In my day job I happen to do work for a number of car and motorcycle clubs. Some of the officers have become friends and they know about my side gig writing about cars and car culture. Last year, in the early spring, my buddy Tony, who's the prez of the Motor City Camaro and Firebird Car Club, told me that the first car show of the year was being held at a Kmart parking lot near Eight Mile and Telegraph. It ended up being a worthwhile visit. There were some interesting cars and I even got a TTAC post about donks and low riders out of it. When Tony recently told me about the last car show of the year, being held in another shopping center parking lot, also near Eight Mile Road, this one by Van Dyke, I figured that he hasn't steered me wrong yet, so I drove over to the east side of town.
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However, when I got there, at the supposed appointed time, it was just an empty parking lot. I thought I might be in the wrong place, but then I saw a line of late model Chevy Impalas driving across the lot. Now one or two Chevy Impalas is nothing to notice, a couple of nondescript automotive appliances (though they could be had with 300+ hp), but a line of ten 9th generation Chevy Impalas in a row is a car club. Which it was, the Impala Boyz (along with a few Impala girlz too).
These Impala girls came out to support the Impala Boyz car club. Full gallery here.
Apparently, this was to be the final gathering of the tribes, an assortment of model specific car clubs showing up to represent. There were a lot of hugs, handshakes, fist bumps and maybe even a beer or two poured out in memory of department members. There were Impalas, Dodge Chargers, a big contingent of Pontiac Grand Prixs, representing a few clubs but most from the Grand Prix Family, a couple of local Corvette clubs, and arriving almost as late as my friends in their Camaros was a parade of panthers, the local chapter of the CVB, the national Crown Vic Boys club, in a variety of Grand Marquises, Town Cars and Crown Vics in both civilian and P71 police interceptor trim.
The Crown Vic Boys show up with their panthers en masse. Full gallery here.
What I liked about this show, unlike just about every other car show I've attended this year, is that these were virtually all daily drivers. Just because someone may not be able to afford a special weekend car doesn't mean that they don't love their ride just as much as someone with one or more pampered special use automobiles. It was a run what you brung event and while most of the cars were in nice shape, there were some that showed the scars of being a daily driver in Detroit. Just because it's got some dents and rust or a missing bumper doesn't mean that you don't love it and want to hang out with others who share that love.
I'd categorize the show as semi-official. While it had the cooperation of the shopping center, there wasn't any judging or official competitions for trophies. There were some burnouts over to the side and some folks were hooning around the periphery. As a matter of fact, that activity was in the backstory of a little vignette I witnessed. I was talking to someone in the Camaro club, mentioning how I think the integrated spoiler on the back deck of the 4th generation Camaro is a masterful piece of design when a Dodge Neon SRT4 parked right in the middle of the Camaros.
A bit of a non-conformist, the only Neon in the show. Full gallery here
When the owner of the Neon got out of his car, the Camaro club members started giving him a hard time about parking there, telling him he should park down the row, near the end of the aisle. He explained rather articulately, emphasizing his comments with words that began with the sixth and fourteenth letters of the English alphabet, that he didn't want to risk getting his car or his person injured by the people who were hot-rodding.
I immediately took a liking to the chap as a fellow noncomformist. Like me, he wasn't there with a club and while there were other Dodges at the event, it was the only Neon.
Whatever differences people had, a good time seemed to be had by all, apparently contrary to what some had predicted. A couple of weeks after the show, while leaving my credit union, I thought the lettering on the back window of a Dodge Charger in the parking lot looked familiar. The owner was standing next to his car, talking with someone in an adjacent parking spot. "Were you at a car show at 8 Mile and Van Dyke?" I asked him. "Yeah. They said we couldn't do it in the D, that there'd be fights and trouble, but we proved them wrong." The closest thing to trouble that I saw was the jawing between the Neon ACR guy and the members of the Camaro club and that was a mostly friendly display of male faux aggression.
I go to lots of car shows. It's a job, but someone has to do it. Seriously, though, I get to attend a lot of top shelf events. The Concours of America is right up there with Pebble Beach and Amelia Island, and the Detroit Autorama is arguably the most prestigious custom car show in the world. I think it's a safe guess to say that none of the cars at the Concours or in the front part of Cobo Hall where the Autorama organizers put the best cars at their show are daily drivers. Most of the cars on display at those events are rarely driven objects of cost-no-object builds or restorations. It's also a safe guess to say that the folks who enter the Concours or the Autorama don't love their trailer queens any more than the folks at an impromptu shopping center parking lot car show love their daily drivers.
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don't worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
The post A Gathering of the Automotive Tribes. The Last Car Show of the Season. appeared first on The Truth About Cars.
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