Nat King Cole topped the charts in 1946 with his hit song ‘I Love You For Sentimental Reasons’.
His silky smooth vocals were the main reason this song became a timeless classic from the age of the Great Singers.
The philosophy behind MyStar has always been to find out the connection between the vehicle and the owner.
Our stories look for the ties that bind the two together and we want the bond to be an unbreakable bond.
Readers know I have mentioned on many occasions how we like to get stories that tug at the heart strings. We will do everything in our power to avoid stories about vehicles destined to be sold or are a cold-blooded financial investment for the owner.
The vehicles are much more than a simple commodity for most car guys and this summer has proven that basic point more than ever. This year I have encountered an amazing number of owners who have a strong family link to the car or truck.
In most cases the vehicle was purchased by a father and the memory of the man is firmly entrenched in the vehicle. For example, one man’s father passed away several decades ago and the son restored his father’s 1965 Chevy ½ ton after it had spent many years in storage on the family farm.
The common denominator this summer has been a pattern where the son restored the vehicle back to its original new condition-no big blocks, no chop and no drop added into the mix. The memory is strongest when a son can look at the vehicle in the same light as his younger years when his father first purchased it.
The Nat King Cole song really makes sense to these car guys because they have invested time and money to hold onto a treasured part of their lives in the form of a four-wheeled legacy owned by their late fathers. They really do love the vehicles for sentimental reasons because the cars and trucks remind the sons and daughters of their own childhood riding in the vehicle with their fathers behind the wheel.
These are the Kodak moments of real life where the memory is more than a photo of their dad’s car or truck-it is their actual car or truck. These car guys are very lucky to have the opportunity to own the vehicles and very admired for their efforts, most of which can be an extremely pricey prospect.
These guys make our job easier and I am happy to tell their family story to a bigger audience so other people get to understand how the real car guys view their vehicles. They are not cold-blooded opportunists attempting to make a quick buck on an investment; they are the real deal whose reason for investment in their dad’s vehicle is 100% sentimental.
I am glad I have been lucky enough to encounter an above average number of these real car guys at the 2013 shows. They help me forget about one guy (definitely not car guy) I met this summer who is a co-investor in a rare Mopar muscle car valued at over 100k and has about as much emotional connection with the car as he does with his Microsoft stocks.
I was not nearly as fond of his reasons for ownership and I doubt whether Nat King Cole, the man who also sang ‘Route 66’, would have liked this guy’s (definitely not car guy’s) reasons either if Nat was still with us.
Jim Sutherland
