MyStarCollectorCar decided to borrow heavily from the language of golf and announce we are on the front nine of 2022, so car guys have plenty of time to map out a game plan for the upcoming year.
Therefore, we decided to jump into the game early and provide some suggestions for car guy plans in ’22.
Jim Sutherland
Our first suggestion: take somebody from another generation to a car show. Your guest of honor may be older or younger than you but may not have attended a show for a variety of reasons. For example, a person from a younger generation will typically have no connection to the vintage car hobby simply because cars are not a huge part of their world. You can expose them to a bygone era of old iron.
Or you can reintroduce older people to a world when vintage cars were an everyday part of their lives-but are now just a pleasant memory for them.
Our second suggestion: take somebody from your own generation to a car show, mainly for the reasons listed in the first suggestion, depending upon your age. We have encountered vintage vehicle owners from every age group over the past 13 years but are very pleased whenever we interview younger car guys who have bought into old car hobby in a big way. These young car guys have a golden opportunity to influence their non-car guy friends simply by owning a vehicle that has a Fred Flintstone vibe to it in their world.
Our third suggestion: take somebody for a ride in an old car. Vintage vehicles are from a bygone era, so they connect the past with the present in a big way and are cool four-wheeled lessons in history. The old iron may be equipped with vacuum wipers, three-on-the-tree manual transmissions, top speeds more suitable for arthritic German Shepherds, and tube radios that once played Benny Goodman when he was a chart-topper, but they are rolling blasts from the past.
The old car’s loud wind noise will likely cancel out its tube radio (even at full volume), but today’s world of quality-free talk radio AM stations will make the old car’s leaky and loud cabin a true blessing. Most importantly, the entire road experience will be either be brand new and cool, or nostalgic, depending upon the age of the invited guest in your old car.
Our fourth suggestion: buy an old car and make your world a better place. Most retro rides will test your patience, coping skills, problem solving, ability to listen for unusual mechanical sounds, ability to smell burning automotive materials, along with an ability to feel peculiar shakes and rattles before all hell breaks loose on the road.
The basic fact is owners sign up for road adventures when they sign a bill of sale and buy a vintage car. A new owner of an old car is at the start line for one of the greatest periods of their lives if they use it wisely and well.
Which brings us to MyStarCollectorCar’s fifth and final point: do not trailer an old car to a show. Car trailers completely erase the spirit of road adventures-unless the trailer is behind a vintage truck.
No vintage ride should be trailered to a car show because it needs to be driven, preferably in the fast lane of a freeway whenever possible.
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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