Cooly Rocks On

As someone that has been heavily involved in Japanese performance cars for most of their life, I have always loved to experience new and different car cultures. It amazes me to see the variety of styles and trends that can be found. One such culture that I love to explore is the classic American car culture, which Cooper and I managed to find plenty of at the Cooly Rocks On Festival in Coolangatta. The week long event saw Coolangatta packed with people and varieties of old school cars, like those seen in this line up along Marine Pde. It’s moments like what you see in this picture that made me feel as if I had gone back in time!

Similar to what would you would expect to see at any given Japanese car show, there was a huge amount of diversity on display across the many very clean American Classics…

…And some not so clean Rat Racer styled cars, like this VW Beetle…

…As well as many cars with rodding influence.

The American classics well and truly outweighed everything, and it’s not hard to see why, with so many gorgeous cars floating around like this Chevy.

Or this immaculate Chevelle that Cooper spotted roaming the streets, looking like it was brand new.

It amazes me every time I see cars in this condition. Anyone that has tried to build a car of 25 years or older knows just how hard it is to maintain and restore it; imagine what it must be like for people with cars that are 50-60 years old!

One thing I loved about visiting Cooly Rocks On was the street culture. Never has it seemed normal to me, for someone at a car event to be strolling around and playing the harmonica, yet somehow, it seemed fitting.

I spotted Matyas from Downshift sharing the enthusiasm for this event, despite the freezing cold and bucketing rain. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what he captured during the week.

Some of the guys have a true dedication to slamming down their cars. I absolutely cannot get enough of long wide American cars that scrape the ground at every movement. Sure, they are not practical, but how often does that stop us with our own cars?

Something that astounds me all the time is how much police love this car culture as well. While I am sure this culture has proved themselves as the responsible culture that it is, I someday hope that the same can be seen for our drift culture.

This car was a serious piece of work; get a load of that supercharger!

I do love this old school, custom style that can be seen across a lot of the cars, particularly with small bits of pin striping as seen at the front.

Not a bad looking line up!

Despite all this, my favorite car on the weekend had to be this beautiful Eldorado. Just look at the detail across this thing.

Every part of this car was perfect.

Cooper also managed to spot a few ‘somewhat unconventional’ cars floating around Coolangatta which were definitely worth a look as well.

As much I love supercars, I can look at classic cars like this for hours. I can only imagine how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into this machine. It all comes down to the passion of one driver, a person who has probably owned this since before any of us were old enough to say the word “horsepower”. I really do love this culture, and can’t wait to explore it more next year at Cooly Rocks On!

E!CM