The astonishing decline in teen driving rates has in part inspired seniors Josh Price and Calvin Barseghian to create the club, “Wild Ride”, which renews student appreciation for cars.

Wild Ride is actually a result of two similar clubs joining forces on campus. Price and Barseghian had originally created a car club, but then realized that their other friends, Natalia Johnson and Dylan McConkey also had a car appreciation club. “We were like, we don’t need two, let’s just make one, and so we combined. It’s now me, Josh, Natalia and Dylan,” said Barseghian.    

Barseghian and Price hope to inspire students on campus to share their passion for cars with the events they plan to do with their club. “It’s mostly just for bringing together people that like cars. It will be like an outside school group. People that aren’t really familiar with the car community and stuff like that who want to get into it will hang out with us,” said Price. 

The club goes to car meets in Southern California weekly, and also plans to do cruises to different areas. 

Cruises are drives that are done together or in individual cars to a specific location, whether it be as simple as  dinner at In-n-out or to Doheny beach, in their cars. Barseghian ultimately hopes to be able to do a cruise up to Malibu or San Francisco, because he thinks the drive up Highway 1 is incredibly scenic. 

These out of school experiences are all done so that the club, as a whole, stays in touch with the car culture. 

“Right now, a lot of the kids are super young so they can’t do much. So, being able to go out late at night is kind of a challenge, but going to morning car meets I think will hopefully start happening more,” said Price. The club meets at school before the shows and drives over together. Once a month, they also aid in beach cleanups that other clubs host. 

One of the main car shows Wild Ride plans to frequent is the Cars and Coffee show at the San Clemente Outlets, a favorite of Price. “That one is the busiest and probably the biggest in SoCal. The vibes are really cool,” said Price.  

“Josh and I both enjoy cars, building them, and just driving in general which seems to be going down a lot now… not a lot of people are getting their licenses until later. We just wanted to find a group to hang out with,” said Barseghian.