South OC Cars and Coffee!

I haven’t been able to attend a Cars and Coffee in a couple months now and decided to drive up to San Clemente to attend South OC Cars and Coffee this past weekend! This is considered one of the best C&C in SoCal with many different types of cars from all eras.

I’ve been meaning to make it a point to head out to more C&C, meets, and car shows to take photos and document the car culture we have here in SoCal. My one personal goal is put myself out there more to shoot photos and film content for the blog!

The RS 6 Avant GT was absolutely nuts to see in person. This was spotted in the parking lot far away from where all the cars normally park in. This is a limited edition car with a price tag that starts north of $236,000! It was built as a homage to the Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO race car! Audi plans to build only 660 examples of these!

The Hakosuka was probably my favorite car this week at the event! Seeing one of these in person is such a treat in a sea of supercars at the meet. If I had unlimited funds, it would be buying this car in a heartbeat.

Quick photodump of cars I thought were pretty cool. This is what basically shows up every weekend at C&C here. Lots of crazy modified cars to stock cars show up to this meet… which brings me to my next point that is a little controversial…

The gatekeeping that happens at this C&C is absolutely wild to me. There’s essentially two parking lots separated by a aisle way and a worker directs cars to turn right into the parking lot pictured above or lets them go straight ahead to the other side of the lot.

From my observations and attending these shows, it seems like their judgement on who goes straight vs who turns right is all over the place. I don’t think they should gatekeep on cars coming in. I understand you want to keep all the Hypercars together, that’s fine. But for everyone else, you’re basically saying your car isn’t “good enough” to get into the main parking lot and you can park in the overflow lot instead. What’s weird to me though is sometimes they let random cars through to the main lot. I’ve seen a 100% stock C6 Corvette come through while right behind it, a highly modified GTR R32, is sent over to the overflow lot? Why is that?

I only bring this up because I feel like the gatekeeping is particularly done to cars that are “modified” in a certain way. I don’t know about you but it seems easy enough if you come to the event enough to know what side a Porsche 911 would be sent to vs what side a stanced out car would go. But also don’t get me wrong, I’ve also seen a mix of slammed cars in the main lot also while also seeing high dollar builds like the 3 GTR’s above in the overflow lot.

I’ve reached out to South OC Cars and Coffee and am waiting for them to respond. I’m also wanting to know what are your guys and girls thoughts on the gatekeeping that happens at certain C&C? Is it justified? Should any car be parked in the main lot? Or is it justified the way they are directing cars? I’ve also been to other C&C where it is first come gets the best spot. The cars and coffee in Rancho Santa Fe is like that. Come early enough and you get a parking spot in the main street. Come late, you park in random streets a couple blocks away.