AFFORDABLE? Not hardly. Maybe a Dodge Dart with slant 6 could be affordable. ... View more

Bought a '68 back in 1981 while the engine was out of my Chevelle. $380. It had the 2bbl 400 and turbo 400. Weak drum brakes all around. It could hold a lot of stuff. 14 foot wood would fit stuck up tho the windshield and only a couple feet stuck out the rear. A twin size hospital bed fit in the back and the tailgate closed. The front seat didn't even have to be moved up! Not bad to drive. I scrapped it in 1986 when the gas tank sprung yet another leak. None to be found anywhere at that time and a one gallon can under the hood doesn't get you far. Mine was rusty. When I parted it out, I cut the windshield out to save and discovered that almost the entire width of the dash board under the glass had rusted away. I wish I could have saved the car. Nothing like it. Still miss it and would love to have another (in better shape). ... View more

Rule 1: Before buying a car whether classic or later, look it over well or have someone do it for you. Rule 2: Know how much you can afford to spend--not on the purchase, but for maintaining it and doing repairs. Does no good to buy a nice car only to have it break and sit because you can't afford the fix. Rule 3: If you are not mechanically inclined and don't have the money to have it done, DON'T BUY IT! Rule 4: Join a club or read up A LOT about your car and all its possible problems and solutions. Rule 5: (and most important rule) Don't tackle a job you can't finish properly or you will wreck the value of the car and someone else will have to fix your mess at much larger expense IF the car does't end up a basket case for thirty years that your estate will end up disposing of for scrap. ... View more

Depends. Can you do all the work yourself in a reasonable amount of time or do you have to send it off to a restoration shop? Can you afford the restoration? Does the current owner think his turd is worth a fortune? Just because you saw it while driving by doesn't mean you will be able to get it. Is the person a hoarder that won't sell anything because "I'll get to it 'someday'"? So many cars rot away because the owner is so pig-headed they won't sell it to someone who will fix it up and the parts they have been collecting for years go bad from poor storage. That 426 Hemi in the rusted to heck Cuda sitting in the yard with the hood off and the carb uncovered come to mind. It was parked in 1978 and not touched since. ... View more

Too many have too much money pushing prices to unsustainable levels for these 'investments'. In the news last week, someone paid a million $ for a Pokemon card. a POKEMON CARD!!!!! Sorry, when there are people not able to afford their one room apartments with their BS paying jobs, there is a problem with society. I can appreciate something nice and maybe rare, but it is OBSCENE the way car prices are now. And I don't want to hear about 'supply and demand' or that people should go to college and get better jobs. Some jobs are paying garbage WITH college degrees required. The car hobby should be FUN and the 'investors' are ruining it. ... View more

Get rid of all the weird holes in the front fascia and make the headlights round. It will need longer range. The wheelbase is plenty long to have a larger battery in it. Still hate the touch screens in the center of the IP like all of them seem to be doing. Put real controls that you can operate by feel without taking your hands off the wheel. ... View more

Depends on what you are trying to build. Many build replicas with almost all new parts using an original VIN from a frame or cowl tag for a model that didn't have the numbers stamped all over. How much needs to be 'original' to qualify? So many people are putting late model drive trains in old cars so the requirement for emissions doesn't seem like too much of a problem. Most want the old car looks with modern stuff underneath. I don't see anyone building reproduction Model T's with all the original underpinnings. It's all a rich person's game anyway. 'Joe Average' can't afford one anyway. ... View more

Add reusable large plastic bins and Ziploc bags to hold the parts you take off (label them). Dumping into unlabeled cardboard boxes is the way to lose and damage stuff. When it takes months to years to finish a project, you will appreciate the organization when putting it all back together. And DON'T stack it all on top of the car!!!!! ... View more

Battery tools are the thing these days in pro repair shops. Less air tools these days as it is one less piece of expensive equipment and no heavy hoses in the way. ... View more

Hopefully they have set up a Not for profit corporation with an endowment to keep it going in the future when they are gone. So many cool small museums (and some larger collections) get broken up and sold off when the owner dies. ... View more

How about showing normal cars the rest of us MIGHT be able to buy for maybe $10-20k max? ... View more

Needed to show what the interior and under the hood looked like. ... View more

Parts for the Lotus are probably made from unobtanium these days. The Jeep went cheap. Try to find one in good shape for that price! Opel GT is an interesting car. If rustfree, they are tough cars. Worked with a guy (college student) in the 80's that had one. A car crossed the center line and he was forced into a bridge abutment. The crash shoved the right front in and almost tore off the wheel. The doors still opened (!) and he drove it home. Swapped out the suspension with the only one in a junk yard in town and it had a rusted shock mount that we had to cobble something up for. He drove it back home 500 miles.The Dodge is overlooked. The quality at the time was terrible so finding one not rusted to nothing is hard. Had a automotive teacher in the early 80's that had a similar 76/77 R/T that had a 4 speed. Worked with a woman who had a 88 Cougar, black>>SHARP car. ... View more

