Just a few metres from the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, a barefoot starter stands between two prewar cars with a chequered flag in her hand. The engines rise, she jumps, and the cars disappear down the beach in a cloud of sand. The sea is only a few yards away.

This is The Race of Gentlemen, a one-eighth-mile beach sprint for old American cars and motorcycles. An announcer calls the drivers and machines from a lifeguard tower, the flag drops, and history stops being something to look at from behind a rope.

American hot-rodders held races like this on beaches in the 1940s and 1950s. The Oilers CC/MC revived the tradition in 2011, and Wildwoodā€™s unusually wide beach became the setting for this fourth running of the event.

The rules are precise. Cars must be American-built before 1935 and use parts or attachments from before 1953; motorcycles must be from 1947 or earlier. In the lineup, a 1934 Ford hot rod can sit beside a cast-iron bathtub fitted with wheels and an engine, but every machine has to belong convincingly to the period.

What makes those constraints interesting is that they do not turn the event into a museum. They create a shared visual language, then give everyone permission to make it loud, competitive, improvised and slightly absurd. The machines are historical objects, but they are here to be driven hard.

Wildwood is part of why it works. Atlantic Avenue runs for four miles past doo-wop-era motels, restaurants and neon signs, giving the gathering a backdrop that feels connected to the machines without turning the town into a film set.

Before the racing begins, the Surfcomber motel hosts the Night of the Troglodytes. The surrounding roads are closed while participants and spectators gather around nearly 150 cars and motorcycles. It is less a polished reconstruction of the past than a living piece of motor culture taking over the street for an evening.

We partnered with photographer Johannes Huwe to document the event for the Wonders app. What stands out in his photographs is not nostalgia made neat and respectable, but the opposite: old machines covered in salt and sand, still earning their place in the present. By the time the starter lowers the flag, preservation no longer looks like keeping something still.