I found myself walking around a car show recently – a show that only ten years ago would have seemed unimaginable – with Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” running through the back of my head. “Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright…they just seem a little weird…” Yeah, I thought, but what about the kids?
The event was RADwood, and it’s actually not just a single event but rather an event series dedicated exclusively to… wait for it… classic cars of the 1980s and 1990s. Look, I know. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you’re probably looking for something to kick right about now. You may have already blurted out loud, “CLASSIC ‘90s CARS – THAT”S NOT EVEN A REAL THING!” And I hear you, but you’re wrong.
For years there’s been concern that the current crop of young people is too wrapped up in their video games or smart phones or social media – or really anything else that requires a screen and a WiFi connection – to be bothered with the analog joys of fooling around with cars. That’s been the narrative, preached like the Gospel by old-school car guys for years now.
But it turns out there’s still plenty of interest in cars among young people, just not in the same cars, events, or social scenes that have traditionally defined car culture. When most people think of collector cars, they often jump to the old standards – tri-five Chevys, first-gen Mustangs and Camaros, Hemi-powered Mopars, British Invasion roadsters, or air-cooled VWs. These communities still make up a huge section of the hobby and will for a long time, but they largely speak to owners from the Baby Boom and early Gen X years.
The kids that came up in later years identify with a different crop of hero cars. And great examples of those cars are becoming rarer and more desirable by the day to an entire generation that grew up watching Knight Rider instead of The Rockford Files on Friday nights. Now in their 30s, 40s and 50s, they’re busy snatching up their dream rides from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
The first RADwood event was held in 2014 in northern California, organized by Art Cervantes, Lane Skelton and Warren Madsen of the Driving While Awesome podcast. Their motivation was simple. The cars they loved and drove were too new to participate in a lot classic car events that excluded pre-1975 vehicles, but they were too old to be included in modern sports and exotic car rallies. So they filled the gap with their own event.
But Cervantes and crew wanted it to be more than just a car show. Instead, they conceived RADwood as a celebration of “Rad” culture, referencing the 1986 BMX-themed movie by the same name, their generation’s American Graffiti in terms of cultural influence. The “-wood” part of the name is a play on the Goodwood Revival festival that takes place in England every summer and merges classic road racing with period-correct dress from the immediate pre- and post-WWII era.
The resulting mashup is a car show (on the surface) with an abundance of BMX bikes and skateboards as display accessories, showgoers outfitted in wild shades of turquoise, hot pink, and yellow or perhaps sporting popped-collar polos, tightly rolled Guess jeans, and Vuarnet sunglasses, all while a DJ spins everything from Prince and Cyndi Lauper to Def Leppard and Corey Hart on the sound system.
The cars that show up at a RADwood event are as unpredictable as the outfits you might see, ranging from near-spotless Malaise-era domestic sedans to tuned Euros and JDM (Japanese domestic market) personal imports. The mix is truly unlike anything.
And while you might question the appeal of a perfectly preserved Chrysler K-car or a right-hand-drive Nissan Pao (a quintessential Kei car), the novelty of these cars is just as important to the RADwood vibe as the lineup of more predictable C4 Corvettes, IROC Zs and modified VW GTIs that reliably attend as well. Where old-school car shows have largely been a platform for showing off custom builds and craftsmanship, RADwood’s strength is in its vast variety, even if the subjects are a little more ordinary in their specification.
So yeah, don’t expect to see much in the way of flame jobs, chrome Cragars or Von Dutch-style pinstripes if you should happen upon a RADwood event. But explore a little and you just might discover a vehicle you never even knew existed. Worst case, you can almost always count on a healthy dose of ‘80s and ‘90s Detroit muscle.
And don’t you worry. The kids are gonna be just fine. They just seem a little weird.
