They say that smell is one of the strongest aids to recollection, that you can be transported back to a time or event by the whiff of whatever you associated with it.

For me that smell is racing fuel mixed with burning rubber.  Pretty much every weekend of my formative years was spent at Brands Hatch watching some form of motorsport or another, from Group C and touring cars, to Mighty Minis and Honda CRX'.



Each year I move further away from this time in my life, houses, jobs, moving, responsibilities all take me a little further away from the carefree time when Sunday was all about getting the best photography spot at Druids, then the days after waiting for the photos to come back from the developers.

So every chance I get now days I'll grab and head over to a motor racing circuit, it almost doesn't matter what it is, just to be out and enjoying cars racing round a track is good enough.  If it can be an event like the HSCC Historic Festival, or this weekends Castle Combe Classic Carnival then all the better.  Now not only do I get to shed responsibilities for a while but I also get to meet up with a whole load of new friends I've met in the intervening years.  What could be better, racing, cars and friends?

I'm sure I'm not the only one for whom the smell of cars triggers happy thoughts, am I?

 

This ain't a scene, its a god damn arms race, as Fall Out Boy recently sang.  From the day this site was announced we got a bit of stick for calling it Retro Scene, for some reason the word scene is like a poison to some people.  It has managed to get itself some bad connotations over the past few years, it has become synonymous with fashion, "me to"-ism, modifying without thought and one-upmanship.

I think this word needs to be reclaimed, the dictionary gives us a number of different definitions, I think the most relevant is "an area or sphere of activity, current interest" which pretty much sums us all up.  We're not always a community, we're not always a club, but we are always "a sphere of activity".  I guess the "area of current interest" bit could put some people off, but if things don't move forwards they stagnate, even the traditional non-modifying classic car scene moves forward by seeking out different cars and more historical information.

I'm quite fond of the fact that scene can also mean "the stage", which is how this whole thing is sometimes, dramas play out, characters enter and characters exit, events occur.


I got 99 problems...

There is a problem with the word scene though, or at least in as far as it has been used recently.  When a 'scene' forms around something it seems to turn into an arms race (seriously, that title wasn't just made up).  If you take low riders as the least controversial starting point (but it could easily be stretch tyres or rat look or cal look), at first it was all about going lower and lower a minor arms race in of itself, eventually the limits were pretty much reached.  After that it became about bouncing higher and higher, in addition to have the most crisp paint job.  Friendly competition is great, inter scene rivalry is what pushes it forwards.  However it can all become so very very serious and the fun starts to disappear as it becomes more and more like some kind of pro competition.  You also end up with this gap where no one can enter into the scene without being looked down on by some others within the 'scene', we loose the ability to just start out and be pretty average, if its not 100% brilliant then its not worth building, or that is how it feels.

We need cars at all points from the entry level cars to the top flight show cars and everything in between.  That is what makes a scene.

 

This is the first time we've done an opinion piece, what do you think?