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Aiken Horsepower Spring Fling goes 'Back to the Future'

May 21—Even without a speaker blasting Huey Lewis and the News or a Michael J. Fox stand-in, there's no mistaking what car Greg Hall brought to the 19th annual Aiken Horsepower Spring Fling car show: a 1982 DMC DeLorean.

"It has some notoriety from the ['Back to the Future'] movies," Hall said Saturday afternoon. "Most people recognize it immediately. Some people are very tickled by the car."

In the "Back to the Future" movies, Michael J. Fox's character uses a modified DeLorean to time travel. In the first movie, he accidentally goes back to 1955 from 1985. In the second, he and the scientist who determined how to make time travel possible travel from 1985 to 2015 and then back to 1955. And in the third, Fox's character travel from 1955 to 1885 and then back to 1985.

Hall said one woman who came to the Spring Fling when it opened at 9 a.m. Saturday in the parking lot of Millbrook Baptist Church had her week made when she was able to get into the car and have her picture taken.

"She was just so excited," Hall said. "There's just something about it that's attractive."

Hall said he brought the DeLorean from a classic car retailer in 1994 and brings it out to the cruise-ins the club has on the first Saturday of the month two or three times per year. He added he usually brings it out for the Spring Fling.

Club President Patrick Lee said the Spring Fling raises funds for the Cumbee Center To Assist Abused Persons through the car show and kid's games.

"A lot of the proceeds go to the Cumbee Center, not to the club itself," Lee said. "It's great [to support the Cumbee Center]. We have a great relationship with them. It's good to give back in time and money."

He added the club had held the event at the fairgrounds north of Aiken for the last couple of years but moved back to town at the Millbrook Baptist Church on Saturday.

Lee said many of the cars at the show were the same cars that are at the club's first Saturday of the month car show at Home Depot. However, he added that some of the cars at the show came from Columbia and Augusta.

Dick Salerno was a non-regular from North Augusta. He brought his 1957 Chevrolet 210 to the show.

The 210s were made from 1953 to 1957 and are similar to the Bel Airs from the same time period. In 1957, the model was replaced by the Biscayne as General Motors sought to rename its cars after coastal cities like the Bel Air, the Biscayne (Biscayne Bay is in Florida), and, later, the Malibu.

Salerno said he came to the show because he liked to have a reason to drive the car. He joked that his wife thought he spent everyday in the garage polishing the car but added that he does like to play with the car as much as possible.