Car Night in L.A. Goes Dark

This can run the gamut from a small parking lot that was home to the “Donut Derelicts” in Orange County (which started at dawn, and required the attendees to vacate the lot by 9 am when all the stores opened!) to the spectacular Pavilions meet in Scottsdale, which attracts hundreds of cars every Saturday afternoon, and is a must see when you are in the area.

The pioneer of these events has to be Car Night in Los Angeles – it has been a fixture for over thirty years. This shouldn’t be too surprising, given that LA is the car capitol of the US, and because, as Neil Diamond put it, “LA’s fine, the sun shines most of the time, and the feeling is “lay back;” palm trees grow and rents are low…” – well, you get the idea. I attended Car Night regularly about fifteen years ago, with my now-dearly-departed friends Chris Dickel and Gary Byrd. We would meet at Gary’s house around 4 pm for a cocktail party, and at about 5:30 we would head out in a vintage car convoy to see someone’s car collection or visit a restoration shop.

I remember Gary taking my young son in his three wheeled Morgan or Lancia Lambda, and one time trying to fit into his “double bubble,” Fiat Abarth, which wasn’t working too well until Gary reached over and twisted my head 90 degrees so I could finally clear the door opening, and causing me to wonder how I was ever going to get out once we got there. When we got where we were going, which could be anywhere in the greater Los Angeles metro area, there would be all kinds of interesting cars, and not just that, but interesting people too. You could usually tell by who the host was, or the venue, what kinds of cars would be there, and consequently what kinds of people, because you could usually match the type of car to the personality of the people who typically bought them!

Tina Van Curen, who is the current Car Night organizer and famed as the owner of the famous Autobooks/Aerobooks in Burbank, explained how the event evolved. “Car Night started as a group of friends working on their cars every Thursday night at the oldest Victorian house in Pasadena. When the neighbors and the lady of the house grew weary of it Car Night became a roving garage party. A couple volunteers used to print up a few “Car Night News” to hand out to the group so they would know where to go for the next 2 or 3 weeks. It was an eclectic group which only grew by invitation. The beauty of Car Night was that it was never a club, no dues, no officers, no treasury to argue over. Unfortunately there was also no way to control who attended or keep track of who they were.” And that’s how the troubles began.

In June of this year, I was in LA, and I attended a Car Night for the first time in many years, having moved to northern California some time ago. The first thing I noticed was that all the cars in the lot were nondescript, modern cars and trucks, with a handful of exceptions. The second thing I noticed was that there was a crowd of people in the house watching a baseball game on television. They didn’t look like car people to me! There were two nondescript dragsters in the driveway, which nobody was paying any attention to at all. It bore no resemblance to any Car Night I ever attended, and that is when I realized that, just like Hershey, things just ain’t what they used to be.

Unfortunately, these were not just the ravings of an aging enthusiast.

Things took a turn for the worse after a Car Night meeting on July 8th at the home and adjacent restoration facility of Gary Wales, who is well known to car people, a VeloceToday subscriber, owner of vintage Fiats and famed for rescuing the Ferrari ‘Breadvan’ and on the cover of the book, “Rebel Rebel”. I had attended an event at Gary’s house years ago, and was pretty impressed because his creations are very, very unusual and built to a very high standard indeed.
Gary has hosted club visits to his house for forty years! But even more, as he says, “I have always made my home and collections available to collectors with similar interest, without restriction, enabling them to touch, handle, read, and generally enjoy the items without close scrutiny.” At the July 8th “Car Night” event, as he says, “Someone stole the most cherished, valuable, (worth thousands of dollars) and prized book in my reference library, an early French edition of the History of Locomotion, that has been in my care for over 35 years, and used by me on a regular basis, never removed from my office, and always in its special place in my library.” Apparently some member of the group felt that it wouldn’t be missed. “Well,” said Wales, “it is missed greatly and not the proper way to thank my wife and I for our hospitality.” Gary has asked that the person who was responsible for this to return it– no questions asked.

Not only that, the event organizers subsequently reported that this is not an isolated incident, and that this caused other hosts to report that, they too, had suffered losses when they played host to this group. Coupled with the increasing percentage of people who come only for the free food and drink Car Nighters have become a less than welcome group in a growing number of places.

For now, after more than thirty years, Car Night in LA has been cancelled indefinitely. I’m just grateful I was able to attend it when it was really something. I know that most of us are real car guys and also decent human beings but in the end, it was “infiltrated by mooches and thieves,” to use the words of the organizer in her farewell email. “Like so many things, it was a victim of its own success and the decline in morals and manners in today’s society,” wrote Tina Van Curen.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a few enterprising collectors started this up again. In fact, that is a certainty. But at least in the beginning, it will be by word of mouth, from one knowledgeable collector to another. You will come with recommendations or not come at all. And perhaps this is the way it should be.