It should be no surprise to anyone here that I am the modified car fan of the team, never being able to keep my dirty paws away from the work engineers did to stock cars, so of course I like to attend events that showcase how people are using their cars to express their personalities. This Sunday, I got another opportunity, with the Bumper 2 Bumper Carshow happening a stone throw away from my house, and with it, the unofficial starting gun for the summer event season.
For those who haven’t come across it yet, Bumper to Bumper isn’t a local one-off. The B2B Global Vibes brand started 21 years ago in the Philippines, where it built a reputation as one of the biggest and longest running outdoor car shows in Asia. From there it’s spread (stops in Manila continue to anchor the calendar, while the format has been exported to crowds overseas), New Zealand now included. Watching it land in Auckland, you get a real sense of a grassroots show that’s travelled a long way while keeping its DNA: no velvet rope, just builders and their cars, engaging with friends and like minded people, and happy to talk about them.
It’s how these events should be: small enough to feel cozy, easy access, family-friendly, and heaps of people caught between mingling with friends, checking out other builds or producing content. A few aftermarket brands used the opportunity to showcase their products and get their name out there, but I felt like I was walking into a family reunion of sorts.
And, as I become older, I cannot help but wear my rose, community-tinted glasses when it comes down to this. These events are not just about the metal, it’s a pulse check on where the community actually is right now. And I’d say it’s in good health: there was a grassroots touch to this event, and a genuinely strong showing from a younger crowd putting their own stamp on things — which, if you care about where this scene goes next, is the most encouraging sign there is.
If there was a theme to this edition, it was Honda — and specifically, Civics. There was a strong representaton of other Japanese brands and some European and vintage machines, but the turnout skewed hard toward Soichiro’s finest, with examples spanning almost the entire lineage: EG hatches that are now pushing 30 years old parked a few rows from brand-new FL5 Type Rs, with EK, FD2, FK8 and everything in between filling the gaps. One of the standouts of the day has to be a Civic Type R Mugen RR — one of only 300 ever built — sitting there, pretty in red, which for most people there was a first.
It wasn’t just an enthusiast affair, either. Honda New Zealand had a presence on site, and it was a genuinely good one: a drop dead gorgeous NA1 NSX on one side, and the brand’s new Super One on the other, a neat snapshot of where the badge has been and where it’s heading. Credit to them for showing up, and, more importantly, buying into the enthusiasms of the owners. But it also raises another question: if Honda NZ is willing to roll out a car like the NSX in front of a crowd this specifically, enthusiastically Honda-literate, why isn’t there more of this? A tuner focused brand with a back catalogue this deep has an obvious audience turning up to events like this one already. It shouldn’t take a grassroots Filipino car show franchise landing in an Auckland yard to put the two together. More of this, please! And not just once a year.
Bumper 2 Bumper joins other recent events in marking the kickoff of the summer run here, and on this showing, I’m hoping for a strong one. Time to update the calendar, and get to work on that project!
