The Full Monty Carlo

EVERYONE IS NAKED. Just putting that out in the open.

After all, everything else is. We’re in Cambridge, Wisconsin, at the Valley View Recreation Club for its Annual Nude Car Show, which started about 35 years ago, and the only bras in sight are on the noses of Corvettes. There really shouldn’t be questions left unanswered by the event name, but you might be wondering why, exactly, anyone would throw a nude car show and maybe what it’s like to attend one. Well, that’s what we’re here to cover. Er, uncover.

While humans have been joining this world naked since day one, nudism (or naturism) as a lifestyle philosophy migrated to the U.S. from Europe in the late 1920s. Since then, naturist societies have founded beaches, campgrounds, hotels, and resorts dedicated to an unclothed clientele. As of 2022, there were more than 180 locations and groups catering to the clothing-optional or clothing-free lifestyle in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean, according to the American Association for Nude Recreation (and that’s just counting the association’s affiliates). As far as we know, Valley View is the only one that hosts a car show, and they do it for the same reason anyone hosts a car show: for a change of scenery, to meet new people, to talk about cars, and because even nudists, stripped of sartorial markers of wealth and status, enjoy showing off their rides.

Jerry Martin, the car show’s unofficial photographer—and the only photographer, as the rest of us have to forfeit camera privileges along with our skivvies at the door—told me he first attended the Valley View show in 1990 and has been to every show since, along with other events at neighboring naturist clubs.