09/28/2026
Just a thought this morning…
I’ve been into cars and trucks my whole life. My dad and uncles all came from the muscle car era. Even my mom had a big-block Chevelle.
Most of my family got caught up in the lifted 4x4 craze of the ’80s, and as a kid, if it had wheels, I was ready to go. Drag races, hill climbs, three-wheeler races, riding three-wheelers at a place we called Gun Point, truck and tractor pulls, mud bogs, monster truck events—you name it. If somebody was going, I wanted to be there.
Once I turned 16, I got really into the mini-truck scene. I still love mini trucks and the lowered-truck crowd to this day. I was never really into the import/“ricer” scene myself, but I always enjoyed checking out what people built.
Something I hear a lot now is, “The car scene just isn’t like it used to be.”
And to some extent, that’s true. But everything changes over time.
What I remember most about the late ’90s and early 2000s mini-truck and import scenes was that we built what WE liked.
We weren’t afraid to paint interior pieces some crazy color. We’d put colored wire loom on everything under the hood. We lowered trucks so much we couldn’t get over a speed bump. We’d bag a truck without really having a clue what we were doing, figure it out along the way, and somehow make it work.
Was everything tasteful? Absolutely not. 😂
But it was ours.
That brings me to the point I’ve been thinking about.
One of the few automotive communities today that reminds me of that old-school car culture is the Jeep community.
Jeeps aren’t really my thing, but I get it.
I can see a completely stock Jeep with different-colored door handles and hinges, a name across the hood, a few accessories bolted on—and the owner absolutely loves it.
It doesn’t have to cost $50,000. It doesn’t have to have the “right” wheels. It doesn’t have to follow whatever the internet says is cool this week.
They’re just making it theirs.
And maybe that’s what some of car culture has lost.
Back then, we weren’t building vehicles hoping strangers on the internet would approve. We were building them because WE thought they were cool.
Maybe the car scene doesn’t need to be exactly like it used to be.
The car scene "back then" was different than the generation before.
Maybe we just need to get back to building what we like, having fun with it, and not caring so much about what everybody else thinks.
That's the beauty of things like this. It's ever evolving.
Just my thought of the day.
