In the comments section of the article I just wrote on “The Truth About Cars” I was taken to task by one person who complained that old cars will always “let you down.”
Maybe it is perverse of me to think so, but I actually enjoy the challenge of keeping an old machine running. I feel the acts or maintenance and repair enhance my relationship with the car. Over time I can hear, feel, and occasionally smell things wrong with it, and feel immensely satisfied when I’m able to tend to them, and continue on my way. If your life is nothing but destinations, then by all means stay away from old cars and their needs. You will be let down. But if your life is about journeys, and adventures, then hit the road in that old jalopy!
I answered the commentator with a variation of the above theme and posited that perhaps my next article would be “The Joys Of Being Let Down By Old Cars.” A further comment then suggested that I’m nuts. 😉
Perhaps I am, but I’m going down that road anyway. Who’s coming with me? Push-starting the 65E all the way home from Los Angeles? It is the punch line from our great Father/Son Road Trip of 2009. Having a stranger save our lost-bolt brake bracket calamity in Idaho last summer? The best part of my trip home from the GTTSR!
Got a great story to tell, then share it here and maybe I’ll weave it in.
It’s probably obvious, but the commenter in question misses the point. I would posit that life’s too short not have owned at least one elderly English sports car.
It’s not merely that these cars have character and it’s not that they are wheeled character-building exercises. For me, they feed the soul in much the same way that the ceremony of Catholic Mass or the ritual of Friday Islamic services provides succor. Turning a wrench in the service of these beautiful machines is, as Augustine of Hippo put it: “a visible sign of an invisible reality.”
You make mention of the fact that you can sense when something’s amiss with the machine. That made me smile with familiarity. At the age of the seventeen, I could field-strip a Stromberg. I could tell when the timing was off even slightly and could change out the right fuse in the dark of a moonless night. This connection isn’t the byproduct of misery but of joy. A summer evening wrenching in the garage is more potent a tonic for whatever ails than hours of yoga.
Trying to communicate this relationship to someone who doesn’t “get it” is like dancing about architecture (to paraphrase Laurie Anderson). There’s a reason some people are Car Guys and others aren’t.
“I would posit that life’s too short not have owned at least one elderly English sports car.”
I’m proud to say that Chuck has squirreled away a saying of my father’s, Paul Wigton, Sr., who once quipped, “Life’s way to short to drive boring cars.”
That’s why I was subjected, -er, exposed to– many an old, NON-boring car. The ONLY cure for the disease, I’m afraid to say…is *death*!
🙂
I Agree! Now, CG, YOMANK, *again*: your comment on TTAC laid me out, diet Mountain Dew emanating from my nostrils..
“…Like testicles hanging off a truck.”
OMFG….where I live (Colorado) it’s almost de riguer for every other “Cowboy Cadillac” (Ferd F____{whatever})to have a set of those…those….*idiot things* attached to the rear bumper. Someday, I’m going to pilfer a set off an unsuspecting urban cowboy’s ersatz ranch wagon, deep fry them in breading, then rehang’em…!
Oi vey es mer!
You just can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t get it.
Quoted from the TTAC comments – “The trip is an adventure, and anything the car decides it needs to do on the side is not a part of the adventure, it is an unwelcome divergence…” But why can’t it be part of the adventure? At most you’re out a few days and some dollars for repairs; not a big deal if you’ve budgeted your time properly. (Granted, if there was a tight deadline you wouldn’t want to find yourself stranded on the side of the road, but why would you be using a collector car in that situation?)
Being only in my mid-20s, I am lucky to own three cars, one which I consider at least semi-collectible. I didn’t buy it as an investment, I bought it to drive around occassionally when the weather is nice. It’s by no means perfect; the interior’s a bit beat up, there’s a paint chip here and there, and it has a few quirks. Still, I smile every time I open the garage and fire it up. And you can’t explain that feeling to someone who just doesn’t get it.
Sorry, I know that rambled on a bit.
“Still, I smile every time I open the garage and fire it up”
That, in a nutshell, explains pretty much everything Bill. 🙂