2022 Volkswagen Golf R Adds Drift Mode to AWD

November 05, 2020 – If you thought Volkswagen couldn’t squeeze more juice out of the 2.0 liter turbocharged engine in the Golf R, you’d be mistaken. VW just introduced the 2022 Golf R, and are claiming it is the most powerful production Golf of all time. Some may be disappointed that the standard Golf is no longer available in the US, but this new R is definitely the silver lining.

With its turbocharged 2.0 liter engine, the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R can put out an incredible 315 hp, 27 more than the previous generation. This boost in power, along with an all-new torque vectoring all-wheel-drive system, launch the Golf R to 62 mph in just 4.7 seconds, with a top speed of 155 mph. When it comes to the transmission, all buyers can choose between a six-speed manual transmission or an optional seven-speed DSG.

Every Golf R generation has come standard with AWD, but this new generation boasts something new and improved. A new rear differential distributes power variably between the axles. If you’re ready to slide it through a corner, the system can be put in “Drift Mode”, which allows up to 100 percent of the torque to be sent to the outside wheel. Another driving profile known as “Special” was configured for the Nurburgring. This profile has softer damping settings to make sure the Golf R can maintain maximum contact with the road.

On the exterior, the Golf R gains a new front bumper featuring a motorsport-style splitter. It also features a new daytime running light at the top of the radiator grille, stretching all the way into the fenders. On the rear bumper, a newly designed high-gloss black diffuser can be found. The production will be limited to three colors, including Lapiz Blue Metallic, Pure White, and Deep Black pearl Effect.

The inside of the 2022 Volkswagen Golf R has gone a bit more digital, allowing for more customization within the cockpit, while a 10-inch Discover Pro touchscreen display greets the driver. The driver and passenger seats have also been upgraded to sportier leather seats, along with a heated and multifunction leather sport steering wheel.

Overall, the all-new 2022 Volkswagen Golf R is going to be a force to reckon with. It will go on sale in the US beginning late next year. No price has been announced, but the previous model started just above $40,000.

Old School Cool: All About Air Cooled Engines

It’s an unfortunate reality that internal combustion engines are inefficient, turning more than half of the energy from every drop of fuel burned into waste heat instead of forward motion or sweet, sweet tire smoke. Much of that lost energy goes into the exhaust, but in order to keep things like cylinder heads, pistons, and engine blocks in a temperature range where they can operate reliably, every engine has to have some way to move waste heat away from the metal and into the air.

Air-cooled engines have been around for basically forever; they’re simple, light, and less complicated than liquid cooled designs, and yet aside from some very specific niche applications, it’s hard to find any large-displacement air-cooled engines in production today. In the US market, most people would be hard-pressed to identify any air-cooled car engines other than the one used by VW for decades across their entire model line, from Beetle to Bus, Porsche’s flat-six 911 powerplants, and perhaps the Corvair. In the motorcycle world, air cooling held on for a lot longer, but even BMW and Suzuki eventually gave up on fins in favor of water jackets for their street bikes.

Battle-Tested

As with so many important aspects of piston engine technology we take for granted today, the competition between air and water cooling saw its most intense period of development during the Second World War. The original 1903 Wright Flyer, the first practical aircraft, used a four-cylinder water-cooled engine (although it had no radiator, relying on boiling off its limited supply of water during the short duration it had to run) and during the Great War, both air-cooled rotary engines (no, not Wankels – that’s a story for another time) and liquid cooled inline engines rapidly developed.

By the late 1930s, aircraft engines, which needed to be both light and powerful, had evolved into two basic forms: Watercooled inline or V designs, and air-cooled radials. The legendary Merlin that powered the P-51 Mustang, and the Allison V-1710 that was installed in pairs in the P-38 Lightning were both liquid cooled, while fighters like the Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, and Thunderbolt all had big, round air-cooled radial engines. Neither approach to engine cooling held a clear advantage (as a matter of fact, it was actually possible for the extremely clever radiator or cooling fin ductwork to generate net thrust from waste heat, though the effect was almost too small to measure) and things mostly came down to packaging within the airframe and streamlining. There, the liquid cooled engines had the advantage of a smaller cross-section, versus simplicity and the lack of a vulnerable radiator for the air cooled radials. By war’s end, both types of engines were capable of more or less the same peak power output and had similar power-to-weight ratios.

