Vintage Parts in Texas – A Gallery from the Historic Pate Swap Meet
To anyone that got to attend the last couple Goodguys Spring Lone Star Nationals at the Texas Motor Speedway, it was a two for one kind of weekend as the historic Pate Swap Meet also took place just outside the speedway.
The Pate is not your run of the mill swap meet – it is more of an institution that has been taking place since 1972! The meet was formed when several car clubs in Texas decided they didn’t need to drive all the way to Hershey, Pennsylvania, when they could host their own swap meet in Texas. That said, a few vintage car enthusiasts including Dr. Aggie Pate, Russ Gruenwald, Barney Calvert and others from the Gulf Coast Region AACA car club in Houston formed the Pate Swap Meet.
Obviously, the name is a tribute to Dr. Pate, the founder of the now closed Pate Museum of Transportation, where this annual rite of spring first took place. The inaugural swap meet was held in a rough semi-circle under trees across from the museum with about 350 vendors.
Today, the Pate Swap Meet Association consists of the 14 largest vintage car clubs in Texas, with the event serving the car restoration hobby and the collection of antique, vintage, and notable automobiles and hot rods. The Meet is the largest event of its type in the Southwest, second largest in the United States, and has been in running at Texas Motor Speedway since 1998.
For anyone showing their car at the Goodguys show, they were able to stroll across the track and through the grandstands to take spend some time walking the Pate! The Swap Meet now hosts over 1,200 vendors with 9,700 spaces so you better bring your comfy shoes and probably should come a day early so you can take in the entire event. We stole away for a little while to check out just a part of the sprawling swap meet – take a look!
