There is a circle of life that takes place with old cars, including reincarnation as a fridge in some cases.
Vintage cars were once new out of the factory or dealership and lit up some family’s life with their newness, a feature often found in puppies.
Jim Sutherland
Eventually both cars and young dogs get older while losing their appeal along the way in many cases. Then both car and mutt will remain with most families until the years finally catch up to them and they are deemed expendable by their owners. One will have a date with the crusher, and one will have a date with a vet. Either way it’s a sad ending.
A new car’s life likely began in a very exciting way when it was purchased by its first owners back in the day. There was a time when cars looked very different every year in North America because there was a heated battle to win the hearts and minds of customers between the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors), including new styles and designs on their newest products.
It was a bloodbath based upon the “planned obsolescence” game plan initiated by General Motors executive Alfred P Sloan during the 1920s. Sloan called it “dynamic obsolescence” because it meant his company would move the yardsticks in terms of style, presumably to compete with Henry Ford’s stand-pat approach to his wildly successful Model T.
True confession: MyStarCollectorCar has a great degree of difficulty identifying pre-war vehicles from the 1920s (outside of the Model T) but we do recognize the impact of frequent style changes in domestic cars during the latter part of the 1950s and well into the 1960s.
Like most Boomers, we were kids during the heyday of the sweeping style changes that occurred during the Elvis and Beatles eras, so we remember very well when somebody in our neighborhood bought a new car and became a local rock star for a New York minute until somebody else bought an even newer car.
The shooting star effect of a new car became obvious because new cars from that era had radically different styles that made last year’s models look ancient by comparison. It was a very aggressive sales plan that was eventually overwhelmed by the sheer cost of equipment retooling required at the car factory, but it was fun while it lasted for car kids from that golden automotive era.
The net effect was newer cars looked very old in a hurry and lost their beauty even faster in the eyes of their beholders. Their death cycle began shortly after the new models grabbed the spotlight and shoved the older cars into an uncertain future based solely upon their reliability and rust immunity.
The older the car, the less likely it would meet the two challenges, particularly in areas where winter was a large part of the calendar year. An old car deemed no longer able to answer the bell in either category was either sold, traded, or baled, depending upon its condition.
One other scenario: drag or drive the car into a long timeout in a shack or pasture and forget about it until somebody discovers it, becomes its newest owner, and ultimately changes its fortunes. We at MyStarCollectorCar call the ensuing restoration or resto mod process by the new owner a rebirth-and we don’t think we are wrong.
It is indeed a rebirth for old rides every time they get rescued from the sad misery of neglect and end up back on the road instead of a starring role as a new kitchen appliance.
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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