One of the biggest mysteries to be found in the 21st Century has to be the holdouts in the car hobby who choose to ignore the overwhelming number of reasons to embrace the new age of the Internet.
They seem to feel that they have no need to expand their horizons when it comes to the old car hobby and these old dogs stubbornly refuse to learn a new trick.
These are car guys who have undertaken major projects over the years that required an amazing amount of talent and ability to reassemble something as complex as an internal combustion engine, yet they are intimidated by a laptop.
Laptops, tablets and smartphones are simply pieces of equipment that have buttons that work within a basic system that anybody can master. The same cannot be said about a re-build on a Chevy small block and yet many car guys would rather tackle the engine than turn on a computer.
So they are content to wallow in a primitive automotive Stone Age where everybody else has discovered fire, eat cooked meat and live in warm caves (the ‘Net), while they dine on raw mastodon and live in a frosty cave (the Phone). It makes very little sense to avoid one of the most effective ways to the vintage vehicle culture ever available to car guys.
There are no prizes for stubborn holdouts in 2013 when a simple push of a button will put the car guy world at their fingertips. Hard-to-find vehicles and vehicle parts are a lot harder to find if you do not use the ‘Net to its best advantage.
The kicker is that some of the holdouts still access the computer world through a relative, sometimes one of their kids, and sometimes their smarter spouses. We have found that older women have embraced the computer age and are ahead of the curve over older men.
Fortunately the number of men that have caught on to the computer age has also increased significantly and will continue to grow as they realize that they have denied themselves access to an incredibly valuable tool in the car guy garage.
We believe the stubborn Internet holdouts were either frightened by the evil computers on the original Star Trek or they are just too hard-headed to change their ways. Either way they have limited themselves to the car guys within their circles and that circle of car guys is several hundred million short of the car guys on the ‘Net.
However there will always be a few car guys who will refuse to embrace the Net, against all odds and any logic. They should feel fortunate that they were not around when the horseless carriage replaced the horse and buggy because we have a feeling that they, their buggies and their horses would have been left behind in the dust by a Model T.
We run into the real stubborn holdouts at car events and we know they will never change their viewpoint about the Net.
We don’t know whether to praise their fierce independent streak or pity their incredibly short-sighted philosophy, but we lean toward Door Number 2.
Jim Sutherland
