Hart Plaza turned into a nostalgic, neon time machine on Saturday.
Thousands came to downtown Detroit for the fourth year of RADwood Detroit, a celebration of ’80s and ’90s culture that is focused on the automotive style of the era. There were about 300 cars packed into Hart Plaza with nearly 3,000 visitors stopping by to check it out.
Art Cervantes, the director of RADwood, worked with Hagerty, a classic car insurance company, to put the event together. It’s all about nostalgia for the new generation of car collectors, he said.
“As people seek out the cars they lusted after when they were young, that becomes popular,” Cervantes said, noting that there has been an influx of interest in cars from the era as ’80s and ’90s kids grow up. “Now, at 35, 45 years old, they’re the ones driving the market.”
Pun intended.
“It’s a fun time. It’s colorful. It’s laid back,” Cervantes said. “They don’t take themselves too seriously.”
The event draws on the hip-hop, skateboarding and BMX cultures of the ’90s to bring together something millennials and Generation Xers are familiar with.
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Cervantes said that while the car culture of the ’80s and ’90s was primarily motored by foreign cars — flashy Nissan’s, BMW E30s and Mazda Miatas — Michigan’s automotive history has an important and personal role to play in the culture, especially for collectors from the metro Detroit region.
“It’s an emotional thing more than anything,” Cervantes said. “What was relevant in high school, when you were listening to Vanilla Ice? The Fox Body Mustang was his favorite car!”
For 46-year-old Bryan Deal of Livonia, it’s all about the nostalgia for him and his tropical yellow ’89 Fox Body Mustang.
“I’ve always been into Mustangs, growing up in the ’90s,” Deal said. “Then you get to your 30s and 40s, you can buy things you wanted when you were young.”
Heather Warthen, 43, and Chris Hynes, 39, came up to Detroit from Aurora, Ill. to see RADwood. Warthen said she’s not a big car person, though Hynes is. She agreed to make the trip so she could dress up, and she made the most of it. In neon green glasses, lightning bolt earrings and a bright red scrunchie pulling her hair into a side ponytail, Warthen said the event reminds her of her youth.
“It hits on the nostalgia, being a child of the ’80s,” Warthen said.
Hynes added on a little bit of car talk: “Eventually, these are going to become the classic cars.”
Eric Laesh, a 44-year-old from Shelby Township, drove his 1985 Cadillac hearse down to Hart Plaza to celebrate the era, earning some funny looks on the highway.
“It rides like a cloud, and it is unbelievably slow,” Laesh said.
He doesn’t get to drive it often — this was his first time bringing it to a show.
“I can’t daily drive it. It’s too ponderous,” Laesh said. “It would be like taking a freighter out on Lake St. Clair. It’s just preposterous.”
No matter how awkward and silly the cars and culture of the ’80s and ’90s might have been, for Laesh and many others, it’s all about celebrating the time of their youth.
“It’s neat,” Laesh said. “It’s a coming of age for my generation.”
News reporter Liam Rappleye can be reached at LRappleye@freepress.com
Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.