There are times in Amazon’s Motorheads, especially during the Neil Burger-directed premiere, when it feels like you’re not really supposed to have been paying attention. Or, at least, when it feels like the show presumes you haven’t been.

Character introductions and plot developments are prefaced by blaring musical cues to let you know in no uncertain terms how to feel. The dialogue is bloated with exposition: “I mean, your dad just lost her,” a girl says to her boyfriend of his own recently dead mother, as if he might have forgotten. And in case none of that might be enough to redirect your attention from whatever TikTok video you were watching simultaneously, the soundtrack is crammed with recently huge, surely expensive hits by the likes of Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and Olivia Rodrigo.

Arguably, such nudges might be useful, even necessary, given it’s likely some proportion of the Gen Z target audience really will be tuning in while staring at their phones. But the heavy hand with which Motorheads deploys them suggests a much bigger clunker than it actually turns out to be. Underneath all the awkward lines and thudding musical stingers, it turns out, is a solidly enjoyable teen drama, bolstered by a winsome cast, some nice chemistry and an endearingly earnest love of street racing.

The latter is Motorheads‘ unique hook, the thing that separates it ever so slightly from the 10,000 other adolescent soaps it’s perfectly aware it resembles. (“That’s literally every high school,” deadpans one parent when another remarks on how crazy it is that their sons are fighting over the same girl.) Imagine the early installments of The Fast and the Furious, before Dominic Toretto became a globe-trotting pseudo-superhero, reimagined as a coming-of-age journey in a tiny Rust Belt town, and you more or less get the idea.

Into the prettily wooded enclave of Ironwood, Pennsylvania, enter Caitlyn (Melissa Collazo) and Zac (Michael Cimino), twins who instinctively share in its vehicular obsession despite having just moved with their mother, Samantha (Nathalie Kelley), from not-especially-car-friendly Brooklyn. Why they’ve relocated, or why Samantha’s chosen to move them in with her mechanic brother-in-law Logan (Ryan Phillippe), is barely explained over 10 hour-long episodes, because the answers don’t really matter.

What does matter is that their arrival shakes up the social scene — not least because Zac and Caitlyn happen to be the children of Christian (played in flashbacks by Ryan’s son Deacon Phillippe), a hometown racing legend who vanished 17 years earlier after a bank robbery gone sideways.  

Nothing much about Motorheads is reinventing the wheel, but then again, nothing much about it is trying to. Of course the new kids immediately befriend the local outcasts, awkward nerd Marcel (Nicolas Cantu) and not-so-bad-boy Curtis (Uriah Shelton), and run afoul of the popular crowd, led by a Porsche-driving bully named Harris (Josh Macqueen). Of course these alliances and rivalries are cemented episode one at a raucous house party hosted by Harris’ even richer girlfriend, Alicia (Mia Healey), and of course Zac instantly develops a fancy for her, sparking the first of at least three overlapping love triangles.

And of course nearly all of the kids’ parents will turn out to have their own shared history of bitter grudges, thwarted romances and dangerous secrets, divulged bit by bit in the flashbacks that open each episode. “It’s kind of like history repeating itself,” one dad announces, lest any viewer miss the too-perfect parallels to the drama playing out among their offspring in the present.

But the predictability is more bug than feature. Beneath all the grime and grease, Motorheads is warm and familiar comfort food, with a surprisingly wholesome heart. Its strongest draw is neither the romantic subplots (some cute flirting and enthusiastic smooching, but nothing racier than that) nor the crime-drama elements (illegally fast driving and grand larceny in both timelines, but no graphic violence), but the simpler pleasure of spending time among people who genuinely seem to enjoy each other’s company.

While Ryan Phillippe is surely the most established actor here — and while he acquits himself well as the gruff but kindly mentor dispensing sage advice to his nephew, niece and their friends on matters both car-related and not — it’s really the younger cast who anchor the series.

Caitlyn, Zac, Curtis and Marcel aren’t particularly surprising or complex characters; the latter two, particularly, seem lifted from the big book of teen-drama archetypes. But Collazo, Cimino, Shelton and Cantu share a comfortable, occasionally funny rapport. And creator John A. Norris (All American) takes the time to build up their relationships bit by bit, rather than simply throwing emotional bombshells in their path. The foursome are a good hang, easy to root for even when they (usually Zac) occasionally give in to juvenile impulses toward selfishness or recklessness.

Then there are the rides. You don’t have to know the first thing about cars to admire the sight of candy-colored Corvettes and Mazdas and Mustangs flying over blacktop, or to share in Caitlyn and Curtis’ satisfaction when they find exactly the right parts to rebuild her dad’s old banana-yellow Dodge Charger. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Motorheads could make a NASCAR fan out of a hater, but it does make it perfectly possible to understand why the entirety of Ironwood might love cars the way Dillon, Texas, once worshipped football or Lima, Ohio, once got weirdly obsessed with high school a cappella.

As the season’s plot progresses, it gradually thickens with high-stakes criminal schemes and painful histories, ending on a pair of gut-punching finale cliffhangers. But it keeps the tone mostly breezy until then, which is probably the savvy move. It’s easier, that way, to cruise past details that don’t make much sense (several of the kids “work” at the local diner, randomly popping in for a few minutes whenever they feel like it) or steer around the pitfalls of sappiness and self-importance.

Life-changing stuff, this isn’t, even if the characters do like to throw around knowingly cheesy metaphors about hitting the gas in romance as well as on the road. It’s just sturdy, reliable entertainment — well worth putting down your phone for and taking for a proper spin.