This week I was in Washington DC for a meeting organized by the HVA (Historic Vehicle Association of America) [Link] with the Department of the Interior, National Parks Service.

The purpose – to plan a new registry of historic vehicles.

Why? To help promote awareness of automotive heritage in the United States.

Go to the Library of Congress website, the section “American Memory” – http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Run a search for “automobiles”.

The result – hardly anything, nothing systematic, no organized collections! When the automobile is one of the defining features of American history and experience!

The challenge – to put this right.

I presented a talk about heritage, the concept and the recent history of the global heritage industry.

Here are the slides:

Shanks-HVA-Auto-Heritage-Summit

The recognition of automotive heritage will be one of the most significant shifts ever in the global heritage industry.

Here’s one of the HVA videos – “This car matters”