The first old car event produced by our founder Dean Earhart, was a car show in the summer of 1979 at the Robinson Plaza Shopping in Robinson Texas. This show was held to draw lots of people to the new center he and partner Acy Cooper had built the year before.

Most of the cars were from Dean's collection of Corvettes and his young children Marcy, Jancy & Jason ran the free cold drink stand. In March of 1980 the first Auto Expo, a car show and swap meet, was held at the Heart-O-Texas Fairgrounds in Waco with thousands in attendance.

The Auto Expo's were held thru out the 80's in Waco, Austin, Belton & Bryan-College station. In the summer of 1984 Dean started Publishing Auto Expo Magazine, a magazine that covered the collector car events in the Southwest. It was sold in mid 1990 to Collector Car Magazine in California.  Several Classic Car Auctions were also produced in Waco & Las Vegas in the late 80's by Earhart Productions. While recovering from surgery and a divorce at his Mothers house in 1991, Dean sold his last car, a 1973  Ford Torino G-T for $1,250. Got on the phone and made deal with the Texas Rangers Baseball Team to rent their parking lot on I-30 for a swap meet the 2nd weekend of November. Dean sent them a $1000. deposit to hold the lot. Over 750 spaces were sold at this first event.

This event became the nationally known "Dallas Swap Meet" and grew to 3000 spaces filled 100s of collector cars 1000s of parts in the late 90's. In 2002 the Ranger owners developed the swap meet area into an office complex causing us to move. In 2004 this event was moved to LaGrave Field in Ft. Worth & the name changed to D/FW Swap Meet were it continues to prosper and draw huge crowds of old car buffs.