Why 'The Death of Car Culture' is a load of s**t--and the problems that turn people off of car culture.

It's 11:47 PM on a Friday night and I'm standing outside the newest Wawa convenience store/gas station built in my area just off of the Oaks Exit of US Route 422 West drinking a F'Real chocolate milkshake blended thin and taking yet another frickin' picture of my car, Wendy. I had just gotten off 422 from King of Prussia, visiting a place that I drove to out of a sense of nostalgia. Don't worry, that will soon be relevant to the focus of this article. What I do want to talk about today is the supposed 'death' of car culture. Some journalistic hack who thinks that their annual small-town car show, or movies like 'American Graffiti' and 'The Fast and the Furious' represents all of car culture as a whole, invariably writes an article with this as the heading every few months, because of reasons like young people not buying new cars, or young people not learning to work on cars with their parents, or electric cars getting more popular, or whatever other trend/phenomena they are pointing to that signals the death knell of all things cool about automobiles. I'm writing this to tell whomever reads this and has a little bit of common sense that such baited headlines are more full of crap than the most constipated person in the world. You don't even need to be an automotive enthusiast to understand that-- you just need to take a closer look.


Now to start with, let's find out who exactly is making the thinly-based accusation that car culture is dying. A Google search about the death or extinction of car culture typed in one variation or another will pull up pieces from NPR, The Associated Press, and The New York Times.  In all of these articles, being from American sources, the 'Hot Rod' culture that gained prevalence in the post World-War era of the 1950s and 1960s is invariably referenced and then automatically put on a pedestal as the one true representation of car culture despite the fact that it is at best a small chunk, a sliver of what car culture as a whole is. These same articles then go on to bemoan the idea that this culture is dying, and the reasons range from (of course) the rising cost of fuel, to people taking more public transit, to people buying less new cars on the whole, and of course, those good-for-nothing "millennials" (one of which I technically am) with their smartphones and social medias and what have you. Yes, especially the millennials, who don't see much value in driving when they can take the bus, or share a ride with the one person in their group who has a car and a license so that they don't need to get their own in order to get from home to work and back. Curse them for commuting in collectivist fashion instead of driving their own car!

That one word--commuting--is the primary reason such articles are bullshit. Every time one of these pieces comes up, quite possibly through willful ignorance, car culture is apparently dying because people are commuting to work in their own cars less. What the creator of these articles have done is take the two distinct subjects of commuting culture and automotive enthusiasm and lumped them together in an extremely uncomfortable love seat and called it car culture, the endangered species. The simple fact of the matter is that commuting culture does not equate to car culture as a whole. Whether you ask someone who hasn't a clue about the metal-plastic-rubber salad under the hood of their car, or whether you ask someone who just finished blueprinting their 350 cubic-inch Small-Block Chevy V8, nine times out of ten, you will get the same answer regarding the practice of commuting to and from work: it sucks. No one likes being stuck in traffic for long periods of time. Commuting is often the result of crappy urban planning forcing people who don't care about driving to buy a car (or an appliance masquerading as a car) and then slog their way to work with hundreds of other people who may or may not like driving because there is no other way to get to work. This mass of commuters is what you see in your morning traffic reports every day and have been seeing every day for much of the past century. That more people are taking mass transit to work is usually the result of a demand finally being met with proper supply of a service as well as an increased focus on environmental consciousness mixed with a little pragmatism-- why drive when you can pay someone else to drive for you while you sit down and catch up on your reading? These are the people who don't drive because they don't need to, and that is personally fine by me. As someone who has taken public transit out of necessity for several years, I can say with confidence that I would much rather drive if I can simply because of the degree of personal freedom it gives to me. Whatever your opinion on land-based transportation however, the fact still stands that commuting culture is totally separate from car culture.

The second irritation I get from these articles is the idea that Hot Rodding is all car culture. Every one of the articles mentioned above has made some sort of reference to the postwar era of rock n' roll music and flame-painted, chopped-topped, suped-up custom jobs with flathead V8's--and that those two things make up all that is sacred and holy in car culture. They like to talk about simpler days when men wrenched under the hood, rebuilding and adjusting carburetors for that little bit more power; the 'good old days' before emissions regulations and controls and fuel injection and computers. Sonari Glinton has even gone back to that idea a second time for NPR's 'Men in America' series, in which the idea is put forth that father/son bonding is hampered by the increasing complexity of cars; nevermind the fact that any internal combustion engine made in the last century that has more than two cylinders is a fairly complicated thing to begin with. But apparently car culture is dying because there are less hot rods on the roads and it's impossible for old Bob and his son Joey to spend quality time together because the car in the garage apparently has a "No User-Serviceable Parts Inside" warning label on the hood and there's no other way they can bond as father and son!

