Cruising the streets of Galway: exploring the car culture and its challenges

Cork City welcomed hundreds of modified vehicles for a car meet over the weekend, two weeks after a similar meet-up took place here in Galway. 

Car meets in Ireland have been an institution for years. They are organized in collaboration with rallies that take place over three to four days, usually on weekends. 

These events take place over “special stages” which are closed roads to the public as well as sections of open road which must be traversed between each stage.

Since people are down for the weekend to come to see their idol competing to produce the quickest time, the amateur people meet at night, in empty spaces to show their modified car, drink and meet new people. 

“The thing I like the most about those meets is the atmosphere of the loud noise and getting to see the different types of cars and meet a lot of new people,” says Alex Elliott, a Galway regular of the car scene. 

“What is cool about meeting people there is that you can go to meets with them in the future afterwards,” he added. 

Behind the organisation of those meets in Galway, there is Conor, a seventeen-year-old Galwegian passionate about cars and the public they gather. 

“It goes along through the family,” said Conor. His dad was also an actual fan of modified cars. 

Conor earns a bit of money with the video and photoshoots of the car he is doing. He created a TikTok account to posts the videos of the cars. 

“TikTok is easier than other social media. It has a bigger visual impact and it is easy to share like this” says the owner of the @officialgalwaycarscene account. 

The account became viral and that is how Conor decided to become the ambassador of Galway car scene. 

On Instagram, he gives the location of the meeting and posts reels of them, bringing a digital dimension to those traditional meetings. 

The last meet in Galway took place during St-Brigid weekend when between 150 and 250 cars where presented each night. 

But even if there has been a huge turnout, especially on Sunday since the Monday was a bank holiday, the guards didn’t forget to keep an eye on what was happening and showed up couple times. 

The car scene : a place where guards and car amateurs don’t like to meet 

In fact, the rallies are planned in advance, but the car meets are most of the time not declared. 

“People going to the car meets at night and people going to the race during the day are very different people”, says Ailish McMonagle, a student at the University of Galway from Donegal where the biggest international rally in Ireland takes place every year. 

With a father who is a huge fan of the rallies, she is annoyed at “people using the event as an excuse to drink.” 

“It gives a bad reputation,” she added.

This bad reputation leads to lot of current interruption by the Gardai during the meets. 

“I try to stay out of it,” Conor said, “but we don’t have a good relationship with them.”  

Usually, the guards check the cars insurance and watch the level of drunkenness of the public to prevent any accident. 

But sometimes, because of the guards’ intervention, “sometimes makes things worse,” according to Conor. 

In fact, these interferences with the state authority can bring a lot of traffic issues, like the last time on Headford Road during the last Galway car meet. 

“We always choose empty spaces and we are not causing traffic,” insists Conor. 

For the future, the 17 year-old-boy would like to make even more videos and that the car car meets become even “more recognised.” 

“If they did gave us a shot, it won’t be as bad as they think,” he said. 

The next rallies will take place in Cork on 15, 16, 17 March 2024 and late June in Donegal, creating new car meets and gathering thousands of car amateurs.