For 25 years, the Society of Vintage Racing Enthusiasts (SOVREN) has hosted the annual Pacific Northwest Historics Races.

Every year the charitable event attracts hundreds of cars and thousands of enthusiasts and spectators to Pacific Raceways to raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital. To date, the event has raised more than $9 million for the hospital.

The annual event is a smorgasbord of automobile fun for spectators, with some of the region’s finest Porsches, BMWs, Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, MGs and more exotic road iron vying for the checkered flag on Pacific Raceway’s 2.25-mile road course.

In the paddock and pit areas, which are open to the public, fans can shop for auto parts and memorabilia and get close up to racing cars that most people only dream of seeing in real life, such as the Porsche 917 that Steve McQueen drove in the 1971 film, “Le Mans”.

For Auburn’s Tana Bryan, known as “The Datsun Lady,” this year’s event marks the 18th time she has volunteered.

In that time, Bryan said, she’s done everything from flagging on the track to guiding people around the massive three-day event.

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything,” she said. “I’ve always been into old cars, and it helps Children’s Hospital. It’s also a lot of fun. I bring one of my own cars to the car show every year. Every year I let somebody else drive my own car. This year I did the parade lap in somebody else’s car following my car.”

Bryan, who runs a Datsun parts supply business, said she first caught the car bug in 1976.

“I got my first (Datsun) for free in 1976, and I still have it,” Bryan said. “It’s a 1968 Datsun Fairlady, and it has about 600,000 miles on it. I drove that as my daily driver for many years, and I started buying parts cars for it. People wanted parts so I started selling parts, and I’ve sold them all over the world since then. So I’ve been running that for about 25 years. and I’m the president of the NWDE (Northwest Datsun Enthusiasts) club.”

In addition to getting her classic car fix and showing off her Datsuns, Bryan said, she has a personal reason for coming every year.

“My daughter was a patient at Seattle Children’s,” she explained. “She has a very rare disease, scleroderma, an auto immune disease.”

The event is still new to Erica Lange, SOVREN’s secretary.

“I love the raising money for Seattle’s Children Hospital part,” Lange said, clearing spectators out of the way of McQueen’s Porsche as it took to the track. “I’m not as up on all the racing stuff.”

Still, she said, she enjoys the event and the opportunity to lure in the next generation of car enthusiasts.

“It’s great for the families to get out and just look around,” she said. “We want the public to learn about racing. We need to build interest because we want people to learn about these cars and vintage racing and get involved.”

Among the several classic cars on display at the track was Jack and Bobbie Berg’s 1956 MGA convertible roadster.

“It’s basically all original,” said Berg, an Auburn resident. “It’s been painted, but it’s never been restored.”

As he cloth buffed the car to a higher level of shine, Berg shared how he and his wife became the second owner of the British-made gem, which has just 55,778 original miles.

“The original owner is a friend of mine, we sail together,” Berg said. “And we were at his house for dinner one night, a whole group of us, and he hauled this out and said, ‘is anybody interested?’ Of course I said yeah. My wife said no.”

Berg said after a year of persuasion and an outing to an MG Northwest Centre car club meeting, the wife at last gave him the go ahead.

“Now if I was to leave her or something like that — which wouldn’t happen because we’ve been married 41 years — she’d take the car and give me everything else,” Berg said. “She loves the car that much.”

Berg and his wife attend several car shows and events every year, but this one, he said, is special.

“This is a charity event, all the profits go to (Seattle) Children’s Hospital and that’s why I’m here,” Berg said. “I love to go to car shows and talk to car people. I don’t want to say car people are the friendliest people in the world, but as a rule, they are. I’ve taken this to hot rod shows and been accepted, with all the big chrome V8s with 400 or 600 horsepower. This one, though, is a neat event, with all the money going to the hospital. It’s really important.”

For more information on SOVREN and its upcoming events, visit www.sovren.org.