At car meets on Long Island, collectors find camaraderie and community
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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.”
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Clockwise from left, Ronnie and Hank Sarno with her 1962 Chevy Impala Super Sport convertible; Nick Ferraioli with one of his Indy 500 festival cars; collectors showing off their cars at the Smith Haven Mall; and another of the Sarnos' cars, with the license plate 27YRWAIT. Credit: Hank Sarno, Ronnie Sarno and Rick Kopstein
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.
![Ken Usry with his 2009 Pontiac G8.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AN2Q1YmU3MTMtNzNhMy00%3AMTMtNzNhMy00NGVjYjkw%2Fblack-and-red-car-jpg.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Ken Usry with his 2009 Pontiac G8. Credit: James Carbone
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.”
![Left, Hank Sarno's GMC Canopy Express; left, June Bartlett with...](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AN2M4YjZhMzYtNTM5Ni00%3AMzYtNTM5Ni00MmNiZTFh%2Fblack-car-jpg.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Left, Hank Sarno's GMC Canopy Express; left, June Bartlett with her Corvette coupe. Credit: Hank Sarno and Debbie Egan-Chin
‘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.”
![Stan Matusewicz with one of his 1956 Thunderbirds in front...](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AYzAwZTZhMjYtMzEyMi00%3AMjYtMzEyMi00ZGNiZWY1%2Flfcov240818.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Stan Matusewicz with one of his 1956 Thunderbirds in front of his Brentwood home. Credit: Elizabeth Sagarin
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.”
![Howard Kroplick's oldest car is a 1909 Alco Black Beast.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AYjdiYmMyMTQtYTMzYi00%3AMTQtYTMzYi00MDViMzcw%2Fmatik-84-jpg.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
Howard Kroplick's oldest car is a 1909 Alco Black Beast. Credit: Rick Kopstein
‘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.”
LI aficionado's dream collection
When Howard and Roz Kroplick married, they had one parking spot, so he sold his first car, a 1966 Mustang, and regretted it immediately.
“Every time I saw a Mustang, I got sick. I blamed Roz,” Kroplick said jokingly.
At his wife’s urging, the East Hills resident said he bought a 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350 during an auction in 2003: “All of a sudden, a cloud lifted.”
Kroplick, 75, who sold his medical communications business in 2008, owns a rare Tucker ’48; a custom car Walter Chrysler made for his wife; a Tritan A2 Aerocar; a 1962 Holman-Moody Challenger III race car; a 1909 Alco Black Beast race car; and two Mustangs, including a 1963 concept car that is deemed the oldest known Mustang on the road.
His eighth car, purchased recently, is a maroon 1933 Duesenberg Model J, one of three such convertibles ever made. It was the fastest and most expensive American car when it was made.
“People ask me what kind of car I’m going to buy next,” he said. “I say I have no idea, but when I see it, I’ll know it. As soon as I saw this car, I said, ‘If we can work a fair price on it, that’s coming home.’ ”
In 2018, Kroplick said, his Tucker came in second, behind one owned by “Star Wars” movie mogul George Lucas, at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California.
“The Force was with him,” Kroplick joked.
His 1937 Chrysler LeBaron, which is competing this year at Pebble Beach, was custom built for Chrysler’s wife, Della. In 2014, the limousine won in the American Classic category at Pebble Beach.
His oldest car, the Alco Black Beast, was a two-time winner of the Vanderbilt Cup Races and raced in the first Indy 500 in 1911. For the 100th anniversary of the Indy 500 in 2011, he recalled two-time race winner Emerson Fittipaldi asking, “Can I see what it can do?”
The antique zoomed around at 40 mph with Kroplick as the passenger. When it stopped, a man shook his hand. It was renowned racing driver Mario Andretti.
Said Kroplick: “I thought I had died.”
— Ellen Yan
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