of growth, natural, and many millions of trees were planted also after the fire over the years.

But I would say there's, it's very green now, but they're a lot shorter than they used to be, that's for sure.

What did you do during the fire?

Where were you?

You at home.

We were at home and we actually did have to evacuate our neighborhood also.

Our neighborhood has oak trees and not as much pine trees and it's a little more spread out.

So a fire.

We did have a few fires at the back of our development, but we made it through okay and we were probably out of the house for about eight or 10 hours or so.

Wow, how long ago was that?

Was that seven years ago?

That was 2011,.

I believe, wow, it was 2011.

Wow, that's quite a ways back.

We're not here to harp on that, but you've got a big Veterans Day car show coming up.

Who all is invited?

When is it?

Okay, well, it's November actually happens to be on Veterans Day, this year November 11th.

We also have a little cruise in the day before, on Friday the 10th, so everyone's invited.

Obviously there's no charge for spectators and we encourage many people.

There's been estimates of six or 7,000 people, give or take 1,000 here or there, depending on who's doing the estimate that a 10.

We limit the show to 400 cars because that's all we have room for, because it is downtown Bastrop where there's plenty of restaurants.

So we close the streets.

We work with the city close off the streets.

Our parking goes is a little challenging because we parked 400 cars in less than an hour and a half or so.

We backed the cars in, obviously, and the streets are narrow, somewhat narrow, but not too bad.

It's pre-registered only because of that limit.

The registration closes on Sunday, november 5th, unless we're full up ahead of time.

Obviously we always get people that want to get in on the last minute, the day or two before, but it can't happen.

No registration the day of the show, but that makes it a lot easier and a lot smoother for getting the cars in and registration and all that.

But it's a great event and judged by class, which is unusual for such a large, all-making model car show.

We give awards in 29 different classes.

I think it's a lot, 35 to 40 judges.

It attracts a pretty high quality of vehicle overall.

The 17th years.

You guys are well-seasoned on putting this thing on.

Yes, we try to enhance it every year and many times the enhancements works very smoothly.

Sometimes the enhancements are de-enhancements, but sometimes that's not quite as evident to the people there, but we try to do the thing.

We usually have at least 140 volunteers and obviously many are our own members.

Not all of our members are volunteers, but we get the high school automotive program from Bass Drop High School.

We get their students from their SkillsUSA group involved, we get other high school students that are in the honor of society and many community volunteers, of course all of our businesses, both downtown and outside of the area, are heavily involved as sponsors.

We've got probably 170 or so different sponsors at different levels for the event.

It's all good.

Do you have to have crowd control and actually more along the lines of fuel control at the Buckeys there as you go in?

Because even though they've got a thousand gas pumps, I would imagine with all those cars coming in there it's going to be kind of crowd.

Yes, yeah, one enhancement we did recently about two years ago is we have two entrances for the car show.

We cut down the parking time in half by having a south entrance and a north entrance.

The entrance is off the Con Street and you go down some side streets and a lot of people want to drive Turn into Main Street but that's not allowed off of Chestnut.

Chestnut is the Highway 150 that crosses Main Street in Bass Drop, but it's a beautiful downtown area.

I was mentioning our sponsors.

Many of the restaurants and almost all the businesses are sponsors, and our major sponsor for the event is Craig's Jewelry.

There are presidential sponsor and Maxine's, which is a well-known restaurant downtown, is our Admiral's sponsor and then we have Colonel Level sponsors, which are many of the car dealers in the area, as well as other businesses.

Like many of the banks, almost every bank is a sponsor.

How many people you got signed up already.

I mean 400 slots.

To a lot of people that's a lot.

But you know, I would imagine the popularity of your show is such that you've got people signed up already, people coming back year after year.

Yeah, we started our well.

We got a brand new website too, so if you haven't had a chance to look at that, one of our members really did a great job in working with a website designer, and so registration is only online.

We don't do the paper registrations anymore.

Like I told you, the deadline was on November 5th.

Right now, we're sitting at about 125 registrations already.

Wow.

So if you're going to go, you better sign up Building fast, like you said, don't wait till the last minute because they could fill up even by you know, november 2nd or 3rd.

And typically that part of November, the weather is usually really good.

We don't have to deal with 100 degree temperatures, that's for sure.

Yeah we don't know yet.