Nothing new here. More electronic crap to break. Automatics or their alternatives are great in congested areas where you are always shifting, but I prefer it simple. ... View more

Still stupid. It's not any is all that common. ... View more

Depends on what you are doing to determine what kind of gloves. If using chemicals like for parts washing or exposure to gasoline/oil, use heavyweight Nitrile. To combat hand sweating, get a bigger size and wear cotton gloves under. For just wrenching, cotton gloves (or Kevlar if worried about cuts) work fine. That's what we wore on the assembly line. You get used to wearing them after awhile and can handle small screws with no problems, just be careful around spinning impact wrenches so you don't tear a finger off. They are moderately washable IF you don't get into the grease. You should be scraping off all the gunk before you wrench anyway to prevent goo from getting where you don't want it (like your eyes) or having a wrench slip because everything is covered with oily muck. "Mechanic's" gloves are OK but cost more. ... View more

Much preferred to the 'collection' of cars and parts left to rot because the owner says he'll 'get to them sometime' and never wants to sell anything. That person then dies and the parts and cars goes to scrap because it isn't any good and has done NO-ONE any good that could have used them. I've passed almost all my projects off that I knew I wouldn't do. Kept the minimal for the car I currently have. You have to feel bad for the newer cars that didn't get saved because few thought they were worthy of saving and the aftermarket didn't support (mid 70's-late 80's). I can appreciate almost ANYTHING these days, 4 door, big cars, foreign econoboxes, whatever, because they ain't makin' em anymore. How many of today's cars will there be for the enthusiast? New parts aren't being supported long enough. Electronics especially will be hard to fix and find. Today is being called another golden age of performance cars, but how will they be kept running? ... View more

?!? My brother had a Maverick in 1973. It was two years old when he got it. Rusty p.o.s. already. ABSOLUTE TURD! ... View more

Most definitely Rear Wheel Drive! Front wheel drive and AWD is OK until you lose traction, then it's a quick trip into the ditch as you plow straight off the road. With rear wheel drive, a quick blip of the throttle and you are straight again, maybe not in the lane you intend to be in. Posi doesn't help a lot unless you have one wheel on ice and the other has some traction. If both wheels are slipping it is going to be going sideways. Our 93 T-Bird had posi and you went up the hill near our house sideways in the winter most of the time. Drove for years with RWD and snow tires with weight in the trunk. Trucks are useless in winter unless they have a LOT of weight in the bed. I drove Chevy S10's for years (put 320,000 miles between two) and always had weight and snows. Never got stuck or off the road because that is how I learned to drive in winter (Illinois). ... View more

Get whatever you want. What one person wants may not be another's choice. Remember how in high school you used to only want two door muscle cars and since they are now hard to find at a reasonable cost, you now look at 4 door cars and oddballs? Unusual is always good. Who wants to see the same old stuff? Got SO sick of street rods with billet and SB Chevy's under the hoods. London Taxis would be a good regular import since Checker went out of business years ago and old Crown Vic cop cars are getting hard to find. Local taxi companies in my city are using Scion XB's ... View more

People have too much money ... View more

There will always be issues with transportation. EV's are not the end all be all. The electric grid (and generation) cannot handle 100% EV's. Long distance travel across the country by car is not easily possible with EV's even with 400 mile range. Fueling a gas car takes five minutes. EV's will take longer even with fast chargers to get a full charge and you know it won't be as cheap as they say. You would have to have millions of chargers and have them on all the streets where people shop and live. That doesn't take into account the dirty secret of where the lithium comes from to make the batteries, recycling issues and loss of book value when the battery dies and you haven't even come close to paying the car loan off. There is room for many different modes. We as a country just need to get out of the mindset that we can do whatever we went whenever we want all the time. People used to live close to where they worked and shopping was close by too. You didn't need a car in the neighborhood I grew up in. Small stores were close and the bus line was at the corner if you needed to go somewhere else in town. Where I live now is five miles from anything. Closest bus stop is 3/4 mile away and taking the bus wastes and hour for the trip that takes 15 minutes by car. Also no good places to walk or ride bikes. Everything needs to change. ... View more

I don't care what the car is or is called, just give me something with some style instead of a lump and I don't want it full of cheap plastic that will break, computer modules running everything and I hate those huge touch screens pasted on the dash. Electric cars seem to be the worst for having 'technology' trash just because they can. ... View more

Six figure sweetheart? It will take six figures tho restore it! It IS rare. ... View more

