The 2025 car show season is finally here, and we are very excited in that kid-at-Christmas kind of way about it.
The off season is a long one here in our part of the Northern Hemisphere where Santa Claus is our noisy neighbor.
Jim Sutherland
However, we do not let grass grow under our feet (a very difficult task in the dead of winter) during the giant refrigeration portion of our year and instead seek out stories via the internet. We used to join many internet car clubs and forums to reach out to owners back in our early years, but now we lean heavily to connections via social media juggernauts like Facebook.
Facebook is a platform built to handle its three billion-plus users and their vast array of interests. MyStarCollectorCar concentrates on Facebook’s vintage vehicle hobbyists and tend to ignore the billions of other topics posted on the famous social media site every nanosecond.
We have little to no interest in pictures of a meal in a restaurant, or feet in front of an ocean–and even less interest in a joke created by somebody else and then posted by somebody who was born without a sense of humor. But we do love a good car story, and Facebook has provided access to some exceptional ones during our off season here in the Great White North.
Our first order of business is to wend our way through the massive Facebook jungle and track down interests, so we are provided with numerous automotive related pages with a vintage vibe.
Most Facebook vintage vehicle fan pages are a closed shop with a minimal admission exam in which a potential page member must answer a few questions about the vehicle in question to prove their worthiness and, presumably, their living human being status. It is a basic questionnaire with few twists and turns, so the process is not a painful one.
Approval as a member of a page dedicated to a particular vintage ride usually takes anywhere from an hour to a day or two, depending upon the size of the membership. A full-fledged member is allowed to reply on an existing story or make a new post on the page.
Our chosen path is watch for new posts from these pages and begin a process to contact the owners when we spot an interesting vehicle story on our feeds. Then the fun begins.
We must be careful in our approach because some page hosts do not want to share their site-much like a mother grizzly does not want to share her cubs. We chose to alert the owner to check their Messenger for a private message from us to speed up the introduction process and not step on page police toes.
These days any post will gather plenty of attention from a host of imaginary hot females who are undoubtedly part of a bot process designed to rope in rubes who believe the Facebook hotties are real. We sincerely hope our posts do not spook the vintage vehicle owners and do not ever respond to the fake babes who show interest in our page messages.
For us, it’s just an annoying feature of Facebook and we live with it.
Most of the time we can connect with the owners and gather a story from somewhere in the world. They are worth the effort and are well-received by our readers, so we will continue to pursue car guy stories via Facebook during the off season for car shows.
That said, there is nothing like an interview with an owner at a summer car show for us here at MyStarCollectorCar. Warm weather and an up-close-and-personal classic ride are a winning combination for us.
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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