Boy did this one beat the whiny, pissy, angry name-callers out of the bushes. Well hold on to your diminutive members, cause I’ve got a whole lot of something to say to you bunch. Let me start off by telling you who I am, because I think that will say a good deal.
I’m 33 years old, the eight-year owner of a now heavily hot-rodded ’68 MkI Triumph GT6 that I drive hard enough to have broken upgraded axles, and far enough to have (on multiple occasions) gotten caught in rainstorms with DOT slicks on, but had to drive on anyway through multiple states just to get home. I grew up going to car shows like those at the Marcus Dairy on Saturday nights, and road races at courses like Lime Rock and Watkins Glen. I’ve been to Speed Week on the Bonneville Salt Flats, driven up Mount Washington and Pikes Peak. I’m a proud workingclass, 11-year card-carrying Union Shopcraftsman. I work hard for a living, make good money and pay good taxes. I’m a hardcore, old-school New Englander, and proud to be an American in the tradition of those many educated, hard-working, principled Americans before me. I don’t care what your race, nationality, religion, sex, gender, hair color or displacement is, though I’d prefer you had a manual transmission. I’m college-educated at a very small, very intense and demanding liberal arts college, an aspiring landowning permacultural farmer, and die-hard environmentalist. I love 20s Bugattis, 30s highboy flathead Fords, 50s gassers, 60s trans Am muscle, 70s endurance racers, 80s Euro rally cars, 90s Japanese drift cars, everything before, after, and in between. I have my own taste, but fast, slow, stock, mod, rare, common - I can appreciate it all.
Let me analogize by putting it this way: I am, in addition to those many other things, also a life-long photographer. But the photography I love is film photography - developed in a can with chemicals, printed in black and white on paper coated with light-sensitive emulsion. This is what I love to do and what interests me, but that doesn’t mean I have to rail against the existence of digital photography. I use and enjoy digital photography, and the fact that the technology is so vastly available and used is a great gift to the world. Period. Efficient, clean, continuously progressive technology to perform a necessary task is hardly something to hate. One’s broader support does not mean the other needs to or will be ended. There is a place for the cultural richness afforded by conventional photography, as there is a place for that of gasoline-burning, fire-spitting internal combustion engines. But every human on planet earth does not need to burn petroleum to get from place to place every day, just because you feel like it. If you think that polluting as much as you want whenever you want is your god-given right, then maybe you ought to consider that your liberty ends where others’ begins. And as a protector of my country’s land, water, and air, I expect every American to be held to equal account. The only ones making this a divisive argument on a damn CLASSIC CAR INSURANCE WEBSITE are those of you who just want to be the loudmouth a$$høle that Americans like me cringe at every time you rear your ugly heads. You’re pretty brave in the comments section, but let’s see you call me a libtard to my face.
The fact is, there’s plenty of encouraging stuff happening in car culture now – in fact, more than ever. It’s just that closed-minded people like those the author is talking about refuse to allow its existence when they have any say in the matter. Well, some news here - it exists anyway. Though we could use more of them, race series like LeMons, Gambler, and Gridlife GLTC are very cool steps in the right direction. Countless aftermarket parts manufacturers from cottage to factory are popping up for almost every sort of vehicle. Look at the virtual community on Youtube alone. People I follow like Jimmy Oakes, The Vargas Brothers, Garrett Mitchell (aka Cleetus McFarland), Stephan Papadakis, Mike Finnigan, Jay Leno, and all the many guys over at Hoonigan, Grind Hard Plumbing, and Donut just to name a few… these are inclusive, interested, positive voices for car culture. But you angry red-hats and bluebloods out there, screaming names, muttering slights, “pulling ladders,” or “closing gates” at anybody not like you – you’re only making a bad name for gearheads, and moreover, a bad name for Americans. You’re hardly protecting our culture from extinction - the only thing you’re succeeding in doing is ruining it for the rest of us. You’re entitled and outspoken so you think you’re right. In that respect, the author is dead effin right, and you’re proving the point for him.
From my perspective, even with my life-long interest, I can honestly say that until I was well out of college and had saved a good deal of money, I felt that cars weren’t for me. It was something to appreciate as a spectator. I wasn’t lucky enough to know people who could teach me what I wanted to know. I didn’t even own a vehicle until I was 21 when I bought my little work truck. Many of you are right in saying that there are a vast number of approachable, inviting people in the car world, but until recently, despite my genuine interest, it was always kind of tough to find ways to educate myself in my spare time. Times are different, but we are the ones to inherit this culture, and I for one want to make it a community that values intelligence and kindness.
