Discovering North American Car Culture at Driven Toronto
The snow has melted, the temps are well into the 20s and the sunburn is real. The Canadian Summer is upon us and as the burning wildfires turned the North-East into a scene from Blade Runner this week, I reflected on what was my first 'proper' car event here.
Driven, a Canadian based automotive show rolled into town last weekend on its pilgrimage across the sprawling metropolis that is Toronto. Their Square One show, spread across the top two floors of a high rise car park, was new ground for me. I'd gotten a taste of the wild Norths car culture a couple of months back at Import Culture but it really was just a taste.
The indoor venue, not too dissimilar to a scene you might see at Dubshed, was poorly lit with horrible yellow paint accents spread across the hall and it led to some less than impressive photos from yours truly. All bar a few cars on the day were truly represented in what was a subpar facility for such an event.
Events haven't been plentiful since the days began to brighten and the harsh grey palette of Winter disappeared but they have been happening. Unfortunately, my almighty return to the realms of Gaelic Football have led to me missing a few early-season outings, something that doesn't sit well with me, ala, its hard to be everywhere.
I've begun to make some connections here and whilst the general population of car enthusiasts seem to be less humble, the majority of people are pretty cool. There's much more of an onus here on being part of a group or certain 'team', if you will and infiltrating those circles has been a weird experience. Rarely in Ireland would you offer someone the chance to get free photos taken of their car, only for them to ignore you or reject your offer. Maybe they can smell my desperation as I urgently try to keep the content fresh?
This event was a bit of mixed bag for sure, a lot of high quality, ultra-clean builds on display, on a day when there was hardly a cloud in the sky and the air pollution wasn't borderline apocalyptic. Those clean builds were sprinkled with a healthy dose of wealthy-daddy cars and 'builds', if you know what I mean.
Its a shame I've built a base around photographing Japanese metal as there was exceptionally executed German cars on display. I'll include some of those down below! I'm not talking about some static A-Class on rep wheels either with everything being 'gas' here its not uncommon to see a S4 or AMG Mercedes bagged on some genuine BBS or VIP-Style wheels. Take the S4 I shared below sitting on fucking Minervas. I never thought I'd see the day....
Overall, I think the good outweighed the bad, which isn't something I admit too often.
Similarly to back home, Nissan and Honda culture is thriving here with everything from fake 180s to really nice S2000 builds. The parts assembled on these cars is also no joke with a lot of genuine Japanese goodies strapped to various areas. I could spot cool wheels for days along with carbon fibre panels, Craft Square mirrors and even a set of two-tone red Recaro SPGs which would look right at home in any Honda-powered machine.
Unless something off the cuff pops up I'm another month out before I get to another show so apologies in advance for the incoming content....
