It’s not often that the second-to-last of something gets commemorated. It isn’t called “The Penultimate Supper,” after all. But, this past Saturday was the first Cars & Coffee where everyone attending knew the bad news — after eight years and 400 Saturdays, the legendary weekend cruise-in car show planned to permanently close at the end of December.


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At the exit this Saturday, event organizers distributed flyers, apologizing for the closure and thanking everyone for their patronage. Signs by the bathroom instructed, “Have a great new year!” and announced that next week’s meet-up, scheduled for the 27th, would be the last one. At least we had one more chance to experience the event.

Then, early Sunday morning, CarStories.com received an official press release from Cars & Coffee, explaining that the attendance at the penultimate Cars & Coffee was “unprecedented,” and pushed the organizers to cancel the event one week early. Those who decided to catch up on sleep this past Saturday with hopes of participating in the final gathering next week are out of luck.


So, the next-to-last Cars & Coffee has officially become the ultimate. At this point, any car fanatic who hasn’t attended, won’t, and is probably wondering what all the fuss was about. How was it? As this past Saturday was actually my first time attending, I’ll borrow a description from the organizers: “Overwhelming.”


For example: Cars & Coffee is a place where you can see a very pretty, yellow competition Ferrari of uncertain provenance, lean over to the guy to your left to ask if he knows the model number, and he turns out to be Bruce Meyer. (Bruce knows a bit about vintage Ferraris.) “Oh that’s a 500 TR, it’s Steve Tillack’s car. Nice guy,” Bruce said, as if talking to any other car guy. Next to us, car care maven Barry Maguire was taking selfies with fans. I’m told that Jay Leno was similarly personable during his frequent visits to Irvine.

Ultimately, any great car event is only as good as the cars. Quality speaks for itself. You know that feeling when you recognize a truly special car — that packet of neurotransmitters released when you spot not just an “AMG,” but a “Black Series,” not just an “M” but a “CSL” — “I know what that is,” you think, “that car is super rare….” Well, it seemed like every car at Cars & Coffee came with a similar, top-of-the-line badge (i.e. “M,” “R,” “RS,” “SV,” “QV,” “GTS,” “SVO,” etc.). After a few hours of walking around the event’s three parking lots, strung out on Starbucks and sugary muffins, those neurotransmitters reach peak efficacy, and you’re left just shaking your head in wonder.


And it’s not just the fancy stuff, either. The car that most captured my attention was actually a van — a 700-horsepower custom monster, modified by the students of nearby El Toro High School. The van was chopped, stripped, and slammed. Its license plate read “WHEELIE.” And though it departed the parking lot on the back of a trailer, the high schooler’s van elicited cheers when its engine (borrowed from a Plymouth Duster) fired up, massive belts whipping by. The future of this whole “auto obsession” thing looks pretty bright.


So, if Cars & Coffee is so great, why is it ending?

It’s not, as I was first informed, a result of noise complaints. All these supercars stuck in one place, with high-revving burnouts as the result. I talked with John Clinard, who acts as unofficial custodian of the amorphous weekend meet-up (and spends his weekdays as Ford’s west coast P.R. director) to get the real story. John said that, in all the years at the Irvine location, they’d only received “a handful” of complaints from a nearby apartment complex. “Everyone thinks it’s the hotel,” John said, gesturing to the Courtyard Marriott in the distance, “But they’ve never complained.”


Was it Mazda? Ford? Taco Bell? The three lots used for the event act as corporate parking during the week, but it doesn’t seem like the companies have enough staff working weekends to complain.

No, “We cancelled it,” John explains. “We’ve just grown too big.” I asked how large the gathering was at the beginning, just to get some perspective. “Opening day, we had 350 cars.” John reminded me that the inaugural Cars & Coffee was actually an offshoot of a previous cruise-in near Crystal Cove State Park (which, itself, was an evolution of “Donut Derelicts” in Huntington Beach). Ford offered to relocate the event in 2006, after the owners of pricey condos near Crystal Cove’s parking lot started complaining about howling V10 engines waking them up at 7:00 AM on their days off.


When I asked if John was surprised that the meet-up’s third iteration suffered the same fate, he again shook his head. “The combination of the quantity of the cars, the location… the lack of an entry fee.” No wonder it had outgrown itself. “We’ve spawned nearly 400 other ‘Cars & Coffee’-type events around the world,” he said. This, too, wasn’t much of a surprise — the general concept of a weekend cruise-in is probably about as old as the car itself; Cars & Coffee merely pinned down a time (early morning, Saturday) and offered a bonus beverage, enjoyed by many a gearhead (coffee).

More than the cars, what surprised me was the attendance. For every article I see about how the general public is losing their love of the automobile, for every missive about apathetic millennials, there sure seemed to be a lot of folks willing to wake up early and drive to Irvine this past Saturday. And not just those lucky enough to have a car worthy of exhibition — I’m talking about the people in SUVs and middle-aged Acuras who were just there to look.


To see joyous things they saw: A minimum of three Bugattis, and only one of them was a Veyron (“only”). I saw more E-Type Jaguars drive by than I’ve seen parked at most concours. We’re talking GT-R after GT-R, NSX next to NSX, not to mention the classic Italian metal or the altered Americana. Peak neurotransmitter packets, indeed. I saw fathers walking around in a stupor with their teenage sons in tow, attempting to calculate the value of what was parked in front of them and finally just giving up, saying “Damn.,” and moving on to the next incredible, impossibly expensive machine.


There are just so many lovely distractions. “What’s that?” Oh, it’s a red Porsche 959, driven by one of your photographic idols, Jeff Zwart. You’ve admired his work for years in Road and Track. Bruce is leaving next, in a black ’32 Ford hot rod with yellow checkerboard flames. And that’s Barry Maguire, leaving in his expertly-detailed Chevy. Maybe John Clinard is right — maybe it has grown too big. Still, what’s next?

“Well, I had about six people come up to me this morning and say, ‘let’s talk,’” John said, smiling. “We’ll consider all options.” He has moved the event once before. Rumors about the next location were already starting to circulate. A gigantic church parking lot in Newport Beach was suggested. The debate will likely last throughout the holidays. Wherever the organizers choose, Cars & Coffee is probably destined to be displaced yet again. The idea itself is just too much of an evergreen — waking up early on a weekend to check out some cool cars with your friends. The idea of the cruise-in isn’t going anywhere.


So, farewell, Cars & Coffee Irvine! Hope to see you again in 2015. Who knows where… who cares. We’ll be there.

CarStory & Photos By: Forest Casey - Forest is a researcher in the curatorial department of the Petersen Automotive Museum