Car Festivals Are All the Rage
Enthusiasts want more than static meets.
HAPPY RACE DAY, especially to Larry Chen and Shant Meshefedjian. I’ve been fortunate to know both these guys over the past year, and it’s a thrill to see them together in this Hagerty video below.
Shant and CMS make incredible Mercedes creations. They somehow look modern and retro at the same time. This is catnip to ‘80s and ‘90s enthusiasts, and they stole the show at Radwood this weekend. Now you get to enjoy them through your screen!
Follow Shant on Instagram to see more.
This will be a short newsletter, because I’ve been spending several hours each day packing and shipping out copies of Cult of GT-R to waiting customers. And there’s more to do tomorrow.
If you hadn’t heard yet, Cult of GT-R had a great opening week. We saw strong sales on my website, CarraraBooks.com, and there are only 75 copies remaining of the premium Wangan Edition (out of an original 250). Plus, the book hit No. 1 on the New Releases list in five different categories.
On top of the release, last Friday I launched a new addition to Race Day. It’s a weekly column on something cool I’ve driven lately. The first one is about the Toyota GR86 I took to Vegas on my SEMA road trip. Let me know what you think!
Then on Saturday, I hosted a table at the annual Radwood SoCal show to display the book in San Pedro at the Port of Los Angeles. Cool venue! I didn’t get to walk the show but had lots of friends say good things. We even had a GT-R at our booth!
So that’s what I’ve been up to. This week is the Los Angeles Auto Show but I’m staying home to ship books and map out my 2024 plan. Anything you’d like to see more of next year? Leave it in a comment below. And thanks for all the support.
A Golden Age of Auto Festivals
One of the central themes of my first book, Slow Car Fast, was that the rise of events like Radwood proved that younger enthusiasts wanted to have an experience while they celebrate cars.
That could mean incorporating culture at large, like Radwood does with ‘80s and ‘90s attire and props. It could mean camping and live musical performances, like GridLife does at its touring festival. Or it could mean being taken for rally rides on a dirt track in between sips of vintage wine and meeting real-life F1 drivers, like the Velocity Invitational offered over the weekend.
In the book, I described Radwood as “Car Coachella,” and wrote the following:
“…celebrating a specific time period through the lens of cars opens the show to people who don’t necessarily consider themselves automotive enthusiasts… The show takes the user experience into account.”
Slow Car Fast came out in 2019. If anything, the popularity of car culture festivals has only intensified since then.
Earlier this year I got my first taste of FuelFest. It’s a touring car show that also includes drifting demonstrations, ride-alongs and live music, plus direct tie-ins to the Fast and Furious franchise.
Two weeks ago at SEMA I also learned about RaceWars USA. This one is perhaps unfortunately named, but it takes the moniker directly from F&F, and combines car shows with drag racing all over the country. Then there’s Elite Tuner, which follows a similar pattern more heavily focused on JDM and the aftermarket.
I would have killed for events like this when I was a kid. Back then, without any real knowledge of where to find car culture events or how to get involved, people who owned sports cars and raced them seemed like a million miles away. Everything was drag racing and static meets with cars I didn’t really care about. The idea that I could have gotten close to any and all variety of sports cars at an affordable level just didn’t exist.
Today, each of the above is drawing huge crowds. People clearly want to get outside and not only see car culture up close, but touch it and feel it. They’re willing to travel for hours, and sometimes fly in from out of state.
And these aren’t massive, organized to the teeth events like Monterey Car Week or the Goodwood Festival of Speed. By comparison, these are thrown-together festivals that lower the barrier of entry to motorsport and welcome fans of all experience and knowledge levels.
If anything, the popularity of car culture festivals has only intensified.
Radwood was the first one that really caught my eye as a sea change in the industry. But after being acquired by Hagerty a few years ago, and now counting big-time sponsors like Mobil 1 as sponsors, it seems to have lost some juice. The show this weekend was fun but people may be fatiguing somewhat on the ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia. The energy just felt a little flat.
It seems to me GridLife has nailed the motorsports angle, and FuelFest has conquered the culture side. We’ll see how events like RaceWars and Elite Tuner continue to grow and develop – I’ll be watching that closely into next year.
But no matter the pecking order, it’s kind of astonishing that auto enthusiasm can support such a wide variety of relatively similar events. They’re mostly all competing for the same attendees. But they keep selling out, and growing bigger by the year. It speaks to an event’s ability to meet fans where they’re at, by providing the vibe and cars they want.
We’ll see what the future holds, and how sponsors handle the opportunity to partner with events like this to make them even bigger and better without compromising their grassroots feel. I know that if events like this existed back when I was a car-obsessed teenager, I would have been sold for life on any sponsors bringing this stuff to life.
Better late than never.
Drive hard and be safe. Black Lives Matter.
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