True car people are becoming a thing of the past

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There is a pretty good car culture around here, if fact at work there is an annual employee car show.

Alot of guys and gals at work building different and unique stuff, just yesterday a buddy a work sent me pics of a camaro he and his son are building. Its pretty cool, back halfed, caged drag car, built in their garage, tig welded together.

Every Saturday at a local parking lot in town is an informal get together, normally between 100-200 cars show up, local restaurants love and support it.

And about a month ago, they announced that they were opening up a former closed drag strip here in WV, so now WV has two drag strips.
 
I lived in Missouri 37 years and moved to S E Tx. 7 years ago. Mo. has/had 3 car plants of the big three and it is an old car hobby state. Tx. is a pickup state and as usual big on GM. Yea big state and lots of population and has an old car hobby like anywhere, but the contrast between the two states to me is considerable. Everything in Tx costs more when buying... but funny how it is always cheaper when selling! Tx. in general has much higher per capita income than Mo. but average type collector cars sell quicker in Mo.

Back in Mo. you paid a few $ for an antique tag good forever. No property tax unless you just want to pay it. If so just a few $. Here you get a 5 year antique tag with property tax prorated over that 5 years plus the high cost of the tag plus have to have inspection. So I just pay for collector car insurance. Mo. antique tag is a little outdated and drive it here in the sticks! Go figure?
In Kansas, you can put an old tag on an antique (25 years or older). It has to be the same year as the car. For example, about 15 years ago I found a 1969 Kansas tag at a swap meet. I bought it and it is now on my 69 Barracuda. you can see it in the picture below.

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I paid a small fee for this favor, and not a penny since. Every year it costs me $25 to keep the car's registration current.
 
In Kansas, you can put an old tag on an antique (25 years or older). It has to be the same year as the car. For example, about 15 years ago I found a 1969 Kansas tag at a swap meet. I bought it and it is now on my 69 Barracuda. you can see it in the picture below.

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I paid a small fee for this favor, and not a penny since. Every year it costs me $25 to keep the car's registration current.
Interesting. Not sure I agree with this swap clause. But am interested in its results and future outcomes.
 
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Abodyjoe, after reading that now, I understand a lot more what you meant 10 years ago. I just wasn't ready to hear it then. I still think you're wrong but far less then before. There is a place for young people owning classic cars, but much like model As and T buckets now it's going to become a very small group of extremely dedicated kids who specifically want that challenge. It's quite simply way too expensive. Like a few other people have mentioned the other thing to is that cars are just straight up way better than they used to be. Which is honestly one of my main reasons for getting the G8 3 years ago. It's newer, got better mileage (unless I romped on it), and was just nicer to drive over all than the Cuda. Plus for 5k you can completely rebuild the LS 2.5 that is in it and make 400 whp with just a cam, intake, and header swap and still get 24 mpg on the highway.

I do get what some of you are saying about a lack of gear heads. I'm pretty sure like one of you said it's due to technology becoming "more intuitive" to use at the expense of learning the ins and outs of getting something to work. I have a gaming computer that I'm currently typing this on. I mod literally every game I own on it, and upgrade it when money allows it.

*Today I bought some newer, bigger, faster RAM sticks to install because I was tired of one of my games yelling at me that I'm using up all my ram playing it. So I install the ram sticks, boot up the computer and nothing. I restarted the stupid thing like 10 times, finally got into the motherboard software, set everything to default and make sure that the size of RAM is correct, and now windows needs to repair itself which means I'll lose everything on my boot drive. Actually.... typing this out I know what the issue is now. When I reset the mobo it reset my boot drive and I was trying to boot off a drive that doesn't have the OS installed on it. So once I'm done with this comment I'll go back, reset my boot drive to the correct one and I'll be good to go.

*Ya'll can skip the part in red if you don't understand computers.