Parts for ANYTHING more than a few years old is hard to come by and the condition of parts is poor. It has been that way for the past 30+ years in metro areas of any size. Land costs are high so the turnover of parts has to be as well. And those cars that end up in rural areas get weathered to death. The plastics just decompose and die. 40 years ago when I was looking for parts for my 69 Chevelle, the pickings were slim then. They were practicing the 'anything older than 8 years gets shredded' routine after only spending two or three weeks in the yard which is crazy because you could get stuff new for those late models still. It's the older stuff that we needed. Now if you have the money, you can get almost anything reproduced due to 3d printing and CAD manufacturing (if you have the prints). Dashboards can be redone. Some seats can be restored easily if the fabric is still out there. All is not lost (except for those who can't afford to do it). ... View more

It is not just car magazines, but all print material that is in danger. My wife worked for a library that sold or tossed THOUSANDS or books and periodicals of all subject types. There is only so much space and they wanted to have room for the latest trash novels that have a shelf life of six months. Anything considered obsolete was weeded. The argument was that people weren't using them. How could they when the library went to an electronic catalog (got rid of the paper card files) that didn't include most of the old titles? Also what about all the knowledge that is lost when people retire or are laid off? There isn't the apprenticeship programs that there used to be. Companies want to hire workers ready to go out of the box and pay nothing while discounting all the skills that the old timers had. ... View more

Blown OR Turbo Buick V-6 was a good engine, but most of the cars the blown engine went in are forgettable. Last good one was the RWD Turbo Regal. ... View more

The plastic body panels may not rust, but what's underneath sure will. Interior plastics were poor so they didn't hold up well and replacements are hard to find these days. ... View more

"Barn Find" car prices have gotten absolutely out of sight. Everyone thinks their rusty, mouse infested turd is worth a fortune. It is a PARTS CAR! Today's generation doesn't want to learn how to do anything. THAT is what the car hobby is about>>>learn how to fix it yourself and get the satisfaction of driving what you built. Plus few can afford to have a restoration shop do it for us. It is NOT about 'value'. You build/restore a car because you LOVE IT, not to make a quick buck. The big auction prices have no bearing on the real cars most of us have in the our garages. One comment said that gas cars will likely be legislated out of existence. Maybe. It WILL get more expensive to own and maybe we won't get to drive as much. We must make sure there is still a place for our antique/classic cars. ... View more

No more-door '63 Ramblers? ... View more

Hate it when the 'investors' get in and run the prices up. Enthusiasts bidding against each other is bad enough. I have a 1969 Firebird with original OHC 6 and manual trans. It's a 30 year old mediocre restoration (Taiwan Camaro 1/4 skins>>that was all there was then), a non-stock paint color and poor floor patch job. Rest is in VGC. Paid $6500 in 1999 and now NADA classic car value says low retail $12,000, average retail $25,000. Will I sell because the $ is up? NO. However, I wish I still had the 69 Chevelle with 307 PG, no power anything. I got when I was 16. It was 10 year old 50k miles one owner then. Kept it 14 years and sold in 1993. It needed everything, but now with the value and all the new reproduction body parts out there, I could have afforded to do it. Hind sight 20/20. ... View more

One of the huge issues, no matter the tire type is the fact that it is impossible to steer with the throttle anymore. With rear drive, you just stab the gas and around the corner you go. Now with FWD/AWD, if you stab the gas, into the ditch or curb you go. Plus all the electronic BS won't let you drive. It does what the computer tells it. For years I drove standard RWD cars with bias ply snow tires, even an S10 truck. Seat of the pants driving>>you could feel the traction limit and adjust. NEVER got stuck and NEVER went off the road. These days you see cars off the road everywhere. People become complacent that the electronics and AWD will save them from their own stupid driving. ... View more

When I saw the intro photo, I thought, "Oh, no. Some stupid builder has wrecked another original car. But the before photo looks like a pretty poor piece to start with--not total garbage, but like the article said, too much to restore to original. Better to use a poor body than to cut up a very nice original. So many times you see some high $ builder take a perfect original car that may have been a base price six cylinder car and turn it into someones 'show car'. Yes, its takes more effort and $ to turn a rust bucket shell into something, but destroying an original is not the way to further the hobby. ... View more

Fix and replace what needs to be done, but leave as much as is as possible. There are enough museum restorations out there. A car is original only once. ... View more

Wrenching these days is tough. I was trained in the early 80's when electronics was just coming out. I didn't end up in service, but worked on an auto assembly line instead. Better money and actually easier work. Knowing the construction process makes it easy to understand why service is so hard these days. The cars are harder to work on as everything is packed in tighter. Parts are made cheaper (to produce, NOT your cost) so they break easier. Flat rate is tough. New hires can't make any money because they don't have the speed. They still have to pay their education costs and tools. Some can beat it and make money, but I would say most can't without cutting corners. The diagnostics is complex. You can't hire the high school dropout that is functionally illiterate. It takes almost college education, or at least the equivalent, to diagnose cars properly. Customers freak when they find out how much some jobs cost. The part might be $50 but it cost $1500 to get to it as everything has to come apart. Heater cores come to mind or timing chains on GM 3.6 V6's. ... View more

