Back to Bolts: Escaping the Upside Down of Car Culture

Why Car Culture Has Started to Feel Like the Plot of Stranger Things (if you're not a fan of Stranger Things it's best to skip this rant and move along).

Car culture is full of genres, sub-genres and meta-scenes. But strip it all back, and most people in the scene fall into one of two camps. 

First, there are the real car people, for the sake of this analogy, let’s call them Hawkins. These are the builders, restorers, tinkerers and caretakers. The ones who obsess over details no one else will ever notice. A Mk1 Golf meticulously restored to factory spec or a slammed, modified MX5 running a turbo and living its best life on suck, squeeze, bang, blow. These people aren’t chasing approval — they’re chasing feeling. Passion. Effort. Craft. Creativity. The work matters more than the applause.

Then there’s the other side, the hive mind. This group is driven almost entirely by status — how much the car is worth, how it looks online, and how it performs in the eyes of the vapid. Depth isn’t required. Context is optional. The car becomes a prop, not a passion.

For a long time, these two worlds barely touched, then social media arrived, or, to stay on theme — the Mind Flayer...

Social media collapsed distance. It pulled everything into one space and quietly rewired motivation. Slowly, an alternative dimension formed — one where car culture became less about building and more about broadcasting. Less about process, more about perception. This space — shallow, performative, ego-driven — is the Upside Down of car culture.

The problem is, this dimension isn’t sustainable. It rewards narcissism. It amplifies insecurity. It gives the loudest voices the most oxygen — not the most knowledgeable, not the most creative, not the most passionate. And it's has attracted people who don’t care about cars at all — only what cars can do for them.

So what happens next?

If this really were Stranger Things, the question wouldn’t be whether the Upside Down exists — it’s already here. The real question is whether Hawkins realises what’s happening before it’s too late.

Because in every season, the truth is the same: the danger isn’t just a physical monster — it’s denial. It’s conformity. It’s pretending everything is fine because it looks good on the surface. And just like in Hawkins, the people who notice first aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones paying attention. The ones still working with their hands. The ones who remember why they fell in love with cars in the first place. A small group who quietly refuse to be absorbed by the hive mind. Who don’t want to live in the Upside Down of car culture — where everything is performative and nothing is real. And friends who don’t lie.

So we step back. We opt out. Not dramatically. Not loudly. Just deliberately. Back to bolts. Back to analogue dreams. Back to the grass roots of car culture. Because in Stranger Things, Hawkins is saved the same way every time — not by trends, not by approval, but by people who choose to care when it would be easier not to.

And that’s where HELS exists. Not in the Upside Down — but fighting quietly to keep Hawkins alive with nostalgia, passion and true petrolhead spirit. It's now up to you, do you stay in the upside down or help to revive Hawkins with us nerds? There's just one last thing to say... I believe.