Unpopular opinion. I'm so frustrated I hate car shows/cruises.

Car "shows" tend to skew older and come with all the typical cliques. "cars and coffee" tends to be more mixed, but it varies wildly.
Plenty of car related events all over the place, but often they're tough to find. Try searching Facebook, Instagram, or other forums for local clubs or groups and see if you can crash some of their get togethers and find some like minded folks. Heck, assign the task to your kid and see if he can help seek out a better suited group.

I tend to agree with your take on the more formal shows though. I dig all kinds of cars and builds, but the more formally organized they are the more they seem to skew old and play 50s tunes while pretending anything newer than 1953 is "late model" despite most of the rods being powered by the same mail order china-laden 350/350 powertrains with more focus on high output AC and paint than anything else.

The next worse are Porsche guys. All they do is stand around and brag about how much they paid over sticker and how much one "just like it" recently resold for, but don't dare squint too hard at the car or you might depreciate it and the owner will have to sue you.. Ugh.

In some places it's gotten so bad that the corvette guys were the only ones not being aholes, lmao.