Smaller Car Events are Getting Bigger

AMID THE YELLOW rolling hills of California’s sun-bleached central coast, a small group gathered in Paso Robles, accompanied by 30 extremely rare and stunning brass era cars.

I was a plus-one along for the ride, which meant I lost my seat in a two-seater 1913 Mercer Raceabout to one of the group’s few mechanics. Naturally, that meant I sat on the wooden ash floor of the car, clutching on to a spotlight bracket for dear life, my sneakers dangling onto the running boards of the car. I listened to the loud and glorious open exhaust cut-out, mesmerized by my closeness to the road, which was disappearing beneath me at a clip.

Though the morning had brought light rain, (cue the hems and hahs about original leather interiors), it had quickly burned off and was now scorching. Now, we battled hard against overheating, to which all hope was lost. Stopped next to a field of half-curious cows as our onlookers, we stretched our legs and gave the cars a moment of respite, tucked away in hills somewhere between Creston and Santa Margarita.

The cows couldn’t care less about which elements of the Stutz Bearcat and other Mercers next to us were original (essentially all of them), nor ask about stock portfolios and business decisions of the highly influential people among us. These were just guys in windbreakers getting sunburnt, toiling over their cars. Incredibly sporting and casual, the moment was rare and to some, priceless.

Since its inception, new collectors were slowly brought into the fold of this particular event, with a great degree of selection and discernment. The tour provided a quiet torch-passing: showing the younger crowd how to handle their very old machines and introducing them to others who could assume stewardship of such special cars.

Each year, there were a few exceptions for poor behavior or unpaid bar tabs. But the same cast of characters (and I do mean characters) gathered for unfussy lunches and early morning tuneups, shielded by tiny, indifferent towns.

So how did these cliquish events come to be? The large-scale driving events such as the London to Brighton, The Copperstate, The F.A.R.T.S. (Friends of Ancient Road Transportation Society), the Mille Miglia Retrospective, and Colorado Grand require a specific eligibility of a car, but the events have 80-120 car entries or as many as 400, in the case of London to Brighton.

Many of these small events are not limited by the make and model of the car, but rather by what we’ve all had enough of: Amid a digital landscape where pictures and posts reign supreme, to the outside eye, a car rally through Tuscany sounds as glamorous as can be.

But before you know it, you’ve got influencers who care more about content creation than they do about arriving at their destination. With hordes of drivers, the food at every stop gets worse, and the formal awards dinners drag on. And then you have the corporate sponsors in a series of modern SUVs following along.

Selling watches and villas and leather jackets and insurance, there’s a moment that inevitably turns to a car collecting version of a timeshare presentation, holding drivers hostage to feign interest in whatever’s being sold.

So, someone takes matters into their own hands, books the hotel blocks, and designs their ideal tour. I spoke to a source who went on a few female-operated rallies, each organized by a co-op of women. The event they attend every year is so exclusive that they do not want to be named — and would prefer to keep the details of who organizes the rallies private.

Essentially, a de facto executive board chooses a tour operator or a third-party facilitator and, as my source explained, “there aren’t the same kinds of rules about the cars. It’s not about who has the best car. It’s about hanging out and having fun. Oh, and if you want to pull over and go antique shopping with your friends, that’s completely above board too.”

Our source heard about this tour by word of mouth and then received a follow up via email inviting them to join a rally in Northern California. She found it refreshing.

“It was centered around what women want to see and enjoy, as opposed to men,” says this source. “Sure, it’s some of the same things, but it’s often female-owned vineyards, heritage homes, and factories we’re stopping at, which just feels empowering. We raised a ton of money for breast cancer research. We do silly costume nights. It’s really about seeing a bunch of my friends on our terms.”

There’s room for the big tours, too. Having dedicated repair teams, new friends across the rigid social groups, and someone to follow when your passenger can’t read a routebook book to save their life — that’s all part of the alchemy. The hotel lobbies of old heads suiting up in sun-bleached baseball caps and ancient Barbour jackets in the morning to brush the dew off their seats — that’s the community I grew up with.

Just like any other travel and in life, the company you keep matters; car rallies are often equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion, so having a good friend to toast with in a beautiful locale at the end of the day, or more often, to make good conversation with when you’re both stranded on the side of the road, makes a world of difference.