January Caffeine and Octane: Then and Now

Since this weekend's monthly meet was postponed due to freezing conditions around the Atlanta metro area, I figured we'd take a look back at some previous January meets. January is one of the toughest months for car shows. Why, on one of the coldest months of the year, would anyone want to get up at the crack of dawn, pile on layers, and walk around a parking lot freezing their toes off?

Well, since it's inception over a decade ago, Caffeine and Octane's consistently been an exception versus rule exercise. Yes, crowds are smaller in the earliest and coldest months of the year, but they're far from modest. I'll start by giving you some images from January 2013.

The mercury hung around 40F the entire morning, but there were several roadster drivers who toughed it out, bundling up and leaving their soft tops at home. That includes this guy in a Porsche Speedster replica.

Bundling up wasn't limited to the drivers of course. Spectators were just as ready for the temperatures, and I caught this couple both sporting Ferrari and Porsche attire from nearly head to toe.

Even the Rolls-Royce girls were out in full force. Wearing all black, they posed in front of a Rolls-Royce Ghost and a white Bentley Continental GT.

The chill was most apparent though when cars started to leave. After sitting for hours, the exhausts of supercars and muscle cars alike chugged out wispy white smoke against the overcast sky.

Of course, this was when Caffeine and Octane was still in its old location off Windward Parkway in Milton. The pictures I took in January 2013 didn't show it, but it was pretty apparent even then that the venue was reaching its capacity. Show cars had space, but spectator parking was hit or miss, with people parking at hotels across the street and even in the grassy undeveloped part of the business park where the show was held.

By 2016, the show had arrived at its current location. Perimeter Mall hosts the show in its massive outer parking lots, letting spectators and others hang out until about 11a.m. when the mall opens. By then, I'd armed myself with a new (to me) Canon 60D with a wide-angle lens, able to better capture the crowds that gathered even when Georgia was at its coldest.

Here, cars file in and out on the mall's ring road, a four-lane thoroughfare inside the parking lot. Many people just take laps, turning out onto the main road, going around the block, then turning back into the parking lot, since spectators line the entire route. Think of it like the Woodward Dream Cruise, but with fewer lanes and more Acuras.

An even better variety of cars showed up in 2016, with the show becoming more organized. Now it has its own website and PR team, and works closely with show car owners, television personalities, filmographers, and the local police department.

Built by Sunbeam in England and powered by a Ford V8, the Tiger is one of the lesser known 60's Anglo-American successes.

Mike Finnegan, writer for Hot Rod Magazine and host of the Youtube series Roadkill chats with Rutledge Wood, an Atlanta native and star of Top Gear on History.

The show now has a dedicated section to showcase the variety of cars that attend. This condensed piece of Caffeine and Octane can include rare vintage sports cars, six-figure supercars, and some grey market import oddities. Within the showcase, there are also several featured cars, given their own section in the middle of the show area.

But outside of the newly-designated area, it's the same Caffeine and Octane you remember from the earlier days, just on a much larger scale. Mopar guys hold down a couple rows, but aside from that the rest of the showfield is a mixed bag. Lowriders, Japanese cars of every shape and modification level, motorcyles, late-80s German sports cars, and even minivans are on display in the more outer reaches of the parking lot.

So the show has changed in a big way over the past three years, and now we're looking at an even bigger future for it, with the first Caffeine and Octane at the Beach event being held on Jekyll Island in March of this year. If the past is any indicator, this will be one you won't want to miss, and this January should be bigger than ever.

Cruisin' with Creepers at The Strand, 7-18-2015

Today the historic Earl Smith Strand theater in Marietta, Ga hosted a classic car show. Two main arteries through the square --North Park Square and East Park Square-- were blocked off to other traffic, but open to pedestrians so that they could see some great examples of classic Detroit steel. Creepers Car Club, founded just down the road in Smyrna back in 1960, was well-represented on this hot Saturday afternoon.

What caught my eye, then? Well, the atmosphere was the first thing. These streets, normally bustling with afternoon traffic, instead funneled a diverse crowd through the small show area. I ran across two older gentlemen with sons in-tow, explaining the straight-8 Buick we were standing in front of. Then it was on to a beautifully-redone Chevelle, 1966, with the appropriate year-of-manufacture license plate. The silver Chevelle had a corner spot, and rightfully so. Red pinstripes on the tires accented the Torq Thrust style wheels beautifully, and further proved that you don't always need a lot of flash to be noticed.

But there certainly was a fair display of flash elsewhere. A custom, chopped top Mercury convertible turned the heads of everyone passing by. Further down the lane, however, I found something even more interesting.

Rat rods are almost always head-turners, because they go against every single rule we know about classic cars. Classic cars should be clean, well-preserved examples of what used to be. But rat rods, on the other hand, are the exact opposite.

Examples like this sedan and pickup are often made to look even more ravaged by the elements and years than they already have been. Intentional surface rust, broken glass, stickers, and ripped up upholstery are all staples of the rat rod.

Shows like this one are the hotbeds of Americana. Located in a historic town square --one spared by Sherman in his march to the sea-- these events are the epitome of small town America. They're the picture you see on the postcard. The cars are simply display pieces, testaments to what used to be. I overheard a guy my age drop the token phrase: "They don't make them like they used to." While on the whole I like to disagree with that statement ("Look at our technology nowadays!" I say. "Don't live in the past!" I say), we do benefit a lot from looking at the past.

You see, even the rat rods are being preserved. Underneath all of that surface patina (to put it nicely), there's often a modern, sophisticated chassis and drivetrain. But history repeats itself. Undesirable cars are filtered out; they die off one by one, then hundreds by hundreds until only several are left. These several remaining Ford Tempos are kept running by their faithful owners (for some reason), but then expire to the pages of history. Only the staple cars--the Pontiac GTOs and the Camaros and even the Falcons-- are kept going because they light that spark. It's a spark that's ignited from a combination of factors.

The way these cars look, or the way they drive, or even television shows and movies they appeared in. They inspire a collective group of people who can afford to fix them back up to their former glory. And then they're passed back down to us, the masses, in hopes that we'll catch a glimpse and become compelled to stay a little longer and truly examine these pieces of history.