Re: The future of the old car hobby

["Tony Sims" <simstony@domain.elided>]

>Ron Horowitz <RonHorowitz@domain.elided> wrote:
>
>OK, I just gotta get this off my chest...
>
>I've seen a number of posts re a scarey look into the future, custom chip
electronics, >the old car restoration hobby, etc.

>Seems to me, there has to be "enough" in terms of cars, interest, knowledge,
money, >and vendors, or the critical mass goes away... ...On an even smaller
scale, people are >interested in two-liter Alfa spiders. By the time you get
to things like 2600's, there's a >tiny number of cars, projects, & people to
amortise the cost of supporting the things, >and the technical difficulty of
restoration is higher. The question may only be which of >the old cars will
survive, and which won't. The more common and simpler (therefore >cheaper,)
and the more desirable, the more likely to survive. Rarity, complexity, and
the >lack of swoopy fenders are probably the death knells.

>Car-wise, the body of skilled labor is probably shrinking... ...98% of the
guys doing crash >repairs these days don't know which end of a body hammer
you're supposed to hold >onto, or even how to paint.

At 41 and given the amount of time and money I can devote to my GTV, it could
easily be the last project car I'll ever need.  Your predictions make me think
in terms of strategy -- perhaps I should be scouring eBay for deals on panel
forming tools and a good multi-function milling machine.  Over the remainder
of my life I'm pretty sure I could teach myself to make a fender or a set of
pistons, and the availability of 20 ga sheet steel and aluminum stock
shouldn't be affected by the state of the modern automobile or the
legislature.  Maybe I can help a few of the young 'uns to feed their car nut
hunger.

>I see a number of trends. As the cost of new cars continues to increase, the
cost and >difficulty of repairing used cars continues to increase, and as the
level of government >inspection and restriction continues to increase, so also
will the cost of car ownership. >Unless there are changes in these general
trends, I suspect we'll reach a point where >only the privelidged and wealthy
will be able to afford to drive cars at all, and some form >of public
transportation will be supported for the underclasses.

I can't get on board with this Orwellian stuff.  To site a contrary trend from
my experience -- Hong Kong and Singapore are both countries where car
ownership is prohibitively expensive and public transportation is excellent.
All the same, the number of car owners grows each year.  Bangkok has only
so-so public transportation and horrific traffic, but more and more people
there are buying cars too.  There are billions of walking, biking, scootering
consumers in China, India, South America and Africa who represent a market
that makes car company execs wet themselves.  In the US, personal
transportation has reached the status of birthright, not much chance the
growth of car ownership is going to slow here.

>...the car hobby will morph into something new and different, like the guys
hanging all >those really ugly fiberglass body kits and wings onto late model
Honda's (a trend I can't >really comprehend, but I'm getting older, and these
are kids.)

I can't get my head around this one either, but I still chuckle when I see one
of these plastic-fantastic noisemakers and recall Scott Fisher's recent
definition of BHP as it relates to the rice-racer crowd -- I think he called
it "Bystander Horsepower"...

Cheers,
Tony
Portland OR
74 GTV

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