The car hobby can be rough territory for car guys if they are married and subject to a series of rigid spousal checks and balances after too many expensive old rust buckets followed the car guys home.
Most old car projects are at best a cash hemorrhage in the eyes of most brides and do not occupy the top rung on their priority list, to say the very least.
Jim Sutherland
An excellent example of the disconnect between wives and old cars occurred many years ago for us here at MyStarCollectorCar. A beautiful mid-60s Buick caught our eye at a car show and we found the proud owner of the vintage ride.
He had just bought the Buick and was basking in the glow of new ownership of an old car when we interviewed him. It was the kind of genuine excitement we seek from an owner because it meant he had found true love in his life after a long search.
The happy ending to the story blew up when we noticed a glum-looking woman in the Buick and asked her about the car. She said, “it would have looked much better as a new kitchen”. Our best guess is either the car or the woman in the car are not a part of the car guy’s world these days. Maybe neither, if it was a nasty divorce.
The question of the day: what type of woman is best suited for marriage to a car guy? MyStarCollectorCar picked five of our better choices for the “or worse” part of the marriage vows.
Our first pick is a realist who does not embrace the old car hobby but accepts her husband’s affliction as a major part of his life. She may not be a car girl but is willing to give him an opportunity to pursue his hobby–within reason. The old vehicle addiction cannot infringe heavily on their property because old cars and trucks are not beautiful yard art in her world.
Our second pick is also a realist, one who balances her husband’s addiction to old cars against addictions to alcohol, drugs or gambling. She assesses the vintage vehicle hobby as a less harmful vice than other potential addictions and can monitor its seriousness by keeping a close track on the number of old relics in their yard.
Our third wifely choice is any woman who sees the lights on in the garage or shop and knows her husband is with his mechanical mistress–sometimes late into the night. For her, it is a much better scenario than a flesh-and-blood mistress, and hopefully less expensive in the long run.
MyStarcollectorCar’s fourth spousal pick is any bride who is also interested in the old car hobby and shares her husband’s love of old vehicles. She is a gearhead who loves the world of retro dreams from the past and may even be a full partner in a husband-and-wife fleet of vintage vehicles. In short, she is an ideal life partner for a car guy.
But not the most ideal, because our fifth and final pick is a wife who can wrench and weld on an old vehicle better than her husband.
She is the dream girl for most car guys and the gold (make that platinum) standard for them in the hobby.
Jim Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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