Cars Aren’t Airplanes Though…

Perhaps the world’s best-known air-cooled engine (and certainly the most widely-produced), the iconic Volkswagen flat four, was conceived during that same tumultuous time as an inexpensive and compact powerplant for Ferdinand Porsche’s “people’s car.” While the design for the Volkswagen Type 1 was set by 1938, it wouldn’t be until a decade later that civilian versions were manufactured in any numbers in post-war Germany. Czechoslovakia’s Tatra had also made a number of air-cooled cars before the war, and continued all the way through the late 1990s (and even still makes air-cooled heavy trucks today) and FIAT and Citroën embraced these kinds of engines in their small, economical post-war vehicles as well.

The only major US domestic manufacturer to put an air-cooled engine into mass production in the modern era was Chevolet, for the 1960-1969 Corvair. These flat-six engines were actually very successful, though the car they were designed for suffered from the first wave of consumer safety activism that would later target Pinto, Audis, and GM trucks for design flaws that made them somewhat more dangerous (though not greatly so) than their contemporaries. Chevy’s air-cooled flat six got thrown out with the bath water, and all subsequent GM engines would rely on liquid cooling.

Of course, it would be impossible to discuss air-cooled auto engines without mentioning the wildly successful Porsche flat-6, which powered the 911 family all the way through the 1998 model year before finally being replaced by a water-cooled design with a similar layout. The ongoing success of that engine family showed that it was certainly possible to create a completely modern, extremely powerful and reliable engine that didn’t need coolant. So why the switch?

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

The dominance of water-cooling in present day automotive engine applications comes down to a few main factors. First, there’s the issue of performance. Though Porsche’s air-cooled flat six (as well as innumerable air-cooled motorcycle engine designs) proved that it’s possible to build engines that are very powerful and reliable without coolant jackets, and more importantly water circulating through the cylinder head, as specific output climbs it becomes harder and harder to control hot spots in the combustion chamber using air cooling alone.

The exhaust valve and port area is one particular trouble spot – without coolant flowing through adjacent passages, it’s hard to move the heat build-up from this area in particular out to the atmosphere, no matter how much cooling fin you throw at the problem. There simply isn’t enough room to accommodate the necessary surface area on the head for adequate heat rejection, and issues arise for cooling the cylinders that aren’t first in line for airflow.

Pistons are another potential issue, as they must first transfer the majority of their excess heat through the ring package and into the cylinder wall before the engine block can take it away, whether it’s water- or air-cooled. Even in water-cooled high performance engines it’s not uncommon to use oil squirters directed at the underside of the pistons to help cool them, and the problem is compounded in air-cooled engines that often use very large amounts of oil circulating in the engine and pumped through an external radiator to assist in temperature control.

 

Better control over cylinder head and piston crown temperatures allows more leeway before preignition (and the engine damage that goes with it) sets in, making water-cooled designs generally less sensitive to fuel quality and more tolerant of high compression ratios or boost. This factor alone weighs heavily in favor of abandoning air cooling for max-performance production engines.

Another increasingly important consideration is tailpipe emissions. The industry has done an incredible job reducing pollution over the last four decades, with emissions control strategies that have a surprisingly small performance downside. The last untapped source of potential improvement, though, was engine startup. Because engines run so clean once they’re up to operating temperature, the majority of tailpipe emissions left to deal with happen during the cold start process. This is why current best practices close-couple a catalytic converter to the cylinder head in the exhaust manifold collector, to reduce the time it takes for the catalyst to ‘light off’ and start doing its thing.

The same is true with ECU mapping during cold starts. Additional fuel must be added – back in the day, we had this thing called a choke that manually blocked airflow through the carburetor and enriched the mixture to the cylinders, but now it’s all handled via computer, with more fuel called for from the injectors until the engine reaches normal operating temperature. An air-cooled engine, even with modern fuel injection, is still slower to get to that point because the cooling system is always ‘on,’ but a water-cooled engine with a thermostat can keep the radiator out of the loop until everything is up to temperature.

Although it’s certainly possible to build an air-cooled engine with baffles to control the airflow past the cylinders (and indeed, this is a ubiquitous feature on light aircraft engines like the Continental and Lycoming flat-four and -six engines that power practically every Cessna, Piper, Beechcraft, and Lancair in the world today), the quick warm-up and precise in-operation control of temperature gives liquid-cooled engines an enormous advantage when it comes to clean tailpipe emissions, and it’s the main reason why Porsche (and to a lesser extent, Volkswagen) eventually adopted it after a long history of successful air-cooled engines.

