40th Annual Wavecrest Woodie Show

Historic Homecoming of Wood-Bodied Cars at the Beach

The surf was the best its been in years here this morning along the Pacific coast in Southern California. This Sunday morning, September 22, 2019, many of the woodie wagons from the Wavecrest Woodie Show gathered for a ceremonial cruise up Historic Hwy 101, from Encinitas to the beach at Oceanside. Every year at 8 AM the cruise to Oceanside begins at the Encinitas City Hall. You have to witness this to get a feel for the excitement of seeing dozens of old wood-bodied cars cruising along Hwy 101. Locals wait for it all year. The cruise skirts Pacific beaches all along the way. The 25-mile cruise is a great opportunity to see these cars in action.

Here is how it looked this morning on the 2019 Cruise To Oceanside: 

Saturday at the Wavecrest Woodie Show

As usual, the early morning overcast skies gave way as the sun shown brightly on the beautiful wood bodied classics on display here at the 2019 Wavecrest Woodie Show. More cars were arriving as we climbed the hill overlooking Moonlight Bay in Encinitas, California where a concourse of woodies was arrayed. First sight of that many woodies all in one place simply takes your breath away. The official record will show that there were 188 wood-bodied cars registered to display on Moonlight Beach this year. 

The annual Wavecrest Woodie Show is the world’s largest All-Woodie Party on the Beach. It is one really laid back event on Saturday, September 21, 2019, from 8 am to 5 pm. The event is sponsored by the San Diego Woodie Club, one of the largest all-woodie car clubs in the country. It is a sanctioned event of the National Woodie Club. 

After the woodies had filled in most of the open spots on the paved concourse area on Saturday morning, the San Diego Woodie Club honored our veterans with a Marine honor guard and flag ceremony. It was nicely done. Pride in America and pride in our heritage. They were all on our minds today. 

Here is how it looked here on Moonlight Beach in Encinitas this morning. 

It is just simply jaw dropping to see so many wood-bodied vehicles on display in one place. Woodie passenger wagons were produced from the 1910’s through the early 1950’s. They are a part of Califonia’s culture because they were the preferred transportation for surfers over the years. Not only were they relatively inexpensive to buy as used vehicles in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but they could easily carry a longboard on the roof. The San Diego Woodie Club observes the lifestyle and the woodie car culture every year at the Wavecrest Woodie Show. Meet and greet starts on Thursday and woodie owners will have events all day on Friday. Then on Saturday morning the main event is the big concourse at Moonlight Beach, historically one of the top surfing venues in California. 

Once again this year, Cars On Line.com is on hand to bring you photos and videos of the Wavecrest Woodie Show for 2019. Woodies will be here from all over the U.S.

Short History of the Woodie Wagon

“It’s An Oldie, But it’s a Woodie” read one of the bumper stickers here in Encinitas as the downtown is filling up with classic Woodie Wagons for the 40th Annual Wavecrest Woodie Show. It was an obvious reference to a Jan and Dean song called “Surf City.” To understand the impact that wood-bodied wagons had on the car culture, you first have to know what place they took in automotive history. 

As the 20th century rolled in, most every form of transportation was framed out of wood … boats, horse-drawn carriages and even planes. It didn’t seem unusual at all back then that wood might be used to frame out the rear of a multi-passenger motorized depot hack. And so the “station wagon” was born. “Hey, Joe, go down to the station and pick up our guests,” the hotel manager would say.

Somewhere along the way, wealthy rural land owners began to think it was trendy to own an out-dorsey looking wood bodied wagon as a utility vehicle around the estate. Ford came out with the first factory made wood-bodied transport around 1929. By the time Chevrolet joined in in 1939 these vehicles were alreay known as station wagons. These wood-bodied station wagons were never profitable for the auto manufacturers. They had to be hand assembled, and the wood was hard to maintain. Yet they stayed in the American rubric until the 1950’s.

It was simply a random happening that the wood-bodied wagons became a cultural icon during the 1960’s. Surfers in California, totally unbeknownst to themselves, brought the wood-bodied wagons back to life. They found that these old wood-bodied utility wagons were very cheap to buy, and they could carry a longboard on top rather easily. Perfect. Along came the Beach Boys, a California rock group that wrote songs about the surfing culture. At that point, the name “woodie” was coined to describe the wood-bodied wagons. Unintended as it were, they became “cool.” The surfers didn’t restore them though. They just tried to keep them running.

According to an article written by Charlie Crowell, the National Woodie Club was organized by Will O’Neil of Hawthorn, California in 1973. Already at that time, woodie owners were organizing to combine their knowledge to preserve these wood-bodied treasures. They could not have known what woodie wagons would mean to car collecting in the 21st Century. Today, fully restored wood-bodied cars, utility vehicles and wagons can command mind boggling prices. Here at the wavecrest woodie show we’ve seen a woodie Rolls-Royce, a wood-bodied Packard Boattail and dozens of woodie buses. Follow this link to read one of our past articles on rare Woodie’s at the Wavecrest Woodie Show.