Redmond members from the Pacific Northwest Region of the Classic Car Club of America will display rare automobiles during the ninth annual Symphony of Gardens Tour on Sunday, June 28. The event, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., benefits the Bellevue Philharmonic and features tours of five unique gardens in Bellevue, Kirkland and Yarrow Point, which have never been open to the public. There will also be live music and refreshments at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. For ticket information, call 1-800-838-3006.

Redmond’s Al McEwan will bring a 1932 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental to stops on the Symphony of Gardens tour. He’ll take the same car on the “Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance,” a 1,500-mile drive from Kirkland to Pebble Beach, Calif. this summer.

Also from Redmond, Brian Rohrback will bring a 1939 Bentley and John Campbell will show a 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II at the Symphony of Gardens event.

The idea to include classic cars in the Symphony of Gardens tour came from McEwan’s former neighbor Beth McCaslin, who is promoting the tour. She saw it as a way to draw more men to the event. In turn, said McEwan, there had to be a fun angle for the car owners.

“If we get 10 to 20 cars, we can have one or two cars at each home (on the garden tour), some in the morning, some in the afternoon, so they can tour the gardens, too,” McEwan explained. “Then there will be a function mid-day at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, to bring the cars there and enjoy refreshments.”

A seasoned classic car exhibitor and judge, McEwan caught the bug as a teen and bought a Bentley in London in 1964. He owned a 1934 Rolls-Royce for 46 years and had other classic cars with a now-deceased partner.

“Jay Leno bought one of my cars in the ’90s,” he noted. And one of his classic cars was featured in a TV commercial, depicting an idle chauffeur whose employer decided he’d rather drive himself around in his new Lincoln.

In the 1970s, McEwan got a call from a movie studio about a non-running Hispano-Suiza that he owned. They wanted to use it in the film version of “The Great Gatsby” which starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. But they wanted to paint it a different color and put in a Ford engine. McEwan refused to alter the car that way.

He described himself as a stickler for details, who can always spot bloopers — for example, when a car built in 1946 appears in a movie that’s supposed to be set in ’41 or ’42.

He further noted that in the Great Depression, when few people could afford luxury cars, people chose dark colors so as not to “flash their wealth.” So if you see a car from the ’30s with a pink paint job, it’s not authentic.

The Classic Car Club of America was formed in the early 1950s and recognizes certain high-end cars, custom-built between 1925-1948.

“As technology moved on, building these cars was impractical,” McEwan explained. “These were wood-framed bodies stretched over aluminum framing. They could do ‘onesies and twosies.’ Handmade customry couldn’t compete with all-steel bodies.”

But from a collector’s viewpoint, he added, “custom-body cars show the handwork of the individual,” which is why they are so desirable.

And “originality is key to value, including the finishes, all mechanical aspects and the interior,” he reiterated.