Are you a purist?

Thanks for all the replies so far.

I have a pretty good grasp on why someone might put a set of Cragars on their car, a Six pack scoop or what have you. It's fairly safe to say those types of things don't look out of place on our cars and have been accepted as 'normal' for decades.

On the other hand, the new-tech mindset is something that's only come about recently. I don't know it all too well but again, I get the feeling it comes from the import tuner world and not from a muscle car standpoint. That assumption could be way off base but that's what my gut tells me.

What I am genuinely looking to understand why someone would choose to modify older cars that way and what criteria they used for making said choices. Is it an attempt at questioning the Status Quo or tradition? Or is this style advertising/internet driven?

I'm not saying that all the cars that end up like this are done by younger guys but that seems to be the main segment of the hobby that gravitates towards the big wheel stuff.

At 43, I might be caught between the old and new. I am old enough to remember riding around in 60s and 70s cars but was not of driving age at the time all those cars were new. By the time I was able to drive in the mid '80s, the muscle car thing had been over for a while. They were still around to some extent but their time had passed. Those early memories left an indelible mark on me.

I'm not into cars purely for nostalgia though. Like most here I was born with gasoline in my veins and a wrench in my hand so it was natural that I ended up knee deep in the car culture as I got older. The old school stuff is really what drives me though and the overwhelming desire to experience it myself first hand. It's hard to describe the thrill of driving a gnarly street machine around to the average person so in that regard we're all brothers.

Some of us are just from a different mother...