Hello, Kansas City. Welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast, your number one go-to for all your Kansas City car detailing needs, all your Kansas City car detailing services and packages that you might need on one of your vehicles. Thomas will literally work on anything from a van to a boat to a car to a supercar to whatever.
He even worked on a car the other day that was in the process of being restored but just needed a general cleaning, but it wasn’t a… Plane? You can do a plane, like he will literally do anything. Today, we’re gonna be talking about car culture and its community. Are you ready? Oh, are we gonna talk about how car culture’s dead? Because it is.
Oh, well, I was gonna talk about something different but we can add that to it. Let’s talk about it. Number one, how did you, Thomas Till, first get plugged into car culture? You know, I would say that I was probably 16 or 17 and I was hanging out at a car wash.
Just got done cleaning my car on a Friday night and these guys from a small town, I grew up in a small town that was far away from any big town. So we lived in the big town of all the small towns. So the town that I grew up in had the only car wash.
So other people from these small towns would come, they’d drive 30 minutes just to use the car wash. And so a kid with a Mustang showed up and then a kid with an Eclipse showed up and another kid with a Scion FR-S showed up and we made a little car group that we met every Friday night and that was just kind of like the thing that we did. That was the first time I experienced car culture and I would say that’s when car culture was like alive and well.
You know, and I had like a Subaru WRX and someone else had a Scion TC and someone else had like a V6 Mustang. Like it didn’t matter what you had. That’s when car culture was alive because you appreciated the car for what it was, not what the price tag was on it.
And then it just got better. Once I got into street racing, I bought a, when I was 17, I bought a C5 Corvette. They built the motor and I put a 150 shot of nitrous on it.
I started going to the big city to street race. That’s when I kind of got plugged in with like fast cars and when I really started experiencing like real car culture. And you’ve gone from whether it’s a car culture or street racing in a small town to street racing in a big city to meeting people that own million dollar cars and they get together and go on rallies.
So you had a wide range of car culture. There is and there’s so many different types of car culture. I mean, there’s car culture that I know nothing about that I don’t want to be a part of, like the stance groups.
I have no interest in being a part of that group, but there are people that that is like their whole life are stance groups and JDM clubs. And you got the drift guys and you’ve got guys that all they talk about is drifting. There’s so many different types of car communities within the car community.
You’ve got the guys with exotic cars that go on rallies and you’ve got the guys that street race cars that are less than $50,000. And there’s just, you know, I would say the group that I feel most a part of even though I’ve done the exotic car rallies is the group of people that go street race. That’s more my crowd.
That’s more my. What you’ve been used to so far. Yes.
That’s like, I can sink into that group of people easily. What’s one misconception people have about car guys? I would think is one thing I would have thought if you have a car, it means you work on the mechanically. I didn’t know that like, that wasn’t part of car culture is like, you like manually, you know, have a garage built and you work on your own cars.
You would think that if you were a car guy, you worked on your car? Yeah. That’s a misconception I would have had. And I would actually tell you that I am an anomaly to that.
Most people that I know that are car guys do work on their car. I don’t mechanically work on vehicles because I don’t have the patience to do it. Most of my friends do work on their own car.
I think once you get into the higher end vehicles that are like $80,000 plus, that’s when, you know, you start paying a shop to work on it. But misconceptions, I would say one of the biggest misconceptions is if you’re a car guy, you’re financially well off. I can’t tell you how many times people thought that I was like rolling in the dough because I had a Corvette.
It’s like, no, I’m broke because I have a Corvette. Like, it’s not a flex. This is just what my net worth is tied up in.
I would say that’s a big one. Next question. What’s one car event that everyone should experience at some point in their life? Like, would it be? Ice cream cruise.
Ooh, nice one. Ice cream cruise is the car event. My best friend puts it on.
It’s the largest car automotive festival in the world. So it’s basically like, have you ever seen like music festivals? It’s like the, okay. It’s not spiritual like this, but have you ever heard of Burning Man? Heard of it, but I don’t know much about it.
Okay. Burning Man is like a festival where people camp out and like all they do is like, it’s weird, it’s spiritual. That’s like a music festival.
Ice cream cruise. Has kind of turned into a car event. It’s got all different types of car culture.
So you’ve got car shows. Then you’ve got drifting. Then you’ve got burnout contests.
Then you’ve got drag racing that’s heads up. Then you’ve got roll racing. You’ve got road course.
All in one weekend. People from all over. People, this year we actually drove by when we were on our way to South Dakota.
We just barely missed it. They had just ended it when we were on our way back. There were people that brought cars in from Australia to go to Ice Cream Cruise.
I mean, it is a huge event. And what’s crazy is Kyle started it out as a, it was called Ice Cream Cruise because he just had a bunch of friends meet up at Brahms in Omaha. Oh wow.
And it just kept growing. And as his YouTube channel grew, more and more people started coming. So I worked the event as a staff member.
And then I would work as a staff member to get free admission. And then I would ditch my duties and just end up racing people. But there for a while I had an ice bear.
I actually want to get another ice bear. But I had an ice bear that I would throw in the back of my Z06 and I would drive it to Ice Cream Cruise. I’d pull my ice bear out and I would like roll around on my little ice bear.
What’s an ice bear? I’ll show you a picture of one in a second. Is it like a stuffed animal? I’ll show you one. I want to get another one.
They’re really fun. But it’s just, it’s a festival of car guys. And you can show up.
It’s like the last true car event where you can show up with anything and have fun. You know, I couldn’t buy a $5,000 Mustang GT and go to a car event here and feel significant. I could go to Ice Cream Cruise and have a blast.
So Ice Cream Cruise is the event. And I’m not just promoting it because the guy who puts it on is a good friend. Like I love that event.
I can’t wait to go back with a fun car. It’s so much fun. Just last question in our last minute, less than a minute.
How has car culture changed over the years? Social media, I feel like has ruined car culture because when you are proud of your, when you’re proud of your $25,000 Corvette that you saved and paid for and you think it’s a Ferrari and then you go on social media and you see that there’s a kid that was 19 years old and his dad bought him a $300,000 Porsche, ruins it for you. And social media has kind of made that more in your face. When I bought my Corvette when I was 17, I literally, it felt like I bought a Ferrari.
And I actually wouldn’t want to buy the same type of Corvette that I bought when I was 17 because it would feel too, I don’t know, not cool enough. But at one point that car felt insane that I owned. I think social media has ruined car culture because it’s kind of turned into, excuse my language here, but like a dick swing contest.
And it’s turned into like who’s got the fattest wallet when you don’t have to have a lot of money to have fun with a car. Yeah. I mean, I miss the days where you could buy a $3,000 car and have fun with it and not care about what other people thought.
Yeah. So if somebody’s wanting to get ahold of you for Kansas City Car Detailing Services or Kansas City Car Detailing Package, how would they go about doing this? The best way to get ahold of me for any of our Kansas City Car Detailing Packages or services is to call 620-282-0402. You can also go online to BespokeRefinement.com. There you can check out a list of all of our different Kansas City Car Detailing packages and services that we have to offer the Kansas City area.