It wasn’t just the color, chrome and power that blew me away at this year’s “Back To The ‘50s” show in St. Paul. It was the hard work done by a bunch of fellow enthusiasts in that state earlier this year order to keep the car hobby alive and rolling.

About a dozen years ago, I was an MSRA member, and I was on the club’s Legislative Committee. That year, the Minnesota Legislature sought to eliminate all but ethanol-blended gasoline statewide.

While it may have put money in the pockets of corn farmers, farmers’ cooperatives and big agribusiness companies, ethanol-blended gasoline was—and still is—bad for vintage cars and trucks. That’s especially true for those built before 1975, whose rubber fuel system parts weren’t engineered for use with alcohol-blended fuels—and which disintegrate (leading to nasty underhood fires) when ethanol-blended gasoline touches them.

To make a long story short: Thanks to the hard work of us Legislative Committee members getting the word out to just about every car and truck hobbyist in Minnesota, we got an exemption written into the ethanol mandate that allowed gas stations to have one storage tankful of non-ethanol-blended premium (“classic premium”) for older cars and trucks that needed it. MSRA ran a list of stations statewide that carried that fuel on their website (www.msra.com), and in their monthly magazine, the Line Chaser—and still does, to this day.


This year, there was legislation in Minnesota that would have put ALL cars and trucks—including collector cars and trucks (in Corvette-speak, that would include C1 through C5)—subject to California’s new-car emissions regulations. Thanks once again to the MSRA’s Legislative Committee’s hard work, the word went out to contact state lawmakers to oppose this bill. And, on the annual “Run To The Hill” day that MSRA has each spring, when a group of club members cruise to the State Capitol and park in front of it, there was a HUGE turnout of just-out-of-storage cars as well as MSRA members who called on their State Representatives and State Senators. (That’s a lot of calling-on, as Minnesota has the largest number of elected lawmakers of any State in the Union.)

All their work paid off, as that misguided legislation was defeated.

I’m proud to know those folks, and prouder still to know that folks like you take time out to make sure there is an old-car hobby for Vette lovers tomorrow, and the day after that, and for all the days after that!