Point is, gear heads are people that want to fix stuff or play with things that people have deemed good enough. That's why PC modding is so niche. It's literally car guy attitudes towards their PC. And I see rumblings of the same thing there too, no one knows how to use the file explorer, no one knows how to troubleshoot, no one knows how to file their stuff correctly, no one knows how to search for files/folders etc. It's because everything is "easier to use". It does this by hiding all the hard stuff just like cars. Anyways, the point of all this rambling is that there are car people attitudes out there, it's just more difficult to find because most people rightly assume it's expensive and wrongly that it's a waste of time. And there's so many different things to get into now and cars are just becoming basic transportation that it's not really a cool hobby anymore. True gearheads will always be around, there'll just be less of them. And to send off that depressing thought, here's my brother and me putting my engine back into the G8 after it wiped out a cam lobe and I had it and the trans rebuilt (trans was an additional 3k on top of the 5 from before, so that was a fun expense to show the wife for a supposed DD). It snowed like 4 times on and off that day. Just absolute ridiculous weather lol.

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yea wasn't meant to disrespt the young getting into the game. its just the reality of the hobby and crazy it has got. there is always room for the young guysm its just way way way more difficult price and parts wise. hell in the late 80's when i was starting out i could go to 4-5 local junk yards and they had a ton of darts, dusters,valiants, coronets,satilites...ets..etc.. you could pick them apart dirt cheap... all that stuff (around here atleast) has dried up. they crushed it all.. hell i picked a freh 340 out of the local you pull it for 100 bucks. 4 :10 sure grip abody 8 3/4 drum to drun for 100 bucks and the yard removed it for me.. 3:91 sure grip center section for 75 bucks.. man it was goo pickins back then, i thought i was too late at that time as guys a few years older had gotten even better deals years before me.. hell i can remember a good friend picking up a 70 challenger convert. in bburnt orange 318 car that he only paid 1300 bucks for. he brought it home and started driving it. needed nothing. was clean as hell he drove it 7 hours to the nats.. this was early to mid 90's. god knows what that car woudl go for today..
 
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In Kansas, you can put an old tag on an antique (25 years or older). It has to be the same year as the car.

wish NJ woul do that.. don't think we ever had the year stamped on the plated though..

a while back i started collecting 1969 (my birth year) license plates. don't know why but i did..lol i have 10 states so far. just picked up 3 or 4 lately. i'm cherry picking the cheap ones for now. then i'll worry about the expensive ones when i need them to finish all the states.

IMG_20240111_071209.jpg
 
If you have young ones around, get them interested, get them the game “Car Mechanic Simulator”. It available for all the popular video game platforms.
 
yea wasn't meant to disrespt the young getting into the game. its just the reality of the hobby and crazy it has got. there is always room for the young guysm its just way way way more difficult price and parts wise. hell in the late 80's when i was starting out i could go to 4-5 local junk yards and they had a ton of darts, dusters,valiants, coronets,satilites...ets..etc.. you could pick them apart dirt cheap... all that stuff (around here atleast) has dried up. they crushed it all.. hell i picked a freh 340 out of the local you pull it for 100 bucks. 4 :10 sure grip abody 8 3/4 drum to drun for 100 bucks and the yard removed it for me.. 3:91 sure grip center section for 75 bucks.. man it was goo pickins back then, i thought i was too late at that time as guys a few years older had gotten even better deals years before me.. hell i can remember a good friend picking up a 70 challenger convert. in bburnt orange 318 car that he only paid 1300 bucks for. he brought it home and started driving it. needed nothing. was clean as hell he drove it 7 hours to the nats.. this was early to mid 90's. god knows what that car woudl go for today..
Back in the eighties, 69 RoadRunners, Darts, etc were only around 15 or so years old. Today a 15 year old car was built in like 2007!! Most yards will keep on hand a car built after 2000.
What was a salary in 1985 vs today!!?
Back in 85 a 10 year old car was old! NOT today!!
 
10 years old a 60's early 70's car was pretty used up.. now they run 200k easily.
So very true.
But, back then I could do a complete rebuild with all machine work and all and have a NEW engine in that 69 383 RoadRunner and not have the price of a new (small) home invested! Or pull a good engine at the boneyard, yea maybe a lowly 400 but none the less..

