There are too many car guys who own vintage vehicles but never drive them.
They collect old vehicles with the same philosophy as people who collect other objects of value: to admire and occasionally dust them.
Unfortunately, an old car or truck deserves a better fate because they don’t exactly thrive on inactivity.
Jim Sutherland
In fact, they lose ground while in solitary confinement and develop leaks, along with corrosion, when lubricants are not circulated throughout the old rides’ mechanical components.
The only upside is the vintage vehicles may still look good, even though they have hidden signs of serious decomposition.
The only realistic solution is drive them. It’s a simple concept, but one not grasped by a significant number of car guys. The journeys do not have to be cross-country odysseys, but the trips are necessary for the vehicles because they were never built to hang on a wall like a painting.
Every car or truck was born to run, to borrow from a Springsteen song title, the entertainer voted most likely to have a massive and uncontrollable ego. Consequently, we at MyStarCollectorCar would like to offer five good ways to bring your vintage vehicle back onto the road.
The first way to drive your vintage vehicle is respect its limitations. For example, a Model T and other vehicles from the early days of automobiles are too slow for modern freeway traffic and require routes that do not require a fast pace. We recommend parades and lightly traveled back roads with no steep climbs and good visibility for Model T owners who really want to enjoy their 4-wheeled turtles in real world driving.
The second way to drive a vintage vehicle is give it a thorough mechanical inspection and fix any issues found during the look-see. A passing grade may eliminate an owner’s anxiety about mechanical failures that lead directly toward misadventures on the road, particularly when owner and disabled car are roughly a thousand miles from nowhere, to borrow once again from another famous song title.
There are no guarantees when it comes to old cars, but an encouraging mechanical report may well be the match that lights the fire of an owner’s willingness to drive his or her vintage ride.
The third way to motivate an owner to hit the open road is an upgrade to the vehicle’s performance. Even a Model T would be welcome on a freeway if it had a modern small block V-8 wedged under its hood. This kind of talk would likely ignite a riot at a Model T club meeting, but it would solve the car’s slug-like performance on the road.
The fourth way to drive an old vehicle has ties to the third way because a major powertrain upgrade will require a major engineering upgrade in many retro rides. The list includes frame, brakes, suspension, steering and likely the entire electrical system in the old relic. Pretty soon the vintage ride will resemble the original vehicle, but with enough custom features to make it a one-off modern vehicle with retro style.
The big drawback is the owner may have sunk so much dough and time into the vehicle that he or she is unwilling to drive it.
Which brings us back to the fifth way: just drive it–whether it’s original or highly modified because you owe it to the old war pony and yourself.
Don’t build it to park it.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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