and a mustang similar to the one Steve McQueen drove in the movie Bullitt. A NASCAR display represents his ownership of Hickory Motor Speedway, which he bought in 1987. “It’s an art collection too,” Benny says. “All of these cars are like pieces of art, they are handcrafted to a degree, so that’s another aspect people consider when they are buying.” Paramount’s sales manager, Kennith Stewart, thinks nostalgia is the strongest reason people love classic cars. “What they say is, ‘when my wife and I got married and had a kid, I had to get rid of my car. We needed a different one. Now that I’m at retirement age, I want a car like I had in my youth. It brings back good memories.’” Kennith remembers that as a teenager in Lancaster, South Carolina, “Me and my friends would cruise the streets, park and talk about cars, drag race them, work on them, and clean them. The cars we have here, when I was growing up, they were cars. They weren’t antiques.” Benny adds, “As we get older, we always try to recapture part of our past, we want to re-live that era, those moments. Couples come in and say, ‘do you remember? We had our first date in that car.’” “These cars have distinction. They have style and class,” Kennith says. “There’s an old saying where I come from. That when you get out of your car, if you don’t take a look back at it, you bought the wrong one.” People can view the collection by appointment, and Benny allows local charities to hold fundraiser events there. He holds a couple of open houses each year which draw hundreds of fans. “We feel blessed to be in this business, and I want to share it with the public.”
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HICKORY LIVING • JULY 2019
Kennith Stewart shows a mustang similar to the one in the movie Bullitt.