Woo e� AT THE OCEAN FESTIVAL
The woodie car design is a staple of Southern California. Photo: Eric Heinz
SoCal Staple
WOODIE CARS ARE ICONIC AND ON DISPLAY AT THE OCEAN FESTIVAL BY MATT CORTINA
Somewhere along the way, the “woodie” became an icon of Southern California. It’s no wonder then that the car will be on full display for the 24th consecutive year at the Ocean Festival this year. Gary Clark, of the Southern California Woodie Club, said over a dozen of the club’s members will be making the trip to San Clemente to show off their woodpaneled cars. But the love affair that the region has with the style goes back decades. “It started back in the ’60s,” Clark said. “For the surfers, this was the cheapest, best vehicle that we could find to take our surfboards to the beach. They were only $200, some of them.” Soon, the woodie became an active part of the act of surfing, Clark said. “We’d take the backseats out and throw those away and then sleep in there at the beach waiting for the sun to come up,” he said. “We’d sometimes get tot he beach at 4 or 5 (a.m.) and sleep until the morning.” The woodie itself came to be way before it took off in California, though. In 1925, Henry Ford bought 760,000 acres of maple tree forest to use for the bodies of his cars, Clark said. That special modeling has made the woodie design unique by modern standards. But combined with the design falling out of favor after the ’60s, it also made the car a pricey collectible—one sought after by baby boomers in the last few decades who want a piece of SoCal nostalgia. “There was a resurgence in the desire for the cars, and of course they started going up in price. Pretty soon (a woodie) needing complete restoration was $10-15,000 (to start), and then by the time you were done, you had $100-150,000 and so the cars became quite pricey,” said Clark, who owns Woodies USA, a woodie retailer in Laguna Niguel. But assuming you don’t want to fork over the dough to own one, you can check out the woodies at the Ocean Festival from 8:30 a.m.-2:45 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday at the Pier. Clark says the reaction from people who view his group’s shows is always the same. “It’s very seldom you’ll see a frown associated with someone meeting a woodie wagon,” he said. “People are giving us the thumbs up and the shaka sign. Everybody loves these cars, and everybody has a story.”