Last week, Durham Meets hosted a peaceful ‘park & chill’ car meet in the east end Toronto suburb of Pickering. Somewhere between 300 to 400 cars showed up for the small meet, strategically held between the highway and some closed for the weekend big-box stores. An ideal location.
This week Ontario Car Scene and DriftCvlture collaborated for a car meet in the west end Toronto suburb on Mississauga. With more than 1,500 gearheads in attendance, it was a completely different vibe. Despite the organizers best efforts, knuckleheads revving their engines, shooting flames and doing burnouts had the crowd cheering, but brought an early end to the night.
Some of the cool cars at the meet included a slammed BMW M4 on BBS wheels, a VIP-style Toyota Century, and a widebody Subaru BRZ with an electric blue wrap.
Retro rides included a yellow Porsche 944, a 1989 BMW 328 with a Chevy V8 swapped in, an unrestored NA Mazda Miata and (of course) a 1992 Subaru SVX on air suspension.
Despite the car meet being absolutely dominated by imports and ‘tuner culture’ one brave old-timer showed up in a candy apple red 1959 Ford Thunderbird with a cream hardtop. The looks on the faces of the youngsters told the story; they had no idea what they were even looking at. The T-Bird may as well have been from a different planet.
Domestics did make up a small portion of the show, though. A Ford Focus RS rally car, a stock little red C8 Corvette, a mango Mustang and a big , lifted Dodge Ram ‘Warlock’ truck showed there’s more to the car scene than Audis and BMWs.
As sun set, the crowds got bigger, and the hooligan behaviour started in earnest.
A couple brave ones got on the roof of the ice-cream truck, forcing the DJ to turn down the music a couple times to ask the crowd to maintain some semblance of order. That was a tall order.
Some of these Mississauga area meets are held in parking lots of shuttered stores. This one was in an industrial plaza filled with body shops and a high-end used car dealer. The businesses were gracious enough to provide an indoor showroom for some of the nicer cars, space for a variety of vendors, and facilities for the crowd. It was actually quite civilized.
After sunset, things got wild. Under cover of darkness cars continued to arrive including a yellow Ferrari and a white Lamborghini with a crazy body kit. Once these guys started revving their V12 engines to redline, the modified Subaru WRXs that had kept quiet all night started 2-stepping and shooting off flames. If Richie Rich can do it, why not the rest of us?
It’s important to note that despite 1,500 people at the meet, there were no security guards, no police presence (until the end) and no fights or drama. Its just that after the sun goes down, those Alpha males and females just can’t help themselves. The police won’t ignore noise by-laws, and once the tire smoke fills the air you just know the end is near.
Just after 10:00 pm, the DJ cut the music and unceremoniously announced that the meet was over. Police were going to clear the parking lot, so it was time to go home. While everyone started up their engines to leave, they didn’t go quietly. Just check out this video to see how the night ended.