If you ask anyone where the car capitol of the world is, they’re bound to say Los Angeles, right? What makes LA great? Is it the year-round driving roads, the thousands of hot rod shops, or the wide variety of cars and enthusiasts? If you listen to Los Angelinos, anyway, they’ll say that the car culture there can’t be beat. But surely it can, right? I’ve been to hundreds of places that can put up a fight for the title of best car culture city, but which one is actually the best? And what are the criteria?
Surely proximity to good roads and good weather are high up on the list, but the traffic, anti-modification legal system, and taxes of LA have to be huge points against it, right? And to make matters worse, there’s no good race track within an hour for your track day shenanigans.
I’ve had great experiences with cars in the San Francisco Bay Area, but again the taxes and cost of living are astronomical. Phoenix, Arizona is also pretty great, but the summer heat is unbearable and the traffic is getting worse every day. They don’t call Detroit The Motor City for nothing, how about that? Or Austin, Texas? Maybe Atlanta? Daytona? Seattle? And that’s before you start considering places outside of the U.S. Surely London, Stuttgart, Yokohama, or Cape Town have to be worthy of consideration? Consider this anecdote; Paris is the only city where I’ve seen a street-parked Lamborghini Espada.
So throw your pick down in the comments below and we’ll have a nice calm conversation about it. Do you live in a car paradise that nobody knows about? Let us know so we can tell the world and all of the car dorks, myself included, can move there. Quit gatekeeping, nerd!