Long Beach: The Beating Heart of California Car Culture

Long Beach has quietly stolen the crown. A port city known for its skyline and shoreline, it’s become the unofficial home of California car culture — a place where JDM nostalgia, modern builds, and high-octane drifting and racing overlap in the same grid of streets and parking lots.

Over a single week, I found myself at the heart of it all — the Japanese Classic Car Show, Larry Chen’s own Type S Night Lights event and Formula Drift Long Beach 2 — three events that, together, felt like chapters in a story about where California car culture is, and where it’s going.

We start at JCCS. The Japanese Classic Car Show, while not in Japan, feels like a pilgrimage for any diehard fan of JDM cars, especially the classics. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the famed showcase.

Think of it as an annual, single-day, living museum by the sea, where the past still idles softly in the background. The air at Marina Green, along Long Beach’s famous Shoreline Drive, smells like ocean salt and old fuel; conversations drift between carburetors and rusted body restoration, alongside acai bowls and tacos.

Under a crisp fall sun, the lineup stretches like a time machine — from meticulously restored ‘Hakosuka’ Nissan Skylines to sleeper Datsun 510s, from first generation Honda Civics to some of the latest cars from Japan. Every badge and decal feels intentional, preserved and respected.

But what makes JCCS special isn’t just the cars, it’s the crowd. Generations overlap here. You’ll see a kid barely tall enough to peer over a fender staring at a 1969 Datsun Z, while next to him, someone in their seventies explains to said kid how they bought one brand new out of high school. Every conversation sounds like a shared secret — part nostalgia, part admiration, part identity. It’s where everyone can share their passion for old Japanese cars.

I’d missed the past few years, so it was nice to stop by, explore the cars, and catch up with some friends. I rarely get the opportunity to ‘check out’ from work mode and enjoy car culture at a more leisurely pace. This event was a solid reason for that, but of course with camera in hand.

If JCCS is where car culture remembers its roots, Type S Night Lights is where it breathes in the present day. Just days after JCCS, Larry Chen’s Type S Night Lights flips that JDM nostalgia into neon lights, right across the street at the Long Beach Convention Center’s parking structure. The lot transforms into a place that could be mistaken for something in Tokyo — low cars idling under sodium lights, reflections stretching across the pavement, music bleeding into the hum of engines.

After visiting Japan and seeing its underground meets, Larry wanted to recreate something like that in the US. It just so happened that the Convention Center parking structure had the perfect vibe to house Larry’s vision. It also just so happened that the city of Long Beach loved the idea of hosting this ‘underground’ style meet in the middle of their city, and on a weekday night.

Despite being officially sponsored by the city of Long Beach, the atmosphere felt distinctly anti-establishment. Less corporate showcase, more curated chaos. You got the sense that every car was built to be photographed under streetlights. S15 Nissan Silvias, B20 engine-swapped Hondas, slammed Lexus GSs and even a few American muscle cars in the bunch — all parked with intention, like an open-air gallery of individuality.

All that flavor came from the very purpose of the event, serving as the Formula Drift pre-meet. It’s also the reason why it drew out most of the pro drift cars and drivers. It was the perfect opportunity to not only enjoy the Japanese-inspired meet, but to also hang out and chat with the top drivers of the FD grid.

The added cherry on top of the meet was an interview panel with Sung Kang to discuss his latest movie: Drifter. For those of you who are unaware, Sung has jumped head first into our world of car culture.

From various collaborative builds to his latest Datsun Z, he’s fully accepted us as we’ve accepted him. He’s been working on this movie for the last two-ish years and, along with Larry and a few others, hosted a surprise panel to briefly discuss the movie, with his core fans in attendance.

Night Lights is cinematic, but unfiltered. The sound of turbos spooling mixed with laughter and camera shutters echoed throughout the meet. There’s that brief moment — standing between a row of glowing taillights and underglow — when Long Beach didn’t feel like California at all. It felt like a different city, one that borrowed a little bit of Tokyo’s soul for the night.

Then came the roar… Formula Drift Long Beach 2 is the exclamation point on the city’s identity — high-decibel, tire-shredding precision right on Shoreline Drive, which also happens to be right next to the parking structure that hosted Larry’s meet.

For those of you who don’t follow the series, FD starts its season in Long Beach, the weekend before the famous Long Beach Grand Prix in April every year. The GP also happens to be the largest event in the city, the largest Indycar race outside of the Indy 500, and has a long history with the area that can be an entire article on its own – but I’ll save that for another time.

With the famous House of Drift – Irwindale Speedway – now gone, Long Beach stepped up to host the season finale. With a new layout, everyone came into the event with a huge question mark over their heads, wondering if the event was going to hold up to the legacy that the original Long Beach track has. All that was whisked away as soon the cars hit the track.

You can feel the crowd’s pulse sync with the throttle — every initiation, every smoke trail was a visual reminder that this culture, while polished in some corners, still lives for the rawness of performance. The grandstands rumbled, cameras snapped, and somewhere in the smoke was the realization that Long Beach isn’t just hosting car culture — it’s fueling it. Larry will have an article more heavily focused on Formula Drift Long Beach 2 coming up, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

By the end of the week, it was clear: Long Beach has become California’s true home of car culture. The city doesn’t just celebrate it — it embodies it. And right now, it’s where California’s automotive heartbeat is loudest.

Also, the cops here are cool…so don’t make life hard for them.