Not my style, but to each his own. Up there with Low Riders, fake "patina", Steam Punk, super high 4x4's etc. As long as you enjoy your hobby and don't make it into something that gets you killed because it is so trendy that someone wants your stuff and will kill you to get it. Kids getting killed over sneakers comes to mind. WTF? It's just stuff. Why can't people enjoy what someone else has without wanting to steal it. Get over yourself! These days, I like stone stock cars with four doors. In the day, I wouldn't own anything with more than two doors or without a V8. ... View more

Service manual/body assembly manual so you know how it is supposed to go together. Blow-up diagrams especially. Nothing worse than breaking something because you took it apart in the wrong order or there was some fastener you couldn't see and didn't know was there without the manual. ... View more

Not very aerodynamic and it looks like a shoe box. I hope they built them better than the US companies did with their 'cardboard' construction that rotted to oblivion in a few short years. ... View more

Choice is good. Build what you want. None of these options is for the regular person with kids and a mortgage, but it's fun to dream. Internal combustion engines WILL eventually go out, either by regulation, high cost of fuel or just age for regular every day use. Hopefully we can still keep our toys running and on the road and not relegate them to the garage or museums. Is electric the total answer, not with our electrical generation and grid as it sits now. ... View more

Hard to find anything that isn't rusted to death though. ... View more

Absolutely hate the trend of cars, both electric and otherwise, having these huge tablets pasted to the instrument panel. $3900? I assume that is just for the motor and not the electronics and batteries. Tesla wants something like $20,000+ for replacement battery. So this truck conversion with a new frame, batteries, electronics and motors will be $100,000+. It would be like buying a Rivian truck, taking the body off and having a custom car builder drop a Ford F-100 cab and box on it. ... View more

Technically they did have an OHC V8. When they bought AMC, they got their 4.7 OHC V8. ... View more

Wife had a 83' Dodge Challenger (Mitsubishi made) as her first car a couple of years out of college. Her dad wouldn't let her get a used car>>had to be new AND paid for>>no loans for her. Nice looking, but rusted, even though she took good care of it. Traded it with low miles at 7 years old and bought a new 90' Cougar>>not much of an improvement in the rust or maintenance area. ... View more

I assume the article is meant to be tongue in cheek. Anyway, I agree that leather is over rated. I grew up with vinyl seats and burned my a** on it for enough years. Had leather trimmed cloth seats that were equally as bad if you happened to slide over the leather edge while wearing shorts. Much rather have GOOD cloth seats--not the ones that look like grandma's drapes or sofa. Plus in sports cars, you would slide around much more with leather. In older cars with mohair, they wore like iron (as long as the mice stayed out). Leather is just a way for manufacturers to pad the price way up---sell expensive leather and then heated/air conditioned seats to go with it. ... View more

A collector car is whatever anyone wants it to be. In years past, people only wanted to collect braas era cars, then pre-1933 cars and ignored fat fenders. Then it moved to pre-WW II, then 1950's, 60's on up. Some only wanted two door cars. Buy whatever thrills you, whether it is a 72 four door Datsun 510 a 69 Camaro, a station wagon, pick-up or some exotic supercar. have fun with it and don't worry about the perceived future investment value. ... View more

Some of the best cars aren't in the shows. ... View more

Mods depend on what you are using the car for: long distances on the Interstate or in town cruise makes a difference. Also, if original replacement parts are hard to get, it is sometimes worth updating to modern and putting the original parts in a box in case you want to put it back to original at some point. ... View more

Don't discount the early cars. Engines can be changed. Carbs can be changed. Many kits out there to put fuel injected engines in earlier cars. Turbo 4 is nothing to sneeze at either so don't leave them out. They can make high horsepower if properly built and it saves weight. Fox bodies were good for their day, but what isn't? Progress is progress. Buy what you want be it a Model T or the latest whatever. People hated the Mustang II, but they were actually pretty good looking and performing cars. Yes the engines were weak on HP, but nothing that a good rebuild with proper speed parts can't fix. ... View more

Good design means different things to different people. Rarely does a car maker hit it on the head with BOTH good visuals AND mechanicals. Visual is in the eye of the buyer. A designer can think his vision is what people wants is great, but it might not sell or if it does may be panned as the ugliest thing on the planet. There are lot of those out there. Early 60's Mopar comes to mind. I can appreciate them now (Edsel too) And a good looking car, the Vega GT for example, looked sporty and hot, but poor engine design and poor quality control ruined it. The best looker with poor mechanical design is still a turd just as the greatest running, most powerful, economical and good looking engine in a lump is a waste. ... View more