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As Holt remembers, “you felt indestructible and untouchable when you were younger, but the sound of crunching metal would put you in your place.” Coupled with the noise of roaring engines, the perceived risk to pedestrians, and the occasional collision, the ‘boy racer’ culture soon became a byword for anti-social behavior, which often left its teenage drivers in high-risk situations.ĭan Anslow, an ex-staffer of Max Power and the co-founder of the online community MAXERS, concurs. The problem was that, at such a young age, drivers seldom had the ability to control the cars they had so finely tuned.
I didn’t know what they were talking about, but it was fascinating when you hear them talk – they were poets, but they wouldn’t have known it.” “You’d stand with the boys around bonnets, listening to them talking about their engines: they might as well be talking in a different language. “It was a place to congregate, to share ideas,” he remembers. Holt spent many nights attending cruises with his friends. Hundreds of teenagers would assemble on the motorway, before finding a spot to line up their cars: a remote suburb, perhaps, or the Southend seafront. “You’d stand with the boys around bonnets, listening to them talking about their engines: they might as well be talking in a different language… they’re poets, but they wouldn’t know it.”īringing this all together were privately-hosted events, colloquially known as cruises. It was just as important as music and clothing.” We always say at the museum that it was the scene, styles, and sounds that make youth culture, but it’s also what you drive. “It was an outlandish, cartoonish period of time. “The peacocking element of it all peaked in the South,” he adds. “There’s a working-class culture that comes from these areas - places such as Essex, where there’s a lot of aspiration,” explains Jamie Brett, a car tuning fanatic and now the creative projects manager for the Museum of Youth Culture. It exploded, particularly, in England’s Home Counties semi-rural, suburban areas set just outside of London, including Essex, Kent, and Hertfordshire. The automotive world – which had previously seemed reserved for middle-aged men – became simultaneously aspirational and subversive. In the early 2000s, cult magazines and early incarnations of the Fast & Furious franchise spurred a new generation of high-octane enthusiasts. “In the night, when the headlights are on, the bodywork gleams, the smell of petrol and the smoke of tires, the injection of drum‘n’bass as someone opens their car door… I get goosebumps now even thinking about what it was like,” Holt says. Remember: this was a pre-Instagram and TikTok era, when teenagers had little else to do to escape their parent’s watchful eyes. When you’re that age, there’s nothing more adrenaline-fuelled.” I couldn’t believe it: I sat in the back of this car, a Nicky Blackmarket mix blared through the sub in the back seat, reverberating through my body, as we hurtled through.
“They were going to a nightclub and asked if I wanted to jump in. “One of my earliest memories is my brother’s friend’s Seat Ibiza – it had smoked lights at the back,” recalls John Joseph Holt, editor of LAW magazine.
The scene and everything that came with it – plumes of tire smoke, bass thumping into the early hours, modified cars decorating your local industrial park – was endorphin-inducing for the crowd that called this their chosen family. But it was also a place for people of all ages to come together over a shared passion for cars. They both documented and inspired a short-lived, but vastly influential subculture of young automotive fanatics.Ģ0 years ago, the modified car scene – and those within it, who were branded as “Boy Racers” by sensationalist tabloid media – was rife, frivolous, and hedonistic. The glossy pages were hidden from conservative parents, and instead were ogled over between friends in the back of someone’s first car – one which was complete with go-faster stripes and an oversized exhaust, in an eager, if misdirected, attempt to impress girls. Racer Media & Marketing, Inc., 17030 Red Hill Avenue, Irvine, CA 92614, their height, these publications were a cornerstone of British adolescence. Your use of this website constitutes acceptance of our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any form without prior authorization. All contents copyright © 2023, Racer Media & Marketing, Inc.
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