SUNRIVER — Rather than a bunch of gearheads spewing stats about speed and horsepower, the Sunriver Antique and Classic Car Show in the Village at Sunriver afforded car lovers the opportunity to talk about the memories they have of eras gone by.

At least, that’s what it felt like Saturday to Susan Worden, 66, of Bend. Worden and her husband, Bill, 63, dressed in 1920s garb (a dress and large, feathered hat for her, a straw hat and knickers for him) to show off their 1929 Ford Model A Roadster, “Mae.” It was their second year participating in the third annual event.

Their Model A was restored 30 years ago, but the couple acquired it about five years ago while they were still living in Colorado. Bill Worden does the mechanical upkeep.

“We love to drive her all over,” Susan Worden said, explaining when she and her husband were in a Model A car club in Colorado, they spent a week driving the car on day trips through the Black Hills.

Saturday, Mae’s top was down, so onlookers could easily peer inside the old car, and see a pair of vintage goggles hanging from the rearview mirror.

Next to Mae was the Wordens’ other car on display, a 1951 Ford pickup, in a shade Worden called candy apple red. The couple drive the truck too, as well as another 1929 Model A, that one a sedan they have at home. Worden said she knows some car buffs have only “show cars” they don’t drive to keep them in pristine condition, but she and her husband don’t believe in that. Although their two cars on display in Sunriver were looking mighty fine, they aren’t just cooped up in a garage.

“This is the truck you run to the hardware store with,” Susan Worden said of the pickup, which she calls “Patches.” There are a few paint spots she wants to see smoothed out, although they were pretty inconspicuous in the sunshine Saturday.

In the back up the pickup was a case of Coke bottles.

“I want a truck like that,” Blake Anderson, 7, of Seattle, said.

“Then why don’t you get in there and see how it fits,” Bill Worden said, opening up Patches’ door. Blake and his brother, Luke, 5, climbed inside. Their dad, Grant Anderson, snapped a picture of the boys while their mom, Kathleen, holding Clara, 2, chatted with Susan Worden about the Model A.

Earlier the family had checked out a Chevy from a whole other era: a ’61 Impala in a light blue. The kids looked in at the bench seats, so different from today, with no seat belts in sight.

“They pretty much ride like boats,” one man said, walking by, looking at the Impala.

Back near the Wordens’ truck and Model A was another 1929 Ford Model A, in a lot different condition. Unlike almost every other car at the show, with glimmering paint jobs (save Deschutes County’s 1907 Holsman motor buggy on display), this Model A Tudor sedan was left in its natural state. The 87-year-old car, rusted but running, attracted a lot of onlookers.

“I’m pretty sure it was used on a farm, and I think I’m the third owner,” Wayne Lowry said to a man checking out the old Ford.

Lowry, who is Deschutes County’s finance director, acquired the car from a friend five or six years ago, he said, and has since repaired it as a hobby.

“I kind of appreciate it as it is,” Lowry said, adding others seem to, too. It’s not complaints he gets at car shows, or questions about why he hasn’t restored the car’s body, but admiration from people who enjoy seeing the car for what it is, in its old age, the windshield the only window left on it. He said the car starts better than any other he’s had; he’s never had to use the crank.

In another corner of the village, Jerry and Susan Poole, of Bend, sat back in the shade as people stopped by to admire their 1963 aqua Chevy Corvair Spyder.

“It didn’t last very long,” Jerry Poole, 78, said of the Corvair model. Since the engine is in the back and the trunk is in the front, some people didn’t know how to handle the car’s weight distribution, Susan, 68, explained. They would over- steer and roll their Corvairs. Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed,” criticized Corvairs, among other cars, for their dangers, Jerry Poole added.

“His book killed them,” he said. The two explained that the backstory adds to the interest of the car.

As Lee Haroun, 69, of Bend, walked up, she shared her own Corvair memory. When she got her first teaching job in 1970, she had to drive from south Portland to Roosevelt High School in north Portland. Her parents gave her their Corvair for her commute.

“It was white,” she said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0325,

kfisicaro@bendbulletin.com