Hiraeth and Hot Rods: Chasing New Nostalgia at Vintage Drag Races

Whenever I return from a weekend away at a hot rodding show I find it difficult to explain how the event went. Often it will take me several seconds, unintentionally holding the other person hostage in a sphere of silence while I silently scroll through my mind, grasping at words that just don't carry the adequate amount of enthusiasm to fully describe how I feel. How can you describe to them the hum of an unseen electricity in the air, or the weight of an aura created by a 90 year old stitched together bucket of steel racing flat out underneath the hazy glow of buzzing drag strip lights ? I often can only respond with “ You just have to be there and feel it, nothing I can say will do it justice”. As I sit here with my feet up , nursing a slew of sore muscles, following another great weekend of vintage drag racing I can’t help but ask myself … Why do we do it ???

Jeff Bettencourt from Black Cat Racing Division at North East Vintage Drags 2026

The Welsh have a word that doesn’t translate directly into English, -“Hiraeth is a Welsh noun that translates roughly to a deep, bittersweet yearning or homesickness. It is famously considered "untranslatable" because it carries a profound mixture of nostalgia, grief, and longing for a home, time, or person that either no longer exists or never was, specifically focusing on a place that can not be returned to.”- as defined by a quick google search. Traditional hotrods and the culture surrounding it feels like a love letter we have written on the wind, in a romantic attempt to marry the past with the present, wrestling with the dichotomy of attempting to return to a home we may never know again but also refuse to let fade into obscurity.

Hot rodding to me feels like a slurry of historical archeology and anthropology translated by horsepower and sun faded patinas. We dig through overgrown fields , sift through dilapidated barns , or if we are lucky stumble across an old man protecting a hoard of rare speed parts he’s collected over his life time like a dragon coiled at the top of a mountain of gold, in the hopes that we find the next perfectly shitty ancient relic to add to our cars. Much like a wizard scouring through ancient tomes we pine through old magazines and photos using them like a Rosetta Stone to decipher what our project car is trying to tell us , convinced the answer to what tail light it or intake manifold to run is just behind then next turn of a page. An honorable and unending quest for, what Ive come to half jokingly call, a “New Nostalgia”.

Jeff Gillen from Kingpins Racing Division at North East Vintage Drags 2026

These vintage drag racing events and car shows act like a lighthouse to us weary sailors lost in a foggy sea of Hiraeth , giving us a safe harbor to all set our compasses to. Growing up in the dirt track racing scene I assumed all racing was the same, close guarded secrets and strategies laced with subterfuge in hopes to gain half a second of competitive edge or that secret shock combination to let you turn in at the last moment and still have the bite you need to stay out of the turn four catch fence. But that isn’t the case in the vintage hot rod community in my experience. I have seen competitors take parts off of their perfectly fine working cars to install them on someone else’s car in a desperate attempt to help them get one or two more hot laps in before the sun goes down.

The companionship and comradery you find in this community transcends the three days of a long weekend on your summer calendar. It fosters an unmistakeable and immediate kinship with some of the best people you will find around. The bug bit me so hard I immediately traded my ‘74 Nova the second I got back from my first show for a channeled ‘30 model A coupe project, in turn triggering a detective-like dedication of my own to late night eBay part shopping and instagram virtual swap meet picking.

Now if you don’t mind, allow me to return to carving out my own little piece of Hiraeth and I in turn challenge you to start chasing your own…

-Danny Bing

Danielle Day Kingpins Racing Division at Northeast Vintage Drags 2026