At car meets on Long Island, collectors find camaraderie and community

A few weeks ago, Nick Ferraioli arrived at his regular Sunday car meet at the Smith Haven Mall — and almost called the police for help.

About 800 cars had converged on the free meet, about double the crowds Ferraioli said he saw a year ago, when he started hosting the weekly event at the mall. There were Model Ts converted into hot rods, muscle cars and even a red Chevrolet Nova Super Sport — a regular at local meetups — owned by a Vietnam War veteran who purchased it in 1966.

“The popularity of the car culture on Long Island is incredible,” said Ferraioli, 51, of Ronkonkoma, a sixth-grade teacher who collects Indy 500 festival cars. “There’s a lot of history of Long Island racing and car culture that goes back, and that was fueled back in the day by the fact that there was money on Long Island.”

And in recent years, the pandemic has helped rev the engine of the Island’s car culture even higher. In the past five years, the number of car meets on Long Island has skyrocketed from a few events per month to more than 25 per week during the summer, Ferraioli said.

One reason for the surge in popularity was that, at a time when many indoor activities were curtailed, car enthusiasts found they could meet outside with masks on, said John Forlenza, 58, of Lake Grove, president of the Fabulous 50s & 60s Nostalgia Car Club. And clubs organized “rolling car shows,” where members drove past nursing facilities and the homes of sick people to lift their spirits.

“It’s a hobby that just brings back a lot of good times,” said Hank Sarno, 77, of Dix Hills. Sarno is a member of the Centurion Cruisers Car Club, a group of active and retired law enforcement car collectors on the Island. Among his fellow enthusiasts, he said, “There’s a lot of camaraderie. After a while, everybody gets to know everybody.”

Nonstop car talk

Whether they own a couple of cars or a warehouse of wheels, collectors said they are united by their shared love of automotives — which can often mean spending more than the price of the car to keep it in top shape. They frequent meetups to connect with other enthusiasts and the public, or enter their vehicles in competitive shows.

At meets, Sarno said he likes stumping “so-called” experts with his matte-black 1946 GMC Canopy Express, a truck with large, glassless windows.

“Somebody came up to me and said, ‘Was this a hearse and you took the windows out?’  ” he recounted.

The GMC, known as a farmer’s truck, was usually filled with a field’s harvest, which was then passed to customers through the window. Sarno said his truck had sat idle for 25 years in a California field until he bought it for $15,000 on eBay.

“Many people remember these types of trucks coming through their neighborhoods and buying produce from them,” said Sarno, who owns six other collectible vehicles with his wife, Ronnie, 76.

At car meets, enthusiasts often get excited, asking each other about their car modifications, where to get parts and how to find a good mechanic for their favorite models.

For Westbury retiree Ken Usry, 72, car talk can be almost never-ending. If it’s Tuesday, he’s at the Oyster Bay meet; if it’s Wednesday, he can be found in Garden City Park, and so on. Monday is a day off, and Sunday is for church — he’s a minister.

Usry said he has owned more than 15 collectible cars since 1971. As a young man, he fell in love with Pontiacs when he rode along as his friend raced his mother’s car. “We were doing 110 mph and a little white car came up beside us, blew the horn and ran away from us,” he recalled. “I said, ‘I want one of those.’  ”

At meets, he shows off his last-of-the-line black 2009 Pontiac G8, which he modified with a red graphic lion on the side and red-and-black wheels and leather interior.

Usry said there’s an etiquette among enthusiasts of not criticizing each other’s cars: “You get to appreciate everybody else’s cars. Somebody’s car might not be as fine as yours, but what they have might be the world to them.”

‘Ladies & Vettes’

Life for collectors can often be time-consuming and anxiety-inducing.

They hunt for old parts at swap meets and online. They love their cars but rarely take them out in order to avoid catastrophes, like a flying pebble cracking an original windshield. If they go to a show, they don’t want their cars driven on dusty trails that could muck up their vehicles’ undersides.

June Bartlett, of Riverhead, owns a 1987 Corvette coupe. She compares collectible cars to houses, saying one can easily spend $5,000 on repairs.

