For 25 years, Somerset has played host to one of the biggest car shows in North America.

Summer Nights Cruise is a monthly gathering for classic car enthusiasts that runs from April to October every year.

The event has brought in millions of dollars to the local economy and become an important part of local culture for summer nights.

Organizers.

It's all about bringing people together.

In our opinion, Summer Nights Cruise is more of just a community event, a gathering of people.

Cars is just a backdrop.

That's just a mechanism to get people downtown.

They run into old friends and families.

They check out the shops downtown, the neat little businesses we have downtown.

Discover what Somerset's about.

When we started this thing 25 years ago, we had our thoughts and dreams of what we wanted to do.

By the end of the first year was to have 500 cars and 5000 spectators, which we did.

And at that point we started catching the attention of the national television shows, all the different automotive shows.

They started reaching out to us and said, hey, we want to come do a segment on you guys.

The magazine started reaching out and running articles on us, and at that point, things just kind of caught fire.

Our largest show to date is 2086 cars.

We will regularly have 8 to 10,000 people downtown.

We've had attendees from 49 states and five foreign countries with cars.

We've had spectators from all over the world.

It brings a lot of attention to the county.

You know, this this event with summer now it's along with tourism, with the like, brings a lot of people in and they see the area and they want to come back.

Some nice cruisers, A501 C3 nonprofit.

So we're not doing it for the money.

We're here to help our community.

Our business plan is for you to come to town, and you spend your money with the hotels, restaurants or gas stations and different businesses.

And, that business plan has worked, and we have become, if we're not the largest, we're one of the largest monthly organized classic car events in the United States.

We have probably somewhere between a 10 to $12 million a year economic impact.

And you figure that over 25 years, that's over a quarter of $1 billion.

You don't have to have a lot of money to enjoy this hobby.

You just get out and do something and be able to be productive and be creative with your own hands.

Watch your mouth and go, wow, this is a six day Road runner.

It was pretty rough about a month ago.

Two and I done all hand painted.

This is all road paint and these are all hand painted by me, so I've heard about it my whole life.

It is fun.

Family fun.

Bring your family down, find your shady spot, say it easy and enjoy.

Pace the love of an automobile.

On to the next generation.

You can count it.

Rain or shine.

We'll.

We'll have the car show.

And people know that.

And and they they put out the word.

A lot of places I go, they want to mention I'm from Somerset and they'll say, oh, that's where the car shows at.

It's pretty neat when somebody will call you from out of state and they send you a picture of somebody wearing a summernats T shirt, or they're at a car show in California and they send you a picture of some decals on the car out there.

So, you know, that you've reached, you know, a lot of people when that happens.

So we've been truly blessed.

The neat thing about the car culture is it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat, you know, it doesn't matter.

You get down here.

And that transcends all that.

Now, did you catch that sort of the general lead jumping of fountain and downtown Somerset in the story?

Well, that car story was put together as a special way to celebrate summer nights, cruises 25th anniversary.

And good job on that.