On the Hard Sand at Wildwood, the Old Machines Roar Again

WILDWOOD — There is a particular sound that belongs to the Wildwoods in the first week of October, and it is not the gulls and it is not the surf. It is the low, uneven cough of a ninety-year-old engine turning over on a cold beach, answered a second later by another, and then the two of them tearing off down a strip of hard-packed sand with the Atlantic for a backdrop.

The Race of Gentlemen is back on the beach this weekend, running Thursday through Sunday, and if you have never stood close enough to feel one of these old machines go by, this is the weekend to fix that. The premise is beautifully stubborn: only pre-1934 automobiles and pre-1947 motorcycles are allowed to line up at the water’s edge and race head-to-head, two at a time, down a short course that the tide itself helps measure out. No carbon fiber, no computers. Just hand-built hot rods, leather helmets, and men and women who treat a rusted flathead engine the way other people treat a family heirloom.

Just hand-built hot rods, leather helmets, and men and women who treat a rusted flathead engine the way other people treat a family heirloom.Max Cedar

Race days

Presented by Stultz & Son Productions, the event has turned into one of those rare shore traditions that draws gearheads from across the country and still feels, somehow, entirely local. The racing runs Saturday and Sunday, with gates opening at 8 a.m. both mornings and the cars rolling onto the sand not long after — the start times bending to the tide chart the way everything at the shore eventually does. Sunday adds bracket racing and a ladies-versus-gentlemen showdown that tends to draw the loudest cheers of the weekend.

More than racing

But the racing is only half of it. The days leading in are full of swap meets and live music, and Friday night brings the “Night of the Troglodytes” chopper party over at the Lazy Bass. When the checkered flag is done Saturday, the crowd drifts to the Pig Dog Beach Bar at Morey’s Piers for a post-race party, a bonfire, and the kind of easy talk that happens between people who all showed up for the same strange, wonderful reason.

What I love about it is the same thing I love about this whole island after Labor Day. The crowds thin, the light goes gold and low, and Wildwood gets to be itself again — a working-class resort town with grease under its fingernails and a long memory for the machines that built it. Kids ages 6 to 16 need a ticket; little ones five and under get in free, which is exactly how it should be, because this is a weekend best handed down.

Bring a jacket. Bring your father if you can. And get there early enough to feel the first one go by.

Based on reporting from the Wildwoods tourism office (wildwoodsnj.com) and PhillyVoice.