Finally, there’s the issue of noise. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but many countries have adopted noise standards that don’t just include the exhaust – intake and other engine noise all count toward the maximum decibel level a vehicle can legally produce. Liquid-cooled engines are inherently quieter than air-cooled ones, partially because of the dampening effect of the water jacket around the cylinders, and because there are no cooling fins directly attached to the reciprocating parts of the engine that can act as resonators, amplifying certain frequencies.

Even the notoriously atavistic Harley-Davidson motorcycle lineup, one of the last strongholds of air-cooled engine technology for road vehicles, is reluctantly moving toward liquid cooling. Their most recent design, the “Milwaukee-Eight,” circulates oil through passages in the cylinder heads, though the cylinder barrels remain air-cooled. It’s only a matter of time until they join their Japanese V-twin competitors and fully embrace water-cooled designs that retain vestigial cylinder fins for cosmetic purposes, if for no other reason than noise limits. After all, every decibel saved in mechanical noise from the engine itself is another decibel available for that all-important exhaust note, and while it’s hard to keep your customers from swapping to louder pipes once they get their bike home, it’s not practical short of complete replacement to go back to an air-cooled engine design.

Like many different technologies that were competitive for quite a while, but eventually fell out of favor for the majority of users, air cooling has seen its time in automotive applications come to an end. Nevertheless, for other situations where light weight and simplicity are still the main priorities (like piston aircraft engines), they’ll remain in production and use for the foreseeable future, as they remain a viable solution to those particular needs. And of course, as long as there’s a single gallon of gas left on earth, somebody somewhere will be using it to fire up the 1600 flat four in their lovingly-maintained VW Super Beetle that still runs like a top.

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2019

Often copied but never duplicated, The Goodwood Festival of Speed (FOS) is perhaps one of the most amazing events on the motorsports calendar. This year the FOS celebrated its 26^th anniversary and StateofSpeed.com was there for the party.

“The Festival is a fantastic event that I always enjoy but running up the hill in the rain is a definite challenge.”Duncan Pittaway, driver The Beast of Turin

The Festival occurs every summer on the grounds of The Duke of Richmond’s ancestral home, Goodwood House, Chichester, West Sussex, 100 miles south west of London, England. The event is centered around a timed hill climb up the Duke’s 1.16-mile drive. The long-standing record for the run was 41.6 seconds set in 1999 by Nick Heidfeld driving a McLaren MP4/13 Formula One car. His average speed was 100.385 mph. Nick’s record for an F1 car remains unbroken as they no longer allow F1 cars timed runs for safety reasons, however, this year Nick’s 20-year-old record was broken by Romain Dumas driving the all-electric VW I.D. R with a time of 39.9 seconds. Dumas might have gone faster on the Sunday but rain prevented a faster run.

The hill climb, which is by invitation only, sees an eclectic field of racecars. We went as a guest of Brit Duncan Pittaway, who muscles the amazing, fire belching “Beast of Turin” up the hill. Built originally in 1911, the 28.5-Liter Fiat ran 132 mph in 1913. Duncan, who recently drove the Beast through the streets of London, restored the car (that’s a book in itself), and drives it with gusto and even ran up the hill in the Sunday rain which sidelined most competitors saying, “The Festival is a fantastic event that I always enjoy but running up the hill in the rain is a definite challenge.”

“[Driverless cars] would be like climbing Mount Everest using virtual reality—who cares.”

Unlike most big-time events, the FOS pits are open to everybody and you can walk around, get up-close-and-personal with the cars and talk to the mechanics, owners and drivers: I bumped into a wide range of drivers from three-time F1 Grand Prix Champion Sir Jackie Stewart to NASCAR star “King Richard” Petty. Others in attendance included Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and his 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, now valued at an estimated $85 million.

This year, the FOS celebrated more than 40 categories of Motorsports from Early Speed Record setters through Brickyard Heroes of Indy, to the Giants of Rallying both past Group B cars to the Giants of Modern Rallying. There were also special celebrations of Aston Martin, that made its Goodwood debut in 1949, Bentley, March Engineering, Mercedes’ 125 years of motorsport, Porsche 917, and Michael Schumacher. Indeed, there are so many and so much to see it makes your head hurt.

Besides all the historic gas guzzlers, there’s an obvious and growing technological shift toward electric and even autonomous cars with no drivers. Call me old fashioned, but driverless cars to me means slot car racing and while skill is involved, I just wonder if removing the driver removes the point. It would be like climbing Mount Everest using virtual reality—who cares.

