Cars & Coffee—How it All Began

Written by Stephen VamVaketis

When I purchased my 1991 NSX in September 2008, I had never heard of Cars & Coffee (C&C). Buying my first “special” car was about to unleash a pent-up passion.

While sitting down with the seller and drafting a sales agreement, he mentioned a local weekly car meet held at the Irvine Spectrum area. After much searching on the Internet, I finally found the website ‘online.carsandcoffee.info’ and the Irvine C&C forum. Virtually every Saturday from 7-9 am, some 500+ display cars enter the north parking lot of the former Ford West Coast Motor Company headquarters. The Mazda headquarters is right there, too.

The genesis of C&C originated in Atlanta, Georgia in May of 2001 and eventually spread to California. The very first C&C event took place in the parking lot of a Roswell, Georgia Coffee House, so that pretty much explains the name. This unique car meet-up caught on when exotic, classic, and sport car owners throughout Atlanta would wake up early in the early morning hours. Upon arriving, they would park their rides, grab a cup of coffee at the Georgia Coffee Shop, and stroll around viewing what others had brought. Car owners found that sipping coffee bean brew with other car enthusiasts was a nice way to start the day. Irvine California and a few other cities across the USA embraced this fun tradition.

For California, this phenomenon began in Huntington Beach years before C&C came to be. In 1986, a few guys with hot rods and muscle cars began meeting at a local donut shop early Saturday morning. This 6:00 am meeting became a regular social event. Word got out to other car owners as car culture is huge in SoCal. Spectator traffic grew from those simply driving by and wanting to check out the cool cars. Over time, the parking lot on the northeast corner of Adams and Magnolia became filled with some 200 cars, trucks, and motorbikes of all kinds, from hot rods to classics. The owner of the donut shop came up with the name “Donut Derelicts” which is still going strong and remains a favorite car meet-up.

In 2003, a couple of guys who had been attending Donut Derelicts decided they needed a change. Mark Greeley and Bob Cheatley loved meeting with their fellow car buddies every Saturday, but the 4 am wakeup time was getting to be a pain. The drive from South Orange County was taking a toll, too. The rather modest strip mall location, weathered parking lot surface, and speed at which the lot filled up led them to search for another place to drive their exotic cars to. They decided to meet a little later in the morning at the newly opened Crystal Cove Promenade right along the iconic Pacific Coast Highway. Situated right at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, this high-end retail development offered stunning panoramic views and a sprawling parking lot. The onsite Starbucks provided the coffee. Little did Mark and Bob know this would eventually grow to be one of the most talked about exotic and classic car gatherings on the planet. Soon, weekly gatherings of 50 cars swelled to over 200 cars. Exotics such as Ferrari and Lamborghini were well in attendance, many from local dealerships. However, the show became plagued with a fair amount of commercial showcasing. The beginning of the end for Crystal Cove was when local residents complained of the noise from engine start-ups and some who couldn’t resist a high-speed flyby. The local police clamped down. Growing congestion led to the Irvine Company imposing parking restrictions, which effectively ended the event. For SoCal C&C to survive, another location needed to be found.

Ford steps in offering its nearby campus adjacent to the upscale Irvine Spectrum. John Clinard, Ford’s Regional Manager of Public Relations and classic car owner and enthusiast, was the principal driver of the event. Before dawn on Saturday October 21, 2006, Ford opened the Premier Automotive Group and Mazda North American Operations campus to “Croissant Derelicts”. It was a stunning success with over 350 cars on display. The name eventually changed to Cars & Coffee and became an amazing car event spectacle.

This most favorite C&C event continued for years but eventually was shut down. It met its demise under similar conditions as did Crystal Cove with local residents complaining about the noise. But C&C would not die. Like cutting off the end of a tree limb many similar events sprouted from the keen interest in C&C spreading to many other locations.