It's my nostalgia for when I lusted after the tire melting hot rods of my youth. I don't much care about looks or comfort, and the saying "Watch out for the guy with an ugly car, all his money is in the engine" makes me feel pretty inside.
EDIT: "It's my nostalgia for when I lusted after the tire melting hot rods of my youth." I meant when I was still too young to have a license.
Ain't nothing wrong with roasting some tires now and again. Like a week ago, I spent the week driving around in a Mustang. This week is was a lovely un-restored Jaguar. So, I love variety. I love the different ways the cars excel, learning where the balance point is, and exploring their envelope.
Basically, they're also all investments. Well, most are. They appreciate better than many other investments. While I have no desire to sell most of the cars I own, I do see them as stores of value.
At the same time, I love the engineering and history behind them. In my life, I've driven many vehicles - and I can almost always come up with something nice to say about them.
I'd say the vast majority of performance improvements of the last few decades are due to computers, from computer aided design of slippery bodies and tuned intakes and exhaust, to the computer control of fuel mixtures and timing, along with them learning about quench areas and such (all good things). OTOH, I hear a lot of problems with Hemis suffering camshaft failures due to some part of the casting shadowing the oil splashing onto them, or transmission failures for Mopars and some weird Ford multiclutch thing. (although back in the '60's Ford had quite a rep for bad trannys to the point where they had TV ads showing someone smoking the tires between Drive and Reverse for an extended time to show they didn't break anymore). I also watch a lot of "Uncle Tony's Garage" on youtube where he's posted several times about even brand name parts for lifters, breaker points (for old cars) etc. breaking within a few days or even minutes. I guess I'm just a glass half empty kinda guy. I also guess that's why I seem to like poal.
Modern cars are awesome. I absolutely love modern cars - and that includes them having computers. I find most of the folks who argue are just people who refuse to update their skillset to understand what's going on. They're more reliable, more efficient, faster, safer, etc... They're better cars by pretty much every metric.
Then, you get the people who don't understand logic. "Well, my 1984 F250 still works!" Yeah, any car can do that - but look at how few survived and how quickly they were off the road compared to modern cars. You can't really argue the data.
On the other hand, it's getting tougher to find a really analog car - by that I mean one where you really feel like you're in touch with the road itself as you were in older cars. Modern brakes and suspensions take that road-feel away.
But, someone's gotta keep the old and special cars around. They really are good stores of value, appreciating faster than S&P 500 and the likes. I'm in the process of moving some investments around and will go on one more buying spree. Then I'll be done... Well, that's what I tell myself.
On that note, I'll be heading out soon. The wife would like some attention before we meander off to bed.
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