The rowdiest car show of the year is going down this weekend in airy Ocean City, Maryland. Or rather, it isn’t. H2Oi has been relocated to Atlantic City after things got altogether too hectic last year and the year before, with simply too much stance running the streets of the beach town. But what is stance? Well, we have an explainer for you.
(Welcome to Car vs. America: The Lost Tapes. We used to have a TV show on Fusion, but while our show was good, our corporate overlords decided to do something else with the network entirely. We managed to obtain all of the raw footage from the show, however, and there was tons of good stuff in there that never made it in. So we decided to put it all together for y’all to enjoy.)
This clip comes to us from cut footage of our TV show Car vs. America, when we rolled in to not-H2Oi in Ocean City last year.
In any case, our producers told us to do a very short, maybe five or ten second explanation of what a stance car is and what makes it interesting as an introduction to another segment. But stance isn’t quick to define. As Ballaban realized that I was going to go on for minutes, days, possibly even YEARS about stance, he started cracking up while the producers got more and more mad.
But what is a stance car? It’s a car that’s daringly low, but it’s not always so stupid low that it can’t drive. But sometimes it is.
It’s also typically an import, but it’s not always an import. It’s got tons of flashy bodywork and chrome, except when it’s subdued and going for class instead.
It usually has tons of camber on its wheels, but it has camber just so it can tuck bigger wheels under those low fenders, which are often stretched or widened with overfenders, but these are just practical concerns to make the wheels fit, except when the car has camber and little wheels, just as a troll. Or just because it’s different or just because the owner likes that look.
Like I said, stance is hard to pin down, but it looks real good. Watch the clip above and you’ll see what we mean.