We've lucked out pretty good.

We've had a little bit of a dampness a couple of years.

Last year, friday night, which we do have a cruise in, we call it on Friday night, and this year is from 5pm to 9pm.

I know Conrad has been there for the cruise in as well a couple of times, but it's kind of more informal.

We still park all the cars on the street.

It's closed off to any any normal traffic and people can just park on the street in a configuration similar to the car show go and we usually have discounts at many of the restaurants and shops downtown.

There's also a great museum downtown that will be open on a Friday and Saturday and there's a.

You know the show is a lot about veterans.

I'll have to say that it's about the cars and the veterans Because it's also as much a veterans tribute ceremony as it is a car show, because we actually have a march down the street, much like you might see at the airport when you have honor flight, when all the veterans are marching down and people are applauding and you know, and recognizing them for their service, and we go.

We have about a 4 block march down the street from the post office and basket goes to the courthouse and then there's a ceremony at the courthouse and that takes place about 1138, 1130 or so.

We also also have and we just got confirmed that we have 2 vintage Military airplanes that will be flying over.

We do that every year, weather permitting, and that's in the plans this year again.

So it's a great ceremony and 2, 2 local veterans are honored at that, at that ceremony, both the officer and a enlisted person for their community service.

Bill, you have a lot of entrance from Bastrop itself.

Well, we do, but we haven't done it in the last year or two, but about two or three years ago we actually did a you know a zip code search and over 35% were more than 100 miles away.

Yeah, and I would imagine Austin, san Antonio and Houston are the big cities.

Yes, yes.

Because I mean, when I think of Bastrop, I think, well, that's pretty cool, it's like halfway to Austin.

Yeah.

It's always a good place to stop.

It's a destination.

It is.

And it is also a destination.

Well, and you've?

got a good partnership with visit Bastropcom as well and you know promoting Bastrop as a destination city and you being a part of it.

So, Bill, you had mentioned earlier that you've been a member of the Bastrop area cruisers for 17 years and this is the 17th year of the show.

Are you kind of one of the founders of the show?

No, no.

The show.

The show actually started before we, before we became members, for just a couple of years or so, and it originally started off off Highway 21 in a small area and then it moved downtown.

So we've been around for the initial, you know, you might say the third, I think the third or fourth year, because we didn't join immediately when we got here.

What kind of like you mentioned visit Bastrop, because they are a big part of it.

We get great support by the city.

You know to put this thing on because it's not an easy thing.

We've been planning this every year.

We get finished and then we start planning it again in March.

Is I forgot what I was going to eat?

a plan?

Are you going to show a car?

Well, that's one thing you know.

When you host a show like this with your own club, we do not enter our cars.

As a matter of fact, it's a requirement when you join the Bastrop area cruisers.

Your membership form says that you're not going to enter a car to show because we have guests and we don't want all in.

Many of our members are judges, so we don't want things to be interpreted that you know we're judging our own cars.

So we put our cars in a separate lot on display and I do usually bring my 70 years on be a color that we've owned for 49 years on display, if I can.

And then we give the participants anybody who enters their car in a show.

We give them one or two ballots and we ask them to go look at our cars.

So we do have awards, but it's entirely separate than the regular awards that we hand out to all the participants.

What would you say?

The main cars that show up there are the classics, antiques, retro mods, whatever it is that give us an overview of some of the cars that show up there.

Well I'd have to say it's a really it's quite a mix.

I mean, obviously you've got we've got some Corvette classes, so you've got the later model cars, you know the muscle cars, the Camaros, the Mopar muscle and things like that late model.

But we have a lot of unique vehicles.

There's a lot of people because this is a veterans event that do special paint themes, veterans paint themes or patriotic paint paint themes.

Of course pickup trucks are big.

We actually added a class this year.

It's called our class and adventure mobile Jeeps, broncos, blazers and non military.

We have some Jeeps that come in military vehicles and classics and antiques.

I know there's one of our Ozoneville Club members that comes down with this 27 Ozoneville and usually are some 20s and 30s vehicles in there.

Great rods rest on mods.

It's really a mix.

To be honest with you, I can't say that there's anything prevalent.

That's.

That is really good, and they're all driven in.

You know there's not a bunch of trailer.

Queens show up to this.

Right.

Most everybody drives into the show.

Is there a limit?

