If you’re not familiar, The Race of Gentlemen, or T.R.O.G. for short, is one of the coolest automotive events ever conceived. An annual drag race on the beaches of southern New Jersey, this gathering is exclusively reserved for traditional, 1950s-style hot rods and classic motorcycles. An interesting story, here’s a little bit about how it all got started. Keeping Traditional Hot Rodding Alive Conceived of by Mel Stultz as a way of expressing his love of traditional hot rods, the inaugural T.R.O.G. was held fairly recently, back in 2012. Just 15 cars and an equal number of motorcycles participated in the event. Despite the low number of vehicles, as reported by Hagerty, more than 3,000 people showed up to the race despite there being no internet announcements or social media posts. As Stultz told Hagerty in an interview, all they did was put out a few paper flyers. Adrift in his early years with no real sense of direction, Stultz eventually joined the U.S. Marines, though he didn’t enjoy his time there. After his service, which ended shortly before the Gulf War, he remained somewhat adrift, before eventually discovering his true passion: traditional hot rods, an antidote to the shiny, expensive and far-too-precious street rods so many folks were building at the time. After discovering his passion, Stultz learned as much as he could about building these classic cars. Duncan Rawlinson via Flickr He loved these custom machines, but the idea of sitting around at car shows doing next to nothing was no fun, so Stultz turned his passion into action. T.R.O.G. is an offshoot of an earlier event called Jalopy Jump and Jive that was hosted at a local bar, though this event has blossomed into something much, much bigger. “When I came up with the name, I knew I had to pull the wool over some people’s eyes, so The Race of Gentlemen was a way to tell them it wasn’t going to be a roving horde of snarling degenerate car crazies invading a town,” noted Stultz in the story, “We were going to be respectful.” Duncan Rawlinson via Flickr Following some important media coverage, particularly in Hot Rod magazine, T.R.O.G. exploded in popularity. Now, tens of thousands of spectators attend the gathering each October, and more than 200 people participate in the races themselves, folks from all over the world, Europe, Japan and even Australia. Back With A Vengeance After A Near-Death Experience As with most things it seems, T.R.O.G. struggled during the COVID years. As Stultz noted, they had zero sponsors during this time, and barely survived 2021. He even funded the event entirely himself the year after that, though 2022 proved to be a disaster. “We were set up on Thursday, and by Friday, a hurricane arrived,” he said. “Jersey called a state of emergency and shut us down. I lost all my savings and everything I had.” Duncan Rawlinson via Flickr Fortunately, the event was able to spring back in subsequent years, with 2024 being a huge success. And hopefully T.R.O.G. can continue succeeding, because there are precious few events like this one, where traditional hot rods are the stars, and participants race for fun, not the fastest time down the sand. For more details about The Race of Gentlemen, check out the Hagerty article linked below.
Liked by Ryan Walker, Evan White
Liked by Ryan Walker, Evan White
Liked by Ryan Walker, Evan White
