I’ll keep this short because I’ve primarily migrated my commentary to Instagram. But if you know me, you know how important 80s and 90s cars (the rad aesthetic) are to me. When Radwood got started in 2017, I poured through the photos from Philly, LA, and all the other shows with great, resounding jealousy. They had everything. Everyone was coming out. Cars I thought that only I could possibly care about were making grand resurgence.
It was a mecca of sorts to experience it in the flesh. It was wild seeing a pristine E36 M3… and a hundred more behind it. Especially memorable were the Pajero (pictured), multiple Espirit (pictured) and a few NSX (partially pictured).
If anything, there now lives in me a deep sadness that comes with the understanding that almost every car being shown was accruing cultural and monetary value as I watched. Some cars I dreamed of – Celica Alltracs, E36’s, 2nd gen MR2s, to name a few – which were once extremely attainable, were gaining value at a higher rate than my income was increasing. I’m genuinely scared of never being able to afford them on the right side of the appreciation curve. I missed them by about five years.
I honestly tried not to take too many photos. I wanted to focus on detail and nuance (and in practice, taillights and interiors), because those were things I thought I had recently been neglecting. I love a good set of taillights. But really, I wanted to focus on appreciating my favorite sub-sub automotive subculture visiting my own backyard.
So after combing through 300ish photos, I only had about 70 worth sharing, and about 15 of them are of the Ferrari F40 that was in attendance. I’d never seen one in real life before. Fascinating, aggressive car. It makes the Porsche 959 look like a grand-tourer, their juxtaposition is insane. When I went through and edited these, I found that I honestly couldn’t adjust the photos of the Ferrari without losing a bit of life from the color, so those are the only photos that are not at least slightly color corrected. I hope you enjoy!
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