That said, as mentioned earlier, this year’s fastest time was set by the Volkswagen I.D. R electric car that recently won Pikes Peak. Driver Romain Dumas scorched up the driveway in 39.9 seconds during the Saturday practice. Rumor had it that he would have killed it on Sunday had rain not prevented it. It’s also a sign of the times that the fields of Goodwood were littered with supercars. Everywhere you looked there were lines of Lambos, Ferraris, Aston Martins and McLarens, et al. Time was they were a rarity on British roads but no longer.

The FOS’s accessibility to the cars and the drivers, particularly if you are a Formula One fan is amazing in this day and age of restricted access. You can get within a few inches of the cars, check them out, hear them run and meet and greet the mechanics and the drivers. I don’t know of anywhere else you can do that in such a casual atmosphere.

Besides the summer FOS, Goodwood hosts the fall Revival, this year scheduled for the weekend of September 13-15. The Revival is held on the old Goodwood Grand Prix circuit that is also on the Duke’s estate that was an airfield during World War II. The Revival features historic circuit racing with everybody in period dress. Like the Festival, it’s a fantastic event to add to your bucket list. For more info visit Goodwood.com

Nashville Pickers

There are many reasons people from all over the world visit Nashville, Tennessee. For example, there is the Grand Ole Opry House, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Johnny Cash Museum, and the historic Ryman Auditorium. There are also more than 180 live music venues as well as bars and restaurants to keep your senses sated.

For car people there is the Lane Motor Museum but fast climbing the list of must-sees is the Marathon Motor Works that houses, among many other stores and eateries, a branch of Antique Archaeology, the namesake of the hit TV show American Pickers.

Built of beautiful red brick in 1881, the Marathon Motor Village, as it is now known, was originally the home of the Marathon Automobiles, at the time one of the largest producers of automobiles in the world assembling as many as 10,000 cars a year in 1912. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons the Marathon was over by 1916. The complex, which is an on-going restoration project by owner Barry Walker, covers well over 150,00 square feet that is now divided into a four-block complex of artists’ and photographers’ studios, offices, a radio station, salons, cafés, bars, a distillery, event spaces and, of course, Antique Archaeology.

For those of you who watch the show on the History Channel, you’ll know that Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz pick their way across America and some other countries in search of that rare nugget. The show has been on since 2010, has an audience of more than five million viewers a week and is seen in 63 countries. Mike, you can tell, is a car and motorcycle guy and he invited us down to Nashville to check out the store.

The store is not big enough to house any cars but they do have on display the Volkswagen-powered motorcycle that was built by lowbrow artist and father of modern pinstriping Von Dutch. Scattered around the store floor to ceiling and among the piles of Antique Archaeology clothing and knick-knacks are more rare motorcycle engines and parts. Unfortunately, most are not for sale including one of Evil Knievel’s star-spangled, white leather ‘jump’ suits.

American Pickers, a brand owned by the History Channel, has logoed merchandise for sale at the History Store. In addition to that, you can purchase Mike’s own line called Two Lanes.

Entrance to the village and, of course, the stores are free but unless you can find free street parking the cost to park in the Village lot is $10. Other than that, it’s a great place for a family to visit where you can spend several hours drinking, dining and checking out the building, the restored machinery, some original Marathon cars that are displayed and, of course, Antique Archaeology. For more information contact www.antiquearchaeology.com/locations.php or www.marathonvillage.net

From Mello to Melodrama

The H2Oi International Story (Part Two)

The stages were set. On one, an automotive revolutionary war of sorts was brewing. Showgoers were about to land in a city they weren’t welcome in with a police force that knew they were coming anyway.

On the other, “generals” were in the final stages of “recolonization,” having lost the hard-fought “Battle of Ocean City” so to speak. It was official: Atlantic City, New Jersey was H2Oi International’s new home, and this new frontier meant new opportunities and challenges for the “settlers.”

CLEARING THE MUDDY WATERS

Before we get into my experiences of both events, I had an opportunity to interview Jay Shoup, owner and founder of H2Oi International. I’m sharing snippets of our conversation in an effort to negate the plethora of inaccurate statements that have—and continue to—come out about his show as well as the events preceding it. Here are the facts:

