This is one in a series of special Langley Advance Times stories about what to expect at this year’s Langley Good Times Cruise-In, happen Saturday, Sept. 9 in Aldergrove. You can also check out this series in our special keepsake edition hitting the streets on Thursday and available in limited quantity at the car show.
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This year, the Langley Good Times Cruise-In, a show partially devoted to hand-built custom cars and trucks, will include a display of exotic cars.
It will be the first time the Aldergrove version of the show has included a supercars display.
As organizer Braden Ulvild, a new Cruise-In director, put it, it will include “a few seven-figure builds,” of custom one-offs, and sleek marques of exotic cars with familiar names.
When you think about it, and Ulvild has, there are some interesting similarities between the two worlds of exotics, and the custom hot rod the show is known for.
While he views himself as “more of a build-it versus buy-it kind of guy,” Ulvild has an appreciation for the passion and craftsmanship that goes into supercars.
“My car affection is pretty broad,” remarked Ulvild, who used to volunteer with the “Driven Project” charity, which surprises seriously ill children with a convoy of supercars.
READ ALSO: VIDEO: Cool cars provide some automotive magic for Langley City teen
“I grew up around hot rods, I worked in a hot rod shop for years, and so I’ve always had a really deep respect for things that take time and thought and detail, and a lot of these supercar marques, a lot of them do just that,” he told the Langley Advance Times.
“They’re small teams that engineer the greatness of these vehicles – much smaller teams than Ford and GM and Toyota. So it’s really impressive, what these teams are able to do.”
“I mean [they’re] race cars for the road, but they’re also capable of being daily driven,” Ulvild remarked.
The essential difference between hot rodders and exotic car aficionados, in his opinion, is a different balance of performance and aesthetics, the way a vehicle looks.
“I think aesthetics are like 80 per cent in the hot rod space, 20 per cent ‘performance-ish,’ whereas in the supercar space, it’s more 50/50 or 20 percent aesthetic, 80 per cent for performance,” Ulvild estimated.
“We’re pretty lucky to have some very, very big brand names [exotic car marques] owned privately in the area and the Fraser Valley – a huge supercar community,” he said.
Bringing in some from that element to a hot rod show will broaden its appeal, he believes.
“We want a little piece of everything for everybody at the show,” Ulvild said.
Cruise-In president Riccardo Sestito said they were originally looking at displaying the specialized trucks used to transport supercars.
We were going to get one of those big huge trailers that actually does that,” Sestito explained.
“Move cars around like those big [supercar] transporters. That was the original plan, but that failed. So what we’re doing, is we’re going to get some of the supercars, get them out there so people can see.”
READ ALSO: Seniors’ smiles made ‘supercar’ parade through Langley worth it
Have a story tip? Email: dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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