The Great Los Angeles Auto Show Fire of 1929 Sunday brought about the end of another chapter in the history of the Los Angeles Auto Show, an event that, aside from 1940 to 1951, has showed off new cars since 1907. This year in the hallway between the two cavernous rooms glinting with new automobiles, there was a long display about the history of the show, bringing to light a bit of trivia. Much of the 1929 show burned to the ground. According to information on the display panels, which said its information and photographs were derived from materials provided by the the California Motor Car Dealers Association, The Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Public Library's Security Pacific National Bank Collection and the University of Southern California's Regional History Collection, more than 300 cars had been assembled beneath four large tents erected at the corner of Hill Street and Washington Boulevard. On the afternoon of March 5, as a few thousand people looked at the last new cars before the onset of the Great Depression, a small fire sparked near an aviation display soon grew beyond the control of the fire department. Less than an hour later, mutilated steel, melted rubber and charred wood and canvas littered the ground where the tents once stood. Although The Los Angeles Times reported that the fire had its origins from a smoldering cigarette butt, later sources, including the show's historical display, say that it began with an electrical short. Either way, more than $1.2 million worth of damage was done to cars, which were insured by a blanket policy. No one was killed in the blaze. About 2,500 spectators escaped uninjured, although The Times reported that an electrician and two firefighters were treated for severe burns. According to the history that organizers from this year's event provided, the fire proved a windfall for at least one business: the garage next door to the event, A-1 Auto Works ("You wreck "em, we fix "em). Not sure what to do with the burned-out hulks auto show officials had the fence between the show and A-1"s yard torn down so that the casualties could more easily be dragged there for scrapping. According to the display, one of the vehicles destroyed was a 1907 Model 30 Packard roadster of the same vintage as the first Los Angeles auto show. The car had more than500,000 miles on it and had been owned by several different people, but had also competed in a number of races over the previous 22 years. In a brilliant bit of last-minute finagling, the show's organizers talked the proprietors of the Shrine Auditorium to agree to host the automotive survivors there. The show went on and even caught the attention of President-elect Herbert Hoover, who came to speak. Only a few months after the fire, the stock market crashed, which brought about the Great Depression and a related decline in automobile sales. But still the show went on, only stopping when World War II brought America's auto industry to a halt. When the auto show reopened in 1952, it was a new age of bigger, flashier cars and auto shows featuring models leaning on the new models (the automotive ones). Accordingly, the remainder of this year's hallway display wasn't filled with images of smoldering cars, but rather the post-war beauties - both human and automotive - that helped bring the show back after its long absence.