1. The actual sanctioned car show that is H2Oi International was never held in Ocean City, Maryland.
   Since the day of the show’s origination, H2Oi has always been held outside Ocean City. People attending the show would congregate in Ocean City because of its proximity to the show. According to Jay, it was local media that incorrectly associated the two events in an effort to put blame on him. “The media beat me down,” Mr. Shoup explained. “Why do they keep bringing me into this?”—a question he asks to this day.
2. It was Jay’s decision to take H2Oi International elsewhere.
   When I asked him about relocating, Mr. Shoup confidently stated that, “There weren’t – and still aren’t – any legal grounds whatsoever for Ocean City to shut down my show, even if I decided to stay put.” Of course, he wasn’t interested in fighting anymore and that’s why he opted to postpone the show in 2017; To find a new, more suitable (and welcoming) venue.
3. “Did Ocean City officials really do everything they could to keep the peace (and the people there)?”
   This is one of the biggest questions Jay continues to ask to this day. He argues that, when it came to the preceding events in Ocean City, “The minority were the ones causing trouble,” and that, “I don’t [necessarily] know the solution, but I do know how to handle them.” Jay, for example, told me that, in the 20 years of his show’s existence, Ocean City officials never bothered to call upon the Maryland State Police to help keep the peace – an organization that he made sure to always hire from for H2Oi every year. And remember, this was never Jay’s problem in the first place!

MY EXPERIENCES

So with all that being said, let me first preface by saying that the following are my experiences of Ocean City and Atlantic City respectively. Anyone and everyone who attended either or both events no doubt had different experiences of them, which are neither right or wrong. I actually wrote a post on one of the Ocean City attendees Facebook groups asking them to share their thoughts and experiences with me. You will occasionally see quotes from this post.

OCEAN CITY

I arrived in Ocean City, Maryland on a Thursday evening, and it took almost two whole days to see the sizeable crowds of years past reappear. By Saturday, the sun set just beyond the horizon, and the natural lighting illuminating our surroundings was replaced by the flashing lights of Ocean City Police cars. As we walked the strip, we’d pass groups of people yelling “SEND IT!” to cruisers waiting at a red light. Usually, these groups would be holding signs with lude messages written on them as well while they taunted. The light would turn green, someone inevitably would in fact send it, and would get pulled over immediately after doing so.

Interactions that would follow between car owners and law enforcement were either contentious or cooperative. For the contentious ones, it was about testing the limits – a mentality not unlike one from a first-year college student. “You go to OCMD for the chaos that ‘H2Oi’ weekend brings,” one person submitted as a response to my Facebook post. “I had even more fun [this year] haha. [I] felt like there was more adrenaline because you could get caught easier,” responded another. And, to be clear, I nor staff from The Dawg Box condone this kind of behavior.

For others, it was a jovial, crime-free game of “Cat and Mouse.” The challenge: Bringing a car down to Ocean City that is blatantly illegal and see how long they can actually drive it on Coastal Highway before getting pulled over. The results: Usually within minutes of the tires touching the pavement, drivers would end up assisting the tow truck driver in loading their own vehicle to be carted off to the impound lot. It’s a game they inevitably lost.

And then there were those who were there simply to hang out. Whether they were seated in lawn chairs on the sidewalk or on inflatable couches in the bed of a truck, it’s as if they went to set an example; showing residents that not all young car enthusiasts were there to act out. Sure they also cruised the strip in vehicles that the city deemed “Unsafe,” but at least they behaved.

ATLANTIC CITY

Now, I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually attended the actual H2Oi International show when it was held in Ocean City, so I personally can’t make a comparison to what took place at The Showboat. Also, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have my prejudgements about what the turnout would be like (that certainly explains why I traveled down on a Sunday afternoon and only spent two full hours there). I can and will, however, talk about H2Oi from the perspective of a 10-year veteran of the east coast car show scene.

For starters, it wasn’t an exclusively Audi/Volkswagen car show. All makes and models were there but thankfully, the 12 Top Dawgs were all European makes. To me, that doesn’t necessarily matter as I understand that businesses often have to adapt to new places and situations. And it was their first year at The Showboat, so I would’ve been shocked if there weren’t growing pains like this.

But, having said all that, what did surprise me was the general presentation of it all. The Showboat’s cul-de-sac, for example, was crammed with the Top Dawg finalists and as many vendor booths as they could fit, all while hotel guests were coming and going. To me, it felt like I was at a job fair.

And then there was the parking garage, where the remaining cars parked. “The idea was to separate general and show parking, but we didn’t really have the manpower to police it this year,” Mr. Shoup clarified. It made sense. Cars were scattered throughout every level with no real organizational structure whatsoever. Many were driving in and out of the garage freely while spectators were still walking around. It honestly felt like a cross between a scene from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and one from car meets I used to attend back home. “We’ll figure out a better solution for next year,” Jay said.

