VASTERAS, SWEDEN — It was the evening of July 3, and a phalanx of American steel was arriving in this town an hour or so northwest of Stockholm.
Pontiacs, Fords, Plymouths, Cadillacs, Chevrolets — pretty much every brand of car ever manufactured on American soil — bumper to bumper into the fading daylight. Most were pristine, with immaculate chrome and gleaming paint, but some were custom hot rods in candy colors, and a few were wrecks that looked as if they had just been pulled from the ocean floor.
All were headed to the Power Big Meet 2014, which the organizers say is the world’s largest classic-car gathering. This was the 30th anniversary of the meet in its current incarnation — first held in 1978 and moved here in 1984 — and as many as 15,000 vehicles were expected to fill the festival grounds. Disciples of Detroit engineering had driven from all over Europe to gawk at one another’s cars.
It is hard to overstate how much the Swedes love old American cars. Swedish enthusiasts will happily boast that there is more classic Detroit iron in Sweden than in the United States. The Swedish fascination for Detroit slipped over into full-blown obsession a long time ago.
Thousands of vintage cars are imported into the country each year, participants here say, in part to satisfy the demand of the Swedish raggare subculture, which is populated by gearheads who have combined the fashion sensibilities of John Travolta in “Grease” with the drinking habits of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concertgoer. A scan of the crowd confirms that the raggare is as ingrained in the Swedish soul as Ikea and Abba.
“Kjell, how the hell are you going to fit that thing in there?” Oskar Antonson shouted to Kjell (Shell) Svenningsson, a friend who was trying with various degrees of violence to fit a Volvo generator under the hood of his 1957 Pontiac Bonneville. The car had ground to a halt in the muddy roads of a campground.
Power Big Meet has two official campgrounds. One has pristine lawns, showers, toilets and most important, no tendency to transform into an ocean of mud at the slightest drizzle; the other, the much more popular Swine Camp, is no doubt named for the grooming standards of the people who choose to stay there.
“You need a longer bolt, Kjell,” Mr. Antonson said. “And washers.”
Ignoring the advice, Mr. Svenningsson grabbed a hacksaw and amputated an egg-size chunk of steel from the generator. He shoved the modified piece into place and cranked the starter. The generator rattled, but obeyed. Kjell slammed the hood. “The car lives in Europe now, so she better get used to European parts,” he said.
The campgrounds neatly illustrate the two cultures of the Swedish Am-car scene. The nice camp has shiny, beautifully restored cars. Swine Camp, on the other hand, is the domain of a very Swedish subspecies of the American automobile: the pilsner car.
That is a car that looks as if it has suffered decades of cruel abuse. It is rusted out, covered with stickers and grime, its roof, trunk and hood beaten and dented almost beyond recognition. And if it is an authentic pilsner, the back end scrapes the ground because the frame has been broken over the rear axle.
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However, it is in the guts of a pilsner car where things get really strange. Under the hood, a true pilsner will have a new or renovated engine, preferably something powerful like a 351-cubic-inch Ford V8. The axles have fresh brakes, the rust is rarely more than skin-deep, and the broken frame may even be welded solid in its mangled state.
The pilsner is a muscle car disguised as a beater.
“It’s about being able to not give a damn,” said Henrik Hjalmarsson, sitting on the hood of his Chevy. Mr. Hjalmarsson owns a particularly defeated-looking pilsner, a 1968 Impala with a 1967 front end and a suitably broken frame. The car was loaded with stickers, many of them Confederate flags. The raggare culture has a deep fascination with the American South.
“I can spill as much beer and put out as many cigarettes on the seats as I want,” he said. “But if you look underneath, the car is like new.”
At 9 a.m. Friday, roughly half the campers dragged themselves out of their campers, back seats or tents to go to the festival grounds while the other half took shelter anywhere they could find. Most had spent the night riding around town, perched on the roofs and trunks of their cars, parked at the local gas station and drinking Swedish moonshine from gallon jugs.
This town is quiet for most of the year, but explodes during Power Big Meet. Some businesses use it as an opportunity to crank up the prices of food and drinks, while most locals are happy to take in the spectacle from their lawn chairs.
As roughly 10,000 cars filed in — fewer than the organizers had anticipated but still filling the festival grounds — many owners spent the first few hours sleeping on the grass next to their cars. Vendors along a main road sold classic hubcaps, license plates and various knickknacks whose value seemed to stem only from the fact that they were American. Bleachers had been set up, and cars entered in the various categories filed past.
Steven Gjaerud, 19, had a 1968 Dodge Coronet body mounted on a 2007 Charger chassis. Mika Droddy has spent most of a year sticking the body of a 1959 Plymouth to the frame of a ’79 Ford Bronco.
But most of the cars were not abominations. In any direction and you might see something beautiful, like a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville, a 1938 Ford Deluxe, a 1965 Sting Ray or one of the 200-some Mustangs sprinkled around the grounds.
Cherielynn Westrich, famous from her appearances on Discovery’s “Overhaulin’ ” show, where she restores cars with Chip Foose, had finally been talked into coming to Power Big Meet after hearing her friends rave about it for years.
“Sweden is the 53rd state,” Ms. Westrich said. “And Power Big Meet is the biggest and baddest car show in the world.”
The next day, the festival was winding down. Some partiers headed home, but most were gearing up for a final night of Big Meet celebrations.
“This place is unique,” Al Young, a former drag racing champion, said after receiving the award for longest distance traveled, having shipped his 1973 Plymouth Road Runner from Seattle to the Netherlands.
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“The Swedes are crazy about their cars, and I love the pilsner cars,” he said. “In the U.S., classic cars are for old guys who can afford to restore them, but these beaters allow kids to get into restoring cars.”
Later, outside the gas station that served as a staging ground for the night’s partying, the claimed largest classic car meet in the world had devolved into the largest party in the world. The police carted away only the least conscious drunks.
A portly gentleman was fixing the roof of his 1965 Chrysler Newport by jumping up and down on it. After five minutes, his foot broke through, to loud cheers.
At the Swine Camp, conditions were worse. Three days of binge drinking and blistering sun had left many people incapable of speech or reason and their sunburned bodies sticky from warm beer.
A family lounged drunkenly around a stretched Pontiac Catalina Safari decorated like an American flag. The owner was in the back seat, wearing nothing but a straw hat and a set of false teeth that had been skillfully attached to his private parts.
He came to from his beer-induced slumber and demanded that everyone party harder. The car lurched into gear, slowly navigating the zombies that slouched around the campground and motored toward town for a final cruise. Country music blared from the speakers.
“I’m more of a Georgia Satellites kind of girl,” said the designated driver, Frida Sofie Abelsnes, 19, referring to the Atlanta-based band. “But this is a country crowd.”
She turned onto the main drag and the America-mobile joined the throng of pilsners and restored cars on their way to town for the final night of Power Big Meet.
