SOUTH KINGSTOWN The Perryville Country Band set the tone for the down-home atmosphere at the fourth annual Perryville Antique Auto Show on Sunday.

The cars, which ranged from the earliest years of motoring through 1970, the food, the silent auction featuring paintings and local crafts, the historical fashion show and the spectacular sunshine completed the stage for a crowded and festive afternoon.

The event was free, with visitors asked to make a donation, according to Diane Smith who organized the show along with her husband, Bob. The Smiths have been staging annual antique car shows at various locales, including the South County Museum in Narragansett and Smith Castle in North Kingstown, for nearly 20 years.

“We’ll make a few thousand dollars for the cause,” she said, adding that the day’s donations totaled around $8,000 at first count.

She said the money will go toward this year’s two beneficiaries, the South Kingstown Land Trust, which is negotiating to buy a parcel of land, and the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society at the Old Washington County Jail, opposite URI in Kingston.

The show was held on the grounds surrounding the spectacular Land Trust Barn on Matunuck Beach Road. About 130 cars participated, meeting in Perryville in the morning and driving to the site via Carpenter’s Grist Mill, a working water-powered mill dating back to 1703 that the Smiths own.

Smith said she and her husband, who sold the Fred Smith Chrysler dealership on Old Tower Hill Road in Wakefield in 2005, bought the mill in 1986 because of its historic value.

She was inside the barn on Sunday, selling small bags of the mill’s products, including jonnycake meal and yellow corn meal, in addition to displaying a number of items of auto memorabilia.

They included a gas ration book from World War II, a porcelain Rhode Island registration from the early years of the last century with RI 4302 in elegant black typeface on white background and a small, square license plate displaying the number 48, which she said dated from World War II when metal was in short supply.

She also said she was on the lookout for a 1951 Studebaker, having just sold her 1962 Chrysler 300, which was at the show.

The band, made up variously as members came and went, of an accordion, a banjo, a double bass, a couple of guitars and mandolins and a bunch of fiddles, arrived by an antique yellow truck and set up in a circle facing each other in the shade of the wide porch of the barn.

Food and information stalls were set up in front along with shaded tables and the silent auction stall. Dr. David Whitaker served Good Humor ice cream bars from his 1955 Ford Good Humor F-250 ice cream truck, which itself served as a link to the antique cars surrounding the barn.

They included a remarkable 1912 IHC (International Harvester) MW (Model M, Water-cooled) right-hand drive auto wagon. With its high carriage wheels and buggy board, it looked the part of a missing link between the horse buggy and the pickup.

“It’s the original pickup,” said Ed Bernier, who said he had rebuilt the 2 cylinder engine since he acquired it 10 years ago. The body had already been restored, he said, adding that top speed was about 10 mph.

Father and son restorers Chris and Sean Brayton attended with family. Sean had driven his rat rod over from his shop in Richmond. He said he built it with some friends in five days, using “parts around his shop,” including an old police car motor, a compressed air tank for a gas tank and upholstery made from an old army blanket. The only parts he could not rustle up were the brake master, the radiator and the front shocks.

He said he shipped the car to Oklahoma and drove it to Las Vegas with his girlfriend for the Viva Las Vegas 12 Rockabilly Weekend in April.

“It was awesome,” he said of the weekend, noting the round trip was more than 2,000 miles.

Close by was Jack Galligan with his black 1965 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, which he said he was now looking to sell.

“I’m not getting any younger,” he said, adding, “Not that I’m going to give it away.”

A green 1949 Ford coupe, an unrestored black 1923 Ford Model T “Tin Lizzie” in great shape and a red-brown 1962 Corvette caught the eye, as did Miles Furlong’s partially restored 1954 Packard Henney Junior ambulance, “Charlotte.”

Furlong, who is a sophomore in auto restoration at McPherson College in Kansas, said he had finished the engine and transmission and expected to have it painted white with “Ghost Buster” decals by the end of the summer.

He then plans to drive it to McPherson and finish it there. “It’s pretty much done except the interior,” he said.

Tom and Kathy St. Martin of West Greenwich were showing their immaculate blue-gray 1965 Volvo 544 Sport, which Kathy says she drives to work every day.

They said they bought the car in 2006 after it had been in storage in a garage in Coventry for about 20 years and put it through a complete restoration that included the discovery of the name “Britta” traced in glue under the rocker panel molding.

They said the original owner in North Carolina told them that he had discovered the name of what he presumed to be a female (or lovelorn male?) worker at the Volvo factory in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Tom said he taped it off to preserve it.

Kathy said they had contacted Volvo to see if they could trace the name and had not yet heard back.

Adding to the down-home charm of the show was the lack of awards — and thus competition — save one from Rhode Island cartoonist Don Bousquet who made one of his choice. The prize was one of his cartoons in a frame.“It’s more about having a good time, of getting together and enjoying each other’s cars instead of being competitive,” said Diane Smith.

Bousquet’s award went to Herb Arnold’s bright blue 1956 Ford F-100 pickup resto-mod with lowered fenders (4 inch clearance) and Mustang engine.

Arnold said restorer Bob Pierce, of Rehoboth, helped him rebuild the truck — license plate FIFTY 6 — which he acquired when it was already in pieces and in the process of being restored.

Arnold, principal of the architectural firm H.L. Arnold & Associates in Westerly, said he was drawn to 1950s auto design partly because each vehicle had a unique style and partly because of his age.

“I was 16 in 1956, there’s nothing better than that,” he said.

Arnold, who was sitting by his vehicle with his wife, Pat, showed a photo album that traced the truck’s progress from bits and pieces to glowing finish. He even had a large photo of the underside, a gleaming arrangement of blue and chrome.

“It’s as nice underneath as it is on top,” he said.

Bousquet said two other cars were close finalists — Keith Bailey’s 1910 Oakland and Bob Reed’s 1910 Pope Hartford.

“They were all worthy,” he said of the show, adding that the two brass era “survivors” particularly caught his eye. “But in the end I chose the resto-mod I could drive home.”

Along with the Carpenter’s Grist Mill, other groups in the barn, including Audrey Pincins’ Horticultural Therapy Program of Rhode Island, which sponsors community service garden work, and the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, were set up with displays and information.

Pettaquamscutt museum assistant Liz Holstein and long-time volunteer Sanford Neuschatz brought a number of antique toy vehicles, including exact scale models of 19th-century horse-drawn farm equipment — including a sickle bar mower and a tedder (which turns mowed hay in order to dry it) — which they said traveling salesmen would use to demonstrate their wares.

pelsworth@projo.com