Refuting this second point is going to be the focus of this post. While an evocative image, the American Hot Rod is not all there is nor will it ever be all there is to car culture. It certainly is a prominent facet, but car culture as a whole is much, much more comprehensive. It is a good place to start however, at least in my opinion. I believe that the reason there even is a car culture in existence is due to people who take something that is otherwise uniform, logical, and rational and make it their own thing that is unique, illogical, and irrational. Hot Rods came to prominence within a demographic steeped in an undercurrent of rebellion; teenagers who want to go fast, have fun, maybe break some rules by experimenting with the resources they have on hand to build *their* machine. When they were first built, it wasn't unusual for a hot rod to be cobbled together using a tired old entry-level vehicle as the base, and a visit to a salvage yard would net some choice parts that with some hammering, prying, and lots of swearing could be persuaded to work together inside the same machine. Get it to work, and you had your own sports car, in a way. It may not handle the same as the rich kid's sports car, but yours was probably faster and louder. More importantly, it's *your* car, and no one could take that away from you.

Fast-forward to the present day: The hot rods of yesteryear have either been totaled or allowed to rust away, or their owners have taken such meticulous care of them to the point that they are recluses, only coming out during the summer for show season or on the weekends, and those that are in decent condition and being sold are way out of the price bracket for your average 16-20 year old holding down two or more jobs and may or may not still be living with their parents. They can't afford a hot new sports car, but the used market is flooded with lots of late 80s and early to late 90s Japanese cars that can be had for less than $7,000. Using sites like Craigslist, someone willing to get their hands dirty buys someones former winter beater 1990 Honda Civic for $700, strips out the interior, puts in a fully-adjustable coilover suspension kit, swaps in the motor and drivetrain from a wrecked 2004 Honda Civic Si, reprograms the ECU with a Hondata FlashPro connected to the onboard diagnostics port and a laptop. A few months/couple thousand dollars later, this enterprising tinkerer can be spotted flying down the freeway at wide-open throttle on their way to a gathering in a shopping center parking lot, where they will park front facing out next to dozens, if not hundreds of other cars with a similar approach to modification, with turbocharger kits, supercharger setups, and some running Nitrous Oxide into their upgraded engines at the local drag strip--at some point in time, these were often referred to as 'tuners'. Others in the same parking lot also have early 1990s Civics and Volkswagen Golfs, but unlike our performance-focused example, these other Civics and Golfs have been lowered to the point that their undercarriage scrapes the road if more than two people are occupying the vehicle at the time, and their wheels and tires are tilted due to a generous amount of negative camber, contributing to their unusual appearance, which may be augmented with a custom vinyl wrap--these are known as 'stanced' cars in the current enthusiast culture. This is what hot-rodding looks like today: the brands are different, the engines aren't as big, and those without the money or willingness to buy horsepower start to emphasize aesthetics over performance, but in the end the idea is still the same-- get a car, make it your own, and hang out with your buddies.

Yet this is but one microcosm and two sub genres of car culture as a whole. In some places, more environmentally-focused enthusiasts can talk at length about fully-electric vehicle conversions done to lightweight vintage cars, or older Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen diesel automobiles converted to run on waste vegetable oil. Still others drive around in soot-spewing lifted diesel trucks tuned with trick engine management software and larger turbochargers up to 700 horsepower and nearly twice that number in pounds-foot of torque. There are those who will buy an old Mazda Miata and then sink an additional $10,000 or more into making it ready to take on other Miatas at an SCCA 'Spec Miata' race event on weekends. And of course, no mention of car culture would be complete with the advent of track days, where anyone with a few hundred dollars and a helmet can take the car they've been driving every day to a racetrack and max out their vehicle alongside high-dollar European exotics, or autocross events where drivers compete against the clock in a technical course outlined in a parking lot where handling and smoothness are emphasized over straight-line speed.