I mean not a car like no newer than a certain year model, or is it open, open?

We do a lot, we do have a class and I'm glad you brought that up.

We do have a class that's called K, which is newer cars and trucks.

So it's 2018 and newer.

Let's see 2018 and newer Because, like in some of our classes, if it's a class that there's not as many vehicles and you don't want a brand new vehicle competing against a 1990 or 1995 vehicle, so we put all those.

You know it's a mix.

Some people you know say well, why am I not in my Corvette class if I've got a new car?

Well, you're in with the new cars.

So new cars and trucks are judged against each other.

We number the spots.

A lot of people wonder how we judge by class, but the same two judges judge the same cars in their class.

It's not like we go down the line and you mix up all the cars together.

We number the spots, so those judges find the spots where those cars are at.

I was wondering how you did that, because you mentioned you put all 400 of them in in an hour and a half.

You've got to have some sort of design to make that work and keep it to where everybody can find what they need.

Yeah, exactly.

So the cars aren't you know, it would be impossible really to judge to park the cars by class because that would take probably until three in the afternoon to get them all in there.

Now on your website, do you show the kinds of classes of cars like, for instance, and what N would be?

Yeah, well, I guess I don't understand totally your question.

Well, for instance, like I have a 2001 Corvette and I'm sure that that falls under one of your categories of classes and are there?

I mean it wouldn't be just a 2001, it would be I don't know 10 years with the yeah, well, I think I get what you're asking for.

For one thing, there are some classes.

There are some vehicles that could fit in more than one class.

We only allow somebody to register a car in one class because sure we don't want somebody to win two awards with the same vehicle, of course, but I think what you're getting at is how do they know what class do they need to be in?

In most cases, they do know, but we have a great communication process through our email, through our Google email, where they can ask the judge a question hey, do I fit in this class or that class?

Or when we get the registrations in, we'll look at them and we'll say, well, I don't know if this really fits in there.

So, like I see, so one of the the last that's many times confused, is the survivors.

Well, the reason that I ask is because, if I'm a real show kind of guy and this is really important to me, I need to have some sort of idea of what I'm competing against.

Not that I'm going to change anything, but I need to.

Don wants to enter into the class that there's only one car is so he can win.

Yeah, no, that's not.

That's not it at all.

Just have an idea of what my competition is.

Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go up against some guy that has that, has a trailer queen, that he's going to show up, you know, and he's going to beat me right out of the box.

Yeah, but I it sounds like, to me it sounds like you've kind of got it laid out to where, if Don registers his Corvette, he's got to do it ahead of time so he, when he shows up, he's going to know what, what class he's in, what group he's in, he's going to know where to park his car, because you've got a numbered system and all these guys I mean.

To me that sounds like it's pretty cool.

Yeah, better than a lot of places.

Very smart, yeah.

We parked the cars as they come in, so they don't really know where they're going to park.

We number after they after they pulled in.

Okay, so so you do it, so you can track them afterwards, okay.

Okay, and that's an important point too, obviously many times.

And we do have two awards for club participation who brings which club brings the most cars?

And one is a cash award of $100 plus a trophy, and the other was $50 for the second numbered highest number of cars.

But if you want to park together with your friends or fellow club members, you have to drive in together.

show up in the way that we save spots.

So, bill, let, we're running out of time here.

So what, let's?

Let's get everybody an address where they can go to register and look at all of the things that they need to know going to the big show.

BastropareaCruiserscom is the place to go, our new website.

It's a really good job and you can get.

You click right there and register, you pick your and also there's a registration fee is $35, but that includes a show T-shirt.

If you show up for the event, you get your T-shirt included with the with the price of the $35 registration and go online and use any type of credit card and that's the main way to register, the only way to register.

Bill, it's great to talk to you.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Best of luck.

Let's touch bases again when we get closer to November.

Okay, sounds good.

Thanks, appreciate it very much.

Thank you, I love that.

I didn't know all of that so yeah, I was.

I was looking at the calendar.

He said November the 11th is the event you know.

Stan happened to hit the third Saturday of the month.

That would be the following Saturday, the 18th, and then the following Saturday would be Autorama.

We could go on a road trip for three weeks.

Yeah, there you go Just saying Just saying I needed permission.

All right Time now for this week in Auto History here on the In-Wheel Time Car Talk Show.

Conrad has that.

