On a Sunday morning with a nor’easter moving in off the Atlantic, at least 81 Sunshine Orange Subaru Crosstreks assembled behind a Big Y supermarket in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for no reason that would satisfy a grant committee. Coverage described the event as a playful, non-fundraising gathering — no ribbon cutting, no brand activation tent. Just a parking lot full of identical orange cars, their owners grinning at each other like they’d all shown up to the same very specific costume party. A year earlier, the whole thing started with 14 vehicles and one person who noticed something worth paying attention to.
How a Wave Between Strangers Became an 81-Car Convoy
Organizer Michelle Kaplan turned a repeated, color-coded roadside greeting into one of New England’s more cheerfully absurd annual traditions.
Kaplan organized the first Sunshine Orange Crosstrek drive in 2025 after noticing something simple — owners of the same unusually colored car kept waving at each other on the road. Against a backdrop dominated by silver, white, and black vehicles, Sunshine Orange is impossible to miss. Drivers noticed each other because they couldn’t help it.
Kaplan turned that recognition into the 2025 inaugural drive, which drew 14 cars. Word spread through social media and enthusiast circles. The second edition drew participants from as far as Wisconsin and Ohio, according to event coverage. Local police directed parade traffic along the route from the Big Y parking lot down Main Street to the Price Chopper lot.
What Happened, By the Numbers
The second parade’s logistics were as straightforward as its premise: show up, be orange, drive.
- Date: September 27, 2026
- Owners gathered at the Big Y at 11 a.m., with the convoy departing at 11:30 a.m.
- Kaplan counted at least 81 participating Sunshine Orange Crosstreks — up from 14 at the 2025 inaugural event, a nearly sixfold increase in one year.
- Owners traveled from as far as Wisconsin and Ohio to take part.
- An approaching nor’easter did nothing to thin the crowd.
The Point Is That There Is No Point
No sponsor, no prize, no product launch — just the spectacle of one unusual color multiplied until it overwhelms the ordinary.
Rural Intelligence described the event as “just as meaningless” in its coverage — and that was not a criticism. “This is just a celebration of absurdity,” Kaplan told the publication. The dynamic is not unlike the Jeep wave, that unspoken nod between Wrangler drivers that costs nothing and means something anyway. Scale that recognition up to more than 80 cars rolling down Main Street and the result is a public spectacle that required almost no infrastructure to produce.
The absurdity compounds into something genuine. One orange Crosstrek is a color choice. More than 80 of them in convoy, proceeding through a small New England town while rain threatens, is a different thing entirely — specific, vivid, and briefly unforgettable in a way that a matching convoy of silver SUVs simply would not be.
What Comes Next
Kaplan reportedly considers a third parade likely, and the trajectory of the event makes that difficult to argue against.
Participation was restricted to Sunshine Orange Crosstreks; spectators were welcome to watch from along Main Street. No tickets, no formal competition. That constraint is the whole design — specific enough to mean something, open enough that showing up is the entire ask.
“I just thought it was so funny and stupid to me, and then it just kind of caught on,” Kaplan told Rural Intelligence. The bar for a lasting tradition, it turns out, is lower than most assume. Find the people already waving at each other, give them a parking lot and a time, and get out of the way.
