Motor Mouth: The Yorkville Car Spotters prove the future is in good hands

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“When I say ‘most people’ I mean, of course, me after my first cocktail.”
―  Bill Bryson,  In a Sunburned Country

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Conventional wisdom is, to paraphrase the great An Wang , the mere projection of trends of the present becoming the realities of the future. Thus did an entire real estate industry become convinced that, addicted to their downtown party palaces, Millennials had abandoned suburbia forever. Much to their chagrin, one tiny little pandemic later, the most depressed real estate in the land is the downtown condos all those city-dwelling Gen-Yers used to live in.

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Similarly, until just a couple of years ago, accepted wisdom had it that these very same 25- to 40-year-olds, thanks to the wonders of public transport, had likewise forsworn the automobile. Today, having abandoned both their condos and the public transit that went with downtown living, Millennials are actually the driving force behind a revitalized auto industry.  

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Unfazed, the fatalists have turned their eagle eyes to Gen Z, reasoning — again using Dr. Wang’s projection of current trends into future behaviour — that our youth are so addicted to their cellphones that the future automobile will be nothing but a mobile iPad. Not content to merely hold their tablets, seems to be the logic, our youth want to crawl inside it. The love of driving, they say, has been displaced by a passion for pixels.

Not so fast, says the Yorkville Car Spotters. A gaggle of teenagers and twenty-somethings armed with varying qualities of telephoto lenses, this motley crew of very (un)mainstream media congregates in downtown Toronto for no other purpose than the worship and photography of high-performance automobiles.

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I have to admit to being taken a little by surprise by their enthusiasm. They recently greeted my arrival — admittedly driving the first Ferrari 812 GTS in the land — to Canada’s Rodeo Drive like I was the Second Coming of Enzo himself. Cameras on zoom and with little regard for personal safety — thank God I was just crawling through trendiest Toronto — they literally laid down in front of the targa-topped Ferrari I was driving simply to gain a better camera angle. WTF, I thought, before querying — ever so politely, of course — as to their motives. Ferraris are literally a dime a dozen in Toronto’s toniest enclave, and here I was getting the full Nick-Nolte-staggering-down-Cumberland-Avenue-on-the-opening-night-of-the-Toronto-Film-Festival treatment.

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Nor was this, as I found out — I seldom venture downtown during these COVID-19 days — a rare event. Every weekend, in fact, these car-loving Gen-Zers descend upon Yorkville Avenue, iPhone or Canon in hand, to spend the entire day photographing rich asshats — or rich-asshat-wannabes like me — and their fancy cars. They come from far and wide and do nothing for the entire day other than take pictures of whatever latest bit of exotica happens to be trundling past Sassafraz or Summer’s Ice Cream. Corvettes and Lambos, Nissans and Porsches, all are greeted with equal vigour, the twentieth Ferrari with the same enthusiasm as the first, the passion for anything four-wheeled written on their faces as plainly, I suspect, as it was on mine, 50-odd years ago.  

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It is this simple bond that holds them together, for other than their love of pistons and Pirellis, they are, as I said, a pretty motley bunch. For some, like Jack, who is combining his passions for photos and cars, it’s just a hobby. For others such as Andre (who hopes to someday sell these very same Ferraris), Isaac (who is studying industrial design at Humber so that he might one day pen the sultry silhouettes he today photographs), and Pierson (who is studying automotive engineering at Oshawa’s Ontario Tech University ), it is just the first of baby steps in what they hope will be a career in the auto industry.  

Cameras on zoom and with little regard for personal safety, they literally laid down in front of the Ferrari to gain a better camera angle

For others, it goes even deeper — Jarret says that making videos of the exotica that prowl Toronto streets literally “saved my life.” Admitting to some dark thoughts after a horrific work injury — he fell from a tall building — he says, “In the hospital I watched countless hours of automotive YouTube and decided that’s what I wanted to do to rebuild my life after becoming disabled.” He sold the surfboards and mountain bikes that had been his previous passion and taught himself photography and video editing. Crutches and shattered heels, it seems, are no match for the lure of straight-pipe Ford GTs and thoroughly souped-up 1,000-horsepower Audi R8s (his favourite cars so far).  

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Of course, we have all seen such fervour before. I have a — wink! wink! — friend, a moderately successful autojournalist, whose passion for motorcycles completely dominated his tender years. When he wasn’t riding, he was tinkering. When he wasn’t riding or tinkering, he was nose deep in a Cycle magazine — cleverly hidden inside a Compton’s encyclopedia so his mom would think he was studying — reading about, what else, Ducatis and Laverdas.

The thing is, despite all that eagerness — and an engineering degree! — the only reason that he has his job is pure serendipity. A long time ago — for he is well and truly ancient — he and a buddy were too hungover to drive home from Toronto to Ottawa after a concert (Duran Duran, I seem to barely remember). Still clothed in his party fare — a Simon LeBon-approved red tinsel tie and red Crayon shoes with clear plastic soles , no less — he went to the offices of Cycle Canada, the country’s then-premier motorcycle magazine, and offered to write an article on the anti-lock brake technology the motorcycle industry was just then starting to embrace. Two weeks later, they called and offered him a full-time job, mainly because he was the last guy through the door that showed any enthusiasm. Thirty-seven years later, I — oops, he — continues to fool at least a few people into thinking he knows what the hell he is talking about.

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My point to all this rambling — and there really is a point — is that success in all things requires two key ingredients: passion and opportunity. These kids all have the passion. Somebody needs to stand up and give them an opportunity.

You can see Jarret Kenny’s work on his Supercar Specifics YouTube channel. Jack Heaslip’s photography is available on Instagram, via @heaslipauto. Issac Kerr hopes to soon create an entire website devoted to his car pics, but for now his stuff can be seen on Instagram, too: @_ikcars. Noah Ullmann’s stuff is also on Instagram: @noahu_photography, but the 17-year-old entrepreneur also says that if you want to hire him for a shoot, “your car becomes my top priority.” Pierson McGillivray publishes all his work on Instagram, at @piersonalexander, and TikTok, but admits “it would be pretty neat to work for a large manufacturer or company to take photographs and make a living off of that.” Andre Oliveira can also be seen on Instagram: @toronto_car_spots; and TikTok: @toronto.car.spots .