I Brought An Old School Disposable Camera to Detroit Radwood And The Results Were Awesome

A few weeks ago, RADwood graced our fair city of Detroit. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, RADwood is a car show that celebrates vehicles from the 80’s and 90’s in cities across the US and the UK. It’s more than just a show; as the website brands it, RADwood is a “lifestyle event.”

There is food, live music, awards, and people dress up in their best period attire. They also pose many of the vehicles in a more artful way than typical car shows where everyone is just lined up next to each other. While at the show I got to sit down with Art Cervantes, the director of RADwood, and chat about cars and all things RAD.

In the RADwood spirit, I eschewed my magic phone and brought some old-school disposable film cameras for my brother and me to take pictures with at the show. This itself was a trip down memory lane. I forgot about having to squint into the tiny viewfinder, the plasticky ratcheting sound as you wind the film after each photo, running out of film, and having to wait three weeks to get your photos back from the developer to see if they are any good. Truthfully, I love the results. Most look like they were taken at a car show 30 years ago.

It’s important to explain why RADwood exists. I was born in 1984, and am solidly in RADwood’s target demographic. When I came of age and started going to car shows in the 90’s and 2000’s the Boomers were having their day. Hippie culture was sort of making a comeback, songs from the 60’s and 70’s were being used in commercials to cash in on their nostalgia. At car shows it was all about the muscle car.

Don’t get me wrong, I love muscle cars and hope to own one someday, but I don’t have the same connection with them as the Boomer generation who grew up with them. I got driven to school in 80’s Hondas and Chrysler minivans. I remember staying up all night with excitement when my parents bought a new car, a 1992 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser. The first time I went over 100 mph was in my friend’s Mitsubishi 3000GT. For the dominant group of enthusiasts at the time, 80’s and 90’s cars just weren’t that cool. My 94 Bonneville probably would’ve been looked down on if I brought it to a show 20 years ago.

We all know life moves in cycles. The muscle cars of the ’60s and ’70s are still plenty cool, but 80s and 90s babies are now on the scene, buying and restoring the cars of their youth. As much as I love to see a 69’ Plymouth Roadrunner, I get more excited seeing a 90’s Plymouth Voyager and remembering all those trips with my friends horsing around in the back seats. It’s awesome seeing the same Lamborghini Diablo I had on my wall as a kid. It was inevitable a show that celebrates these cars would come on the scene, and RADwood does an excellent job.

It was a lot of fun walking around Detroit’s Hart Plaza, seeing people decked out in 80’s and 90’s attire, drooling over an excellent selection of cars. You’ll see bedroom wall poster supercars, mundane daily drivers, and everything in between. That is another cool thing about RADwood, is all cars from that era are welcome and celebrated.

Art Cervantes, the co-founder and director of RADwood was nice enough to take a break from judging cars to sit and chat with me. He’s definitely a car guy through and through. I asked him beyond the nostalgia factor, what makes cars from this era special?

“This particular era is a perfect hybrid of analog and modernity. You have that classic vibe, but it’s a car that will start because it’s fuel injected. You have some basic electronics but you have a little bit of that comfort, like a pretty decent AC. That makes them desirable as a classic or like an entry-level collector car too. They’re easier to work on there and you can still find parts. They’re a little more usable than something carbureted.”

This is something I love about cars from this era. Automakers started working harder to make their vehicles more reliable and not turn to scrap after 100k miles. It was a time before electronic power steering and throttle by wire removed a lot of the tactile feedback you got while driving. No screens, less distractions. It was just you and the car.

Since RADwood shows take place all over the US and now the UK as well, I asked Art what makes the Detroit show unique.

“I love how it brings out a lot of the obscure tuner stuff and the special additions from domestic manufactures that we don’t really see on the West Coast. I think it happened where naturally, those cars were put out there and the rust kinda took them so they only made it within a 50 mile radius of Detroit, so it’s very rare to see that stuff. For example I didn’t even know about the Olds Quad-442 special edition. This is a pretty cool car, dual overhead cam, high revving. Actually a very sporty, a good handling car. So there were all these cars that were being produced in that period that we don’t see anywhere else. You have the Omnis and the GLHS’s and the Saleens and the Shelbys like that CSX up there. I’m doing the judging and I’m seeing Lincoln town cars from the 80s that are absolutely impeccable, that someone kept at their lake house. Those don’t exist where I live. You got a lot of the domestic stuff which is great, I’m glad we can celebrate that here.”

I definitely agreed with him on those points. Walking around the show there were boatloads of obscure cars, as well as mint versions of everyday cars that filled the roads 30 years ago but now have disappeared from the landscape.

Although we were a little sad my Bonneville didn’t make it to the show despite wrenching until midnight the night before, my brother and I had a great time. It was fun checking out dream cars from our childhood and exploring everyday cars from our youth that would have been lost to time if not for the hard work of fellow enthusiasts. We will definitely be back next year. Enjoy the rest of the photos!