Car collection strikes a Cord
Tall and silver-haired, with steady gaze and thoughtful conversation, Tom Armstrong has been a regular at the Forest Grove Concours d'Elegance for more than 30 years. He's been an exhibitor, judge and, last year, served as senior judge at the vaunted classic-car competition held each July just outside Portland.
Armstrong, a retired shipping executive who lives in Issaquah Washington, has serious car cred. He has been a Pebble Beach judge, is the founding Chairman of the Kirkland Concours in 2003 and a life member of the Classic Car Club of America, Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Club and the Society of Vintage Racing Enthusiasts.
He and his wife Susan own a 1931 Model SJ Duesenberg Convertible Sedan, which won the Forest Grove Sweepstakes Award in 1983 and is featured in "The Allure of the Automobile", an exhibit illustrating the stylistic development of automobiles, at the Portland Art Museum this summer.
Read more about Tom Armstrong...
Brent McKinley
Brent McKinley came to the classic car hobby the way many people do. Somebody once said "a classic car is one you rode in the back of between the ages of five and 15" and, in 1950, McKinley's grandfather bought a new Hudson Commodore Six.
As anyone into Hudsons knows, this was the engine to have those days, as it dominated NASCAR for four years in the early 1950s with "Twin-H Power" carburetion.
"My grandfather died in the 1960s, and he left me his car," said McKinley, an investment builder in Arlington, Wash., who grew up in Spokane. "That was the seed car for my collection and I did a 100-point restoration on it in the 1990s." (A "100-point" restoration leaves a car in the same condition that is was when it rolled off the assembly line.)