In essence, if one needs any proof that car culture is alive and well in America and that young people are still interested in cars, one only needs to put a little more effort into the search. On any given evening, in various parking lots across the United States, there's a car meet happening, the sort of gathering alluded to in the example two paragraphs ago. While stanced cars have been the majority of cars showing up to such meets as of late, most meets that aren't hosted by a specific car club generally have a diverse selection of vehicles that show up, including vintage muscle cars, the aforementioned lifted diesel trucks, and in many cases, those of the two-wheeled persuasion also come to such meetings as well, riding anything from blindingly-fast sportbikes, to loud grumbling 'choppers', and even highly-customized scooters. No matter the ride they bring, however, the common bond between the people who show up to these gatherings is a love for their vehicles, and a capacity to appreciate the work that others put into their own machines. Where a car meet differs from a car show is the looser amount of organization compared to your average show, but most important is the fact that generally such gatherings are all-inclusive. For the most part, no one will complain if you show up in a completely stock, unmodified vehicle and park amidst others' more customized machines, and for all the crying and hand-wringing over the idea that social media has replaced human interaction, the people at these meets will often partake in both, some even going so far as to advertise their Instagram profile with a window sticker so that others can follow their vehicular adventures (the jury is still currently out as to whether or not this is a social faux pas). How do I know all this? Simple-- I've been to the kinds of meets I describe. Even before I got my car, I would hang out with friends and would try to make it out every Sunday to a meet hosted by a local group known as Flawless Car Club at the auxiliary lot of the United Artists' IMAX movie theater in King of Prussia, PA. Between the hours of 8pm and 10pm, flocks of cars from all over the area, no doubt having travelled any of the major expressways near the meet spot, came together to park up and show off, some people having come all the way from New Jersey, Delaware, and even New York. Aside from stanced cars, lifted trucks, and of course locally-tuned and modified Japanese cars, I have even seen more interesting and rare machines, such as a Right-Hand Drive Subaru Legacy Wagon that once lived a life as a postal mail carrier but now sports a Subaru Impreza WRX motor under the hood, a Ford Model A, a Ferrari F355 Spider, a Lotus Elise, a Ferrari 430 Scuderia, a slammed 1964 Corvair Spyder Turbo, an E36 BMW 3-series coupe with a Corvette V8 swap, lowered Honda Ruckus scooters with extended swingarms, and even a ride-on mower that had been modified to go faster than it was ever originally intended to. I even have pictures from those meets:

Having been to some several meets over the course of summer 2013, I obviously couldn't wait until I had my own car so that I too could join the party. However, balancing two jobs and working closing shifts all week made going to the meets at King of Prussia an exercise in the 'off day lottery'. Then, just a week after my last visit to the usual meet spot, my Facebook feed was inundated with news that made going to the KOP meet a thing of the past-- someone at the meet decided to try and show off in some fashion interpreted by local law enforcement as reckless behavior and was subsequently pulled over. As for the rest of those at the meet, the majority of attendees were made to disperse, not wanting to stick around and possibly be harassed by additional police officers. In the subsequent days to follow, word quickly spread that the owners of the land where the KOP meets had taken place were no longer allowing Flawless Car Club to host their meets there, and one could say that because of this, a staple of local automotive culture had been dissolved and scattered to the winds. One of the largest and most diverse meets in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area was no more, all because some moron decided to show off. I had hoped that I would still be able to enjoy the socializing that came with these meets once I had my car-- perhaps some people would continue to visit the area when the police weren't looking, but my nostalgic Friday night drive up to the former meet spot yielded these sad sights instead:

To think that this parking lot which once hosted hundreds of customized and well-maintained vehicles whose owners had clearly put a lot of time, money, sweat, blood, and tears into was now going to just be empty silence every Sunday evening is to be honest a little heartbreaking to me. While there are other meets in the area during the week, they are often small and don't see anywhere near the level of attendance that the Flawless Car Club meets did.

On one hand, perhaps this is for the best. For all my extolling of the virtues of car culture, it is often all rendered moot by those who feel the need to take showing off their car to a more active level without regard for the safety or comfort of those around them. While the various hosts of Flawless Car Club did what they could to ensure those attending these meets made no trouble for others, it would be impossible to prevent every single idiot with a too-big ego from attending these meets, as there were often more cars than there were meet hosts with the authority to enforce the basic meet rule of "Don't be an idiot with your vehicle." These weren't police officers or even private security hosting the meet, these were just regular everyday car guys who liked to socialize on Sunday nights and invite whomever wanted to stop by, have a look at others' creativity and chat with other people who share a common interest. They expected those who attended the meets to largely govern themselves, be civil to one another, and behave in a manner that would not warrant close scrutiny by police. These expectations generally hold true in smaller, more intimate meets where more or less everyone knows each other with a few new faces every now and then, but in meets as large as the KOP meets got, not everyone is as familiar with each other nor will everyone be on the same level of social etiquette. 