Yes our modern engines are made for miles and the old engines were made for smiles! The modern cars should last, look what they cost!!! :BangHead: :steering:
 
So very true.
But, back then I could do a complete rebuild with all machine work and all and have a NEW engine in that 69 383 RoadRunner and not have the price of a new (small) home invested! Or pull a good engine at the boneyard, yea maybe a lowly 400 but none the less..

Yes our modern engines are made for miles and the old engines were made for smiles! The modern cars should last, look what they cost!!! :BangHead: :steering:
Like I said my LS 2.5 made 540 hp with a cam swap, cold air intake, and long tubes. I had A/C and got 23 mpg on the freeway. Modern engines are made for smiles too, look at how fast a modern z06 is. It's almost as fast as a 240 hp superbike. They're just more complicated and far more reliable now which is a horse apiece.
 
Part of the expense is lack of knowledge or thinking you need "modern" brakes, suspension, and drive train. If you look, there are deals out there, some cars my be out of reach, but you can still get a decent Mopar without spending a fortune. 20 years ago we bought my son's 73 Dart 4 door for $500 because no one wanted a 4 door. It was a doctor's wife car with 30,000 miles on it. 318, AC, Sure Grip 7 1/4 rear, disc brakes, no rust. It has about 100,000 miles on it now and still starts in a heartbeat and runs down the road very nicely. Only changes were a front sway bar, small Mopar Performance cam, double roller timing chain, 273 Commando intake, carb and air cleaner, dual exhaust, a 72 340 distributor, +1" heavy duty rear leaf springs, and original 15" x 6.5 Rallye Wheels with good tires. One step at a time. At one point we painted it Top Banana Yellow with the rear stripe. All over the course of years. Any old Mopar car can get the same treatment for next to nothing to become a nice enjoyable ride without spending a fortune. No need for a 360, 440, aluminum heads, strokers, headers, big cam and associated valve train upgrades, special ignition, overdrive transmission, coil over front suspension, rotisserie paint and body.
 
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^^^^Yep! It tends to be the nature of our hobby is the guy has one old car and it is his "baby" and gets the best of everything, also alot of unneeded stuff and wonders why he has a fortune in it!

Maybe the younger the guy, the more need for instant gratifiation? Maybe we are all that way till we learn life is usually not instant!

Heck I have seen some really nice solid drivers that went begging for weeks on end. If it was a really desirable model and CHEAP enough, it sold the first day/
 
Totally misrepresented when sold. Passed off as original with a rotissary resto. I watched it happen. Let the drunk buyer beware!
 
Maybe...lipstick on a pig?
A fool an his money is easily separated?
Or his wife said honey "buy that pretty pick one and I will .......".

and only guys that call here are the ones wanting to trade a Jap bic in the middle of the winter that does not run!!!! :BangHead: :thumbsup:
 
I'm 42. All of my friends that are on this forum and the B-Bodies forum are in their late 30s to late 40s.

We're trying to keep the car culture alive locally as best as we can. We drive our cars everywhere. We try to be good ambassadors for Ma MOPAR. We do the right things.

It's a tall order. Kids nowadays are being programmed to stay indoors and their exposure to motorsports and things we grew up with are limited. I've met kids as old as 15 that have told me they've never seen a classic car in person before. That's crazy!

Call it ego, or pride, or maybe a combination of both - but when a wide-eyed little kid hangs out his parent's car window to give me a thumbs up...that's what it's all about. That kid was me.
 
This is a slice of American history. Cars may go faster with more trinkets but they will never be more user friendly and personalizable.
 
Car shows are a joke. It angers me to watch a new challenger off the showroom getting a trophy. I mean, wtf did they do other than buy a new car? But hey, I got a second place for a car I spent 10 years building.
It angers me too! I just don't get it, the car shows I bring my 73 Duster to, they open it up to "all years". That's just wrong!
 
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