“There’s always something you’ve got to do to them to keep them going,” said Bartlett, 64, co-author of “Ladies & Vettes: A Guide for the Female Corvette Enthusiast.”

“You want to keep the ’Vette as pristine and as close to the original as possible,” said Bartlett, who sits on the board of the Long Island Corvette Owners Association. “You want to treat it like family.”

For Ronnie Sarno, finding a 1962 Chevy Impala Super Sport convertible turned into a decades-long quest.

When she was 18, she said, she fell in love with the model and bought one from a young man drafted in the Vietnam War. It was stolen a week later.

Her husband, she said, searched around the country on and off for years until he found the perfect replacement. Her 1962 Impala’s car plate: 37YRWAIT.

The Sarnos’ vehicles have won multiple awards but, they said, they found competitions frustrating, with increasingly rigorous standards as they advanced through the levels. For example, they said, if just one bolt has the wrong inscription on its head, points are taken off. Competitions are also costly — the Sarnos said they had to buy a $20,000 covered trailer to transport their contestant to shows around the country, as well as a heavy-duty Suburban to tow the trailer.

“If I didn’t love the cars as much as he did, and if I didn’t enjoy the hobby as much as I do, this marriage wouldn’t last,” said Ronnie Sarno, married 54 years to Hank. “I don’t think too many wives who are not interested in this hobby would go along spending that much money over the years in cars.”

American, Long Island psyche

Many Long Islanders feel they keep history alive by sharing their motors with the public.

After all, they live on an island awash in motor history. The Vanderbilt Motor Parkway, which ran from eastern Queens to Lake Ronkonkoma, opened in 1908 as the nation’s first road created specifically for autos. Mario Andretti, one of the world’s most successful race car drivers, made his sports car racing debut in 1965 at the Bridgehampton Race Circuit, one of several racetracks that once operated on the Island. And the famed Baldwin-Motion supercars hailed from Long Island — new cars ordered at the Baldwin Chevrolet dealership, then custom-upgraded by Motion Performance, a local mechanic shop.

Stan Matusewicz, a Brentwood Thunderbird mechanic, said he feels like he is preserving a part of the American psyche.

He himself has two 1956 Thunderbirds, a model he fell in love with after watching classic movies like “American Graffiti” and “Grease.” They came from a time when enthusiasts focused on style and horsepower reigned, not the number of cupholders — the collectors’ joke about modern cars, he said.

And like any true romance, Matusewicz, 67, said his love has reduced him to tears once, like when his peacock blue-and-white Thunderbird was rear-ended at 8 mph during a pandemic rolling car show, causing $8,000 in damages.

“We keep them in shape so people don’t forget how these classic cars should be,” he said. “People want to protect their memories. It’s like our heritage — American cars.”

‘Fast . . . powerful . . . perfect’

Collectors say they relive their youth through their chrome, fins and roar of motors.

“I’m a 70-year-old child,” said Gary Heicklen, who retired in 2017 after 40 years of selling at or managing Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet and Mitsubishi dealerships.

Heicklen, president of the Pontiac Clubs of Long Island, said that when he drives one of the two cars he restored — a ’69 Pontiac GTO and a ’69 Chevy Chevelle — his son tells him his smile is “so different.”

His cars reflect the days of no responsibilities, when he raced on Route 231 in Deer Park and anywhere else he could, said the retiree from Douglaston, Queens: “They were fast, they were powerful, they were obnoxious — and totally perfect for the times.”

For his part, Ferraioli said his cars evoke memories of his mother, who loved car racing. When he was a kid, he said, everyone in the family would stop whatever they were doing and watch the Indy 500 together.

His white Indy 500 car was the first he purchased and the only one of his Indy 500 cars that his mother rode in before she died. “I will never sell it,” he said.

Hank Sarno, too, chuckled as he recalled his younger days tinkering with cars and cruising all night.

“Everybody is living their childhood,” he said of car collectors. “Their years when they had hair and teeth and didn’t have glasses.”