Even if the majority of meet attendees understand how they are supposed to behave in such a setting, there's a good chance that there's going to be that one person who decides to be 'Mr. Cool Guy' (and it's inevitably almost always a guy, unless someone can point me to an example of a female behaving with a similar level of recklessness) and starts revving their engine to show off, demonstrates their totally-sweet sound system by turning up the volume and bass to maximum, or activate their two-step launch control system and make gunshot noises from their exhaust, or perhaps the greatest breach of car meet etiquette of all, they try to do a big smoky burnout so that all the guys will think they're awesome and whatever ladies are at the meet will suddenly be overcome with the urge to remove their undergarments because they are so aroused by this person's display of horsepower.

The resultant reality, however, is much different. Go to about 1:17 in the video and watch from there:



Given that a car meet is typically a place where people gather and that there isn't much between these vehicles and human flesh and bone, common sense would suggest that doing a burnout, which is already complicated enough to do in a controlled setting to say nothing of a public area full of people, is surely the fastest way to run someone over or damage someone else's ride without traveling very far at all. Some people obviously don't get the memo, and it's these idiots who make it difficult to justify holding a car meet in a place where most are relying on a positive reputation to continue having a place to hang out with their cars if all it takes is some mouth-breather to ruin everything for them and get them kicked out of the spot. Like anything remotely collective, it only takes the sins of a few for the many to be punished.  The only countermeasures to this would be to make a meet more exclusive based on the types of vehicles that are the most often involved in these displays of recklessness or to have a police officer there for the duration of the entire meet to deter bad behavior, but this may require some special arrangement with local law enforcement and may make people attending the meets feel uncomfortable, causing them to leave for places where they won't feel like they will be ticketed for just being there. Is this the image enthusiasts want to give to people who might otherwise take an interest in their local car scene? I think not. As if this was not bad enough, the different opinions people have at car meets have occasionally caused hostility to the point that what is supposed to be a civil gathering of people passionate about their cars into a forum war in the flesh with all the elitism and egoism that entails. With all these factors, it would seem like car meets are a dumb idea; why would anyone go to one?

On the other hand however, car meets exist as a means of socializing and free association between people with a common passion and interest. The majority of people who come to these meets are genuinely nice people who are polite enough not to disrespect someone else's car simply because it's different from what they themselves like. Most enthusiasts don't go out of their way to make someone who came out to have a good time feel extremely attacked all of a sudden, and if they have anything slightly negative to say about someone else's ride, it's usually an acknowledged in-joke within the car community to which the intended target can agree with a certain degree of good grace instead of getting all 'butthurt' the way so many people on the internet do. Sometimes, these meets happen for an especially good cause; in one case, a meet became a show held in honor of a terminally-ill child whose father wanted to ensure his son had one more unforgettable memory with the time he had left. Locally, one of the Flawless Car Club meets I went to was a collaboration with an all-female car club known as Pretty Little Drivers LACE to hold a food drive for Philabundance, exchanging canned goods from attendees for raffle tickets that netted winners some rather lovely prize baskets, some of which were car-related, others not so much.

Most importantly, car meets are the greatest proof that car culture is alive and well. Rather, it is the most tangible, physical proof it exists outside of the Internet, and anyone who attends even a single meet will quickly be dissuaded of the notion that people aren't into cars anymore. Car culture hasn't died, it just changed with the times and took on different forms. The future of car culture won't be the same as it is now, with the increased focus on emissions controls and sustainability and what have you, but rest assured there will be people be meeting up in parking lots in the future, showing off their rides adorned with the newest go-fast bits or modified to suit the newest fashion in the personal transportation scene. And alongside these new, environmentally-friendly vehicles, people will still see the cars of yesteryear, the ones that still make noise and are a bit less friendly to the environment, but if it's what the young and cash-strapped can afford to bring, then they will bring it anyway. Perhaps one might see a young person of today visit one of these future meets as an adult who hasn't let go of their youth, parking up in a clattering lifted turbodiesel truck that spews soot at the prod of the accelerator pedal; the result of overclocked injectors shooting soybean-derived biodiesel into combustion chambers at their highest compression ratio. While I can't predict what these future car meets will actually look anything like what I described above, I have a feeling that car culture won't die out unless the people who participate in it go extinct en masse. Instead, it will just take different form.

With time, money, patience, and the will to control my life's schedule, I plan for Wendy and myself to be more active participants in car culture as a whole. I have plans to modify her more to my liking, but those plans require money and effort, as many good things in life do. Before I left that old haunt where all those cars used to meet every sunday, I took a not very good photo.

Someday, Wendy and I will be regulars at a meet someplace where we can be among friends with similar taste in modification. Until then, I have with me the memories of the meets at King of Prussia, and despite that weekly meet no longer being a thing, I still remain secure in the knowledge that for every idiot doing a burnout at a meet somewhere and getting it shut down, there's at least a hundred more people who keep car culture alive by presenting a positive image of what it's all about.