My last post was a bit negative, so this time I’ll talk about the good side of car culture.
Car culture ain’t all hooligans doing burnouts and bouncing their engines off the limiter in parking lots. Despite my last post there is one aspect of car culture that I do enjoy, and it all centers around one word:
Community
Like many cultures, community is a big aspect. Community is what holds cultures together, and car culture is full of many different communities that make up the whole car community. Depending on what type of car you drive, you can guarantee that there is a community out there dedicated to your car. These dedicated car communities are useful because they are a hot bed of tips and tricks for a variety of things ranging from numerous DIYs to performing various maintenance tasks yourself to numerous help threads on how to make your vehicle perform better. Build threads act as a digital way for people to share what they’ve done to their own cars and to receive feedback and ideas from the community. Numerous aftermarket companies use car communities to do R&D for their products before releasing them to the mass market.
Beyond the digital aspect of car communities are the physical portions. The most common real display of physical car communities are car meets. These meets serve as a way for the car community to get together and show off their cars outside of a screen and to discuss in person the one thing that we all love: cars. These car meets can serve a greater purpose. More and more car meets are being used for charity events, and I’ve been fortunate to have experienced one of these charitable car events.
2019 Purist Group Toy Drive - Car Code Auto Spa (Photo provided by @keithkars)
Above is a photo of a charity toy drive event I had the pleasure of attending with some friends. The boy in the wheelchair, Sebastian, has a terrible disease and contacted Sean Lee (to the right) of the Purist Group to organize a charity toy drive / car show for the Shriners Hospital. Sean Lee created the Purist Group with the sole intention of showing that the car community can do good. Every car show that is put on by the Purist Group also doubles as a charity event, whether it’s through toy drives, school supplies for the needy, etc. People such as Sean and Sebastian show the world that the car community is more than a bunch of hooligans disturbing locals with their loud and obnoxious cars, and the car community can use more people like the two pictured above.
Beyond attending car meets is the simple car cruise. Car cruises are ways for a small group of people to get together and drive their cars together, typically through scenic roads such as canyon or coastal roads. Living in SoCal I am quite spoiled for choice with roads and the weather, but car cruises are suited for anyone anywhere.
Local Canyon Cruise - Malibu Canyon Outlook (3/30/2019)
As shown above, any vehicle is welcome. The only rule I have for car cruises is to keep things safe and treat it as a cruise, not a race.
A form of car cruises are road rallies. Road rallies are like car cruises on steroids. Typically road rallies take the idea of a Sunday afternoon cruise and spread it across multiple days and a couple hundred miles of driving. Where as the only costs for a car cruise is the gas you use, road rallies typically cost a few hundred bucks a person in order to cover things such as lodging, food, and rally decals. Cheaper one day rallies are available, but the main point of road rallies is getting a large group of car owners together and driving around to interesting places using the scenic route. Where car cruises are typically done with friends, road rallies are done with people from all over, so rallies can be a great way to meet new fellow car enthusiasts. I had the pleasure of taking part in a day rally with a group of friends and I had a great time checking that item off my bucket list.
2019 GT Rally Pioneertown Run - Cable Airport
I hope this post convinces you that car culture is not a bad thing. Just because there are a few bad apples here and there, not all of us car enthusiasts are hooligans. As long as car enthusiasts keep focusing on the community aspect of car culture I feel that car culture will continue to survive and the general public’s view of the car community will change for the better. Like always, feel free to leave a comment below.
Thanks,
J. Stitt