With a smile on his face, senior Hans Hong strolls down the Walnut Car Club car meet “Calibull & Coffee” located on Industry Way, City of Industry, observing all kinds of cars ranging from black Lamborghinis to 2024 Nissan GT-Rs.
Hong started Walnut Car Club, a youth-led club that unites people with the same interest in cars. His passion from the look of cars to the benefits of promoting new generations to feel invested and welcomed into car inclusivity. Drawing 1,277 followers’ attention on Instagram, he continues to share the culture and community that he has created with the club.
“My main goal is to promote the car culture in Walnut since SoCal is the main point of car culture in Orange County,” said Hong. “We [want to] make Walnut a hotspot of a SoCal car culture, so I put an emphasis on Walnut.”
Hong promotes car culture by expressing his interests in cars and involvement with putting together local car meetups, where people stroll down parking lots looking at the different European types of cars. His efforts are to rebuild the car community that declined during COVID-19 and help them get their voices back to express the culture of Walnut car meets.
“The Walnut car culture was always here, but it died down after 2019 due to COVID-19. A lot of the supercar owners just stopped coming out,” sophomore Amir Othman, a photographer of Walnut car culture, said. “It is crazy to think that Hans is reviving the Walnut car culture little by little.”
Over time, he helped grow the community by allowing locals to connect without traveling long distances to other cities. Hong and some other people have faced similar issues of having to travel to remote areas.
“This part of Socal [Walnut] is overlooked for its cars, and many had to travel to Irvine for meets,” said Hong. “I decided to solve this problem within my community. I met many like-minded people who faced the same issue, and the initiative took off.”
Whether it is creating flyers for a car meet or simply talking about cars, Hong emphasizes the importance of networking. The amount of business that he gains from his events showcases the value of making connections within the car world.
“Every two weeks before [a car meet], I will make a flyer and then I’ll just spam and direct message (DM) a bunch of local business owners, and then nine out of 10 times, they will probably show up,” Hong said. “The initiative has blown up and gained major attraction and recognition within the SoCal car community as a whole.”
Hong’s ability to host car meets has drawn a wide range of participants beyond his own circle of passion. He has found ways to generate interest, bring people together and allow Walnut to be noticed. Rather than just a local culture meetup, these car meets are something that people look forward to, where they can show off their cars with pride.
“Hans’s maturity and delegating skills really showed his handling of different situations during the car meets,” Han’s friend, junior Ryan Yu, said. “Hans’s ability to market really helped us and Walnut to bring these car meets.”
The continued success and growing progress have led Hong to push himself harder to set very high standards for his car meets. He’s not just aiming to host car meets and share his passion with others, but to build something meaningful among the youth-led events in SoCal.
“I always expect the meets to not only just fulfill normal levels, so that it makes waves in the SoCal car community,” said Hong. “Whether it’s the quality turnout, the experiences, etc. I expect the turnout to always be overpar to a pretty extreme level in order to stand out and raise awareness to car enthusiasts across SoCal.”
For Hong, car culture isn’t just about his passions and being a part of a club; it’s also about the community. For all his hard work, planning to host the car meets turns into networking and reviving the Walnut car culture. The success in car meets is rewarding, but the connections and the bonds that he creates along the way are just as important to him.
“Car culture represents the car community and car scene itself, especially representing the people in the car scene and the type of cars that we showcase,” said Hong. “[It is an] all-encompassing term representing the car scene, community, and everything it entails within.”
