Pomona Swap Meet & Classic Car Show
The largest antique automotive, Corvette, Porsche, Street Rod, and VW swap meet and car show on the West Coast.
In 1975, antique-automobile enthusiast George W. Cross III was looking for an easier way to find parts for his unique restoration projects and came up with the idea of creating an automobile-specific swap meet where he and other car enthusiast could come together to buy and sell whatever it is they needed from one another. Today, George’s vision has grown to become what many are calling the “West Coast’s Largest Antique Auto, Corvette, Porsche, Street Rod, and Volkswagen Swap Meet and Classic Car Show.” Held seven times a year, each event attracts tens of thousands of people from all over the world to check out the more than 15 miles of vendors selling hard to find car parts, accessories, and vehicles.
Whether you’re trying to sell your vehicle or just want to show it off, the car corral section of the Pomona Swap Meet is one of the best places to have it on display. It’s divided up into six specialized sections: pre-1985 classics, any year Corvette, any year Porsche, pre-1959 street rods, pre-1985 Volkswagen, and pre-1985 imports.
Walking through the Euro sections of the car corral we were blown away by some of the historic we were blown away by some of the things we saw. Unless we had a time machine we probably never would have been able to get as close as we did to some of these historic machines. Read on to check out some of the more noteworthy vehicles we saw at the swap meet.
One of only about 4,500 models built, this 280 SE 3.5 represents the final iteration of Mercedes’s W111 chassis. When they were first introduced in 1969, the 280 SE 3.5 was fitted with Mercedes’s new M116 3499cc V-8 engines, which reportedly made about 200hp and gave the 280 SE 3.5 a top speed of 210km/h (130mph) and a 0-100km/h time of 9.5 seconds (11.5 for those with an automatic transmission).
A very rare 1939 Peugeot P53CL WW2 French military bike – unfortunately we couldn’t find out much about this bike, even from the owner himself; however, given the fact that it is a military bike, the owner speculates it could have been used by the French Foreign Legion.
A 1936 Express bike, Express Werke AG was founded in 1884 as a bicycle and motorcycle manufacture. In the 1930s Express started making mopeds and lightweight such as this one using 75cc and 98cc Sachs engines. These motorcycles proved to be very popular in pre-war Germany with massive quantities of them sold to both civilian and commercial users. In 1958 Express Werke AG would merge with fellow Germany motorcycle manufacturers, DKW and Victoria to form Zweirad Union. Zweirad Union would later go on to terminate Express production a year later.
A 1949 MG TC, when these were first introduced they were powered by a 1250cc engine that supposedly got 28mpg and had a 0-60 time of 22.7 seconds which at the time was quite impressive.