British car part junkies come out early to Wheaton swap meet

Ted Schumacher was out early Sunday setting up his stash of wires, tubes, gauges and other accessories in a cold, dingy room in the DuPage County Fairgrounds.

The Ohio man spent the weekend driving down to the Chicago suburbs for the daylong swap meet of British car parts, one of dozens of out-of-town vendors who make the trip annually in Wheaton.

By 7 a.m., Schumacher was ready to roll. Before 8 a.m., the line outside the building was already growing with gear heads looking for a deal.

"A bunch of us sell parts for cars that'd have been out of production for 20 or more years," Schumacher said. "So it was a little bit of that 'the early bird gets the worm' sort of thing going on."

More than 600 shoppers spent the day scouring about 100 dealer tables at the British Car Swap Meet and Auto Jumble.

Jim Evans, who has spent the last 13 years organizing the event, says the swap meet draws people from all over the Midwest.

"These are mostly hobby people," said Evans, a Glen Ellyn man who gets some of his own fix as a member of the Chicago area MG British Car Club. "Some of them don't even make money coming out here, but they come back because of their love for these cars."

Rod Hahnemann hauled a sharp 1959 Austin Healey Sprite road car from his home near Ann Arbor, Mich., in hopes it could get somebody interested in buying it from him.

"There's definitely been some interest in it," Hahnemann said. "We'll see."

Phil Cooke and his wife, Cathy, have been making the 750-mile trip from Pennsylvania to Wheaton for the last several years. While at first the weekend swap meets were moneymakers, the last couple years have been mostly about reconnecting with old friends.

"The economy hasn't helped us," Cooke said. "But people like to touch, and they're always looking for bargains."