On the West Coast of America right now is a little event called the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
As part of the wider week-long spectacle that is Monterey Car Week, the Californian coastal town of Monterey finds itself engulfed by hundreds of rare, expensive and otherworldly supercars for a champagne-fuelled celebration of all things automotive. Assuming your idea of a celebration involves many wealthy individuals trying to out-do one another in a very small space.
Think Pagani, Bugatti and an endless supply of luxury start-ups seemingly named using ChatGTP. New cars are unveiled, classics are sold for record-breaking amounts, and low-volume specials suddenly appear as if they’ve spawned from an arcade game. Value? We’re talking hundreds of millions, if not billions.
It’s an intense few days. Try and follow Monterey Car Week across social media and it quickly becomes oversaturated to the point that a McLaren F1 GTR seems relatively tame compared to other things on display. Imagine spending months in the gym building up a six pack only to decide the best place to show this off was at a Mr. Olympian event. You can’t deny it’s impressive, but there’s always someone out there going that bit further than you.
On the opposite end of this automotive spectrum you have the Retro Rides 2023 Gathering at Mallory Park in the UK. I’d bet the total value of cars on display didn’t exceed a single Bugatti Chiron, but I’d also put money on the fact that Retro Rides packed more interesting and rare cars together than Monterey.
Cars that were once commonplace two decades ago yet now feel like automotive time capsules; like Opel’s 3.0-litre, 24-valve Omega 3000. The phrase ‘rare but nobody cares’ often gets batted around in automotive circles, but if you’ve ever been to a Retro Rides gathering – or better yet trawled their (spookily active) web forum – you’ll know this platform exists purely as a safe space for those people who do care when everyone else has moved on to the next big thing.
Admirable? Dedicated? Obsessed? Likely all of those words and more because it goes way beyond simply having deep pockets to keep these kinds of cars in existence all year round. Rebuilding and restoring a classic Ferrari could be looked upon as a bit of an investment, but the same couldn’t be said for oddities like the Nissan Sunny and Renault Avantime.
This is the attitude which makes every Retro Rides gathering so much fun. And that isn’t a dig at Monterey; there’s a thousand ways to enjoy car culture, but it doesn’t always need to be full of buzz words like ‘most expensive’ and ‘least miles’.
In the last 24 hours alone, more than 400 members and 7,000 guests have scoured the Retro Rides forum, which tells you everything you need to know about the sort of characters (and attitudes) this platform brings together.
Celebrate the oddities; embrace your obscure knowledge of British Leyland and don’t ever feel your car isn’t worthy of being on display. This isn’t your typical scene gathering filled with Instagram personalities offering 15% discount on cleaning gear; the term ‘off white’ is only used to describe faded paintwork here and nothing else.
Which is why it’s one of the best one-day shows I’ve been to in years, and that’s all down to David and the Retro Rides team who know exactly what their audience want for a good time.
Experiencing car culture only through social media can leave you feeling uninspired and deflated; you know the builds before you’ve ever seen them in real life, and projects are thrown together so quickly for hype their stories tend to focus on what has been done rather than why.
But spend five minutes at any Retro Rides gathering and you’ll quickly know we needn’t worry about the future. Because these are people preserving the past and ensuring no car is forgotten regardless of its value or obscurity. And long may that continue.
Stay tuned for more Retro Rides content coming in the next week including spotlights and a more detailed look into those stand-out oddities on display.
Mark Riccioni
Instagram: mark_scenemedia
Twitter: markriccioni
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