Look, I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s often difficult to embrace change, but I think that if we as enthusiasts, take the time to try to embrace it (and succeed), we can appreciate H2Oi’s new home while still reminiscing about the good times in Ocean City, Maryland. For all intents and purposes, H2Oi was a success. What do you think?

From Mellow to Melodrama

The H2Oi International Story (Part One)

It couldn’t have been a more perfect setting: A nine-mile highway running through the belly of an island. The Atlantic Ocean to the East and resort condominiums to the West. The name: Ocean City, Maryland. 

An annual Audi/Volkswagen-specific car show called H2Oi International would take place at either Fort Whaley in Whaleyville or at the racetrack at Ocean Downs Casino, and the closest area with enough hotel vacancies for the thousands to flood in was, for better or worse, Ocean City. In addition to the vacancies, only about 7,000 residents inhabited the almost 40 square-mile island. So there was plenty of room for things to get wild too.

What began as a pre-party turned into one of the most confusing, controversial “car shows” in the United States. But how did this happen…and why?

A SEASONAL CAR SHOW SEASON

To understand why there is a propensity to get rowdy before H2Oi International, you first have to understand how the East Coast car show season works. Unlike our western counterpart, we don’t always receive the nicest weather – for months on end – and therefore have a limited amount of time to enjoy our cars. When the end of September approaches, our internal senses remind us that “the end is near.”

The easiest way to explain this is to do a hypothetical experiment of sorts: Imagine Ocean City, Maryland as a small, fragile glass vial. Now imagine each car enthusiast as a molecule in the excited state – moving around uncontrollably without a final destination. Crumbier weather (i.e., rain and snow) serves as the catalyst, causing these molecules to increase their movements as the quality of weather deteriorates. Now imagine that, before the weather reaches “hibernation” temperatures for cars, more and more molecules get crammed into the vial all at once. Sound like a recipe for combustion, right?

A HUGE MEDIA OPPORTUNITY

Show car owners are inherently proud of what they have, so when you combine the opportunity to publicly showcase your car to other like-minded enthusiasts, with aspiring automotive creatives eager to shoot and ample scenic backdrops to shoot in front of, there’s one more variable to add to the aforementioned equation: The media.

Chris Petruccio of Krispy Media is one of many media professionals responsible for putting the pre-party-like festivities of H2Oi International on the map. Back in 2013, Petruccio created and released his now infamous “After Movie,” which garnered the attention of millions of auto enthusiasts to date. “I managed to create something that captured the attention of and resonated with the younger audience,” Chris explained to me in a phone interview. “It was definitely one of my big breaks as an automotive filmmaker, and I make sure to attend every year to thank my fans.”

In the years following the After Movie’s release, the days leading up to H2Oi International have become a time for budding automotive filmmakers to also try and make their mark. With many creators wanting to replicate what they’ve seen in the After Movie, burnouts, reckless driving, and, in some cases, vandalism have all become common practice.

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

In 2017, the events preceding H2Oi were the equivalent of the vial from the aforementioned experiment of being filled to the brim and exploding. Ocean City Police responded to over 2,700 calls that weekend and, “While H2Oi International is not, and has never been, a city-hosted or sanctioned event…we still hosted thousands of participants, ”Chief of Police Ross Buzzuro explained in a press release. To make matters worse, nearly any method that both the city and O.C.P.D. used to try and contain the insanity, like increasing fines, impounding “unsafe vehicles,” and installing metal gates in the highway’s median, only fueled showgoers to further act out. Any effort put in to differentiate H2Oi International from this “pre-party” fiasco was essentially futile. O.C.P.D. had to find fault in something, so they blamed the show.

Jay Shoup, the founder of H2Oi International, never envisioned a weekend-long, laidback, car show resulting in the exact opposite take place. In fact, he wrote a lengthy public letter to distance himself and the real H2Oi from all of it. Unfortunately, fingers were already being pointed and there was nothing either Ocean City nor Mr. Shoup could do to resolve the matter. Both sides did, however, ultimately come to an agreement that the show had to relocate, and so it did…to The Showboat in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

This spawned a “Us Versus Them” syndrome in many showgoers. You were either: A “Loyalist” who would go wherever the sanctioned event was being held or a “Pre-Partier” who wouldn’t accept any location to congregate except Ocean City. The irony, of course, is that shows like H2Oi are ultimately designed to bring people together and not cause a divide between them.

Now that you’ve read the “Prologue” to the H2Oi saga, you can begin to understand why things have unfolded the way they have. Stay tuned for part two, where I’ll be giving a more in-depth description of each event from my perspective.