Well, I know Jeff is a fan of the a couple of cars, so we'll have a little bit of that in here.

Thank you, conrad.

In 1954, the Ford Thunderbird began production.

You know the original T-bird, very iconic car.

And then in 1959, the Ford Falcon was introduced as well.

Not quite as iconic, but some pretty cool Falcons.

There was a Sprint with a little Hypo 289 available and you know to a large degree that was the foundation.

We made so much fun of those cars.

Come on.

But that was the foundation of the Mustang.

I understand that, but it sure didn't look like that, and then you could also get that in a Ranchero, which I thought was a cool car.

That would have been OK, but that one there that you're showing that's the four door.

You could easily tub it out.

And then in 1980, willie Nelson hits the charts with On the Road Again.

Ok, so I'm seeing younger faces on money.

And then in 1989, lexus begins car sales here in the US.

Yes, and then there's just a derivative and upscale version of the Toyota.

You know, last week we talked about the Mazda Amade brand, that kind of bombed.

Well, lexus to this day is still quite a desirable car in the industry.

It's the bomb.

Yeah, and then in 1994, the National Corvette Museum opens up.

Have you been done?

I never have you got to go, I know that I do.

They have big, huge Corvette events every year.

You know you can actually get an RPO on your Corvette for museum delivery and they will deliver you the vehicle right from the museum.

It's a desirable RPO to have if you're going to own a Corvette forever.

So, and then in 2002, the last Mercury Cougar was built.

Now that's a 69 eliminated.

That's a good look at the car there.

That's the 302.

There was the Mercury version of the Boss 302 Mustang with the Boss 302 engine.

School buddy of mine had a 390.

That was kind of my favorite year for Cougars.

But you can get some pretty cool engines in Cougars 428, cobra Jets.

There were two Cougars that were built with the Boss 429, but they were built for the Wood Brothers kids.

Yeah, that's it for today.

So the last Cougar was built in 2002 and the last Cougar was not a desirable Cougar, that was that little import looking thing.

And then in 2006, the Bentley Continental GTC production begins.

You know, if you're into Bentley's beautiful car as well, and actually that kind of a featured car in a Gulf Coast Auto Works, you can see them working on the front of one of those as they're putting a, as they're putting its front pretty sector on it.

So that's this week in Auto History.

Back to you.

Don All right.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that An evaluation of 25 vehicle brands consumer privacy policies found that none of them offer adequate protection.

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Don's going.

Where are mine?

Collie.

So Big Brother is watching and using the data, so it's selling it and selling it.

Yeah, I always wondered how, all of a sudden, things will appear on my Facebook feed.

It's like what?

Where did that come from?

Do they list it on the Moroni?

No, no, no, no, they don't list it.

No, it's not listed anywhere.

You would be surprised what access OnStar has to your life.

What's?

I'm saying when you go where you've been, how fast you got there.

What's going on?

They can actually turn the microphones on and listen inside your car if they choose to.

Well, I have a car that doesn't have that.

I have a 2001 model.

I'm sure if I use my phone in the car they know where the car is, but that's all that they know.

You don't even have to use your phone, you just have it in your pocket.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying.

Yes, they have the phone turned on in your car.

They know where the car is.

It's uh, it's kind of scary actually.

It's extremely scary.

Yeah.

Big brothers watching all the time and they're going to figure out a way to tax you for whatever it is you do.

Ford Motor Company said it will spend about $270 million to fix an issue with rear view cameras that has plagued several models, according to a document filed Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Thank you, automotive news for this.

The affected vehicles are the 2020 to 2023 Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator, 2020 to 2022 Lincoln Corsair, 22 to 23 Ford Transit, 18 to 21 Lincoln Navigator and 21 Ford Bronco.

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Ouch, they're big bucks that they're having to cough up.

That's it for this hour of the In-Wheel Time Car Talk Show.

Quick break, now We'll be right back.

We invite you to stay with us.

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Honoring Veterans with Classic Cars: A Bastrop Tradition with Bill Szelag

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Chevrolet Corvette

Chevrolet Camaro

Chevrolet Blazer

Ford Thunderbird

Ford Falcon

Ford Mustang

Ford Ranchero

Mercury Cougar

Ford Explorer

Ford Bronco

Lincoln Navigator

Lincoln Corsair

Ford Transit

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