The “A” Story

The “A” Story:

A Brief History of Auto Round-Up Magazine

When Ron Smith was a teenager growing up in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, the state started a program designed to beautify the mountain state and make it more attractive to tourists. Part of this program was to rid the scenic landscapes of unsightly “old vehicles” parked along the roadways. Any automobile that was not running or did not have license on it that was parked in sight of the highway was considered an eyesore.

The owners of these vehicles had to either move them or get rid of them. These automobiles were paint marked with a big white “A” to indicate that they were abandoned and therefore needed to be towed away and out of sight.

Ron Smith saw hundreds of cars from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and older being taken away to be crushed only because the owners were unable to move them out of sight or sell them to someone who wanted to fix them up. He thought that if there was only some way for people to find out what the different cars were and where they were at, he was sure that many could be sold to someone wanting to take the time to restore them.

Ron wanted to save as many of these old cars as he could, so he started carrying a camera with him everywhere he went, and when he would see an old car along the road, he would stop and take a picture of it and get the owners telephone number. He would then make copies of the pictures he had taken along with phone numbers and put these up in service stations and grocery stores.

Before long, Ron was finding homes for many of the cars he had “rounded up”. After a while, others started helping him out by mailing pictures to him, and Ron was putting more and more pages of cars and phone numbers on bulletin boards throughout the areas he traveled.

This eventually grew into the Auto Round-Up Magazine, and many of the people mailing in pictures talked about being a member of the Auto Round-Up Club.

Well, after more than 37 years, the Auto Round-Up Magazine and the Auto Round-Up Club is still going strong! Club members, now known as subscribers, from all over the world! Today, the printed magazine is distributed throughout all 50 states in the U.S., all seven provinces of Canada, and over 30 countries worldwide!  Overall, Auto Round-Up Publications has published over 1,300 magazines, have over 250,000 active readers, sold over 500,000 cars, and printed over 30,000,000 copies!

The Auto Round-Up Magazine and our Auto Round-Up Club Members are now “saving” thousands of “old cars” monthly, all because of a young country boy’s dream to save a few!