I bought my wife a new dd a year ago, never again, if I had to do it over, I'd bought a 66 chevelle or something like it. This thing goes to the dealership for everything, doesn't even have a trans dipstick, all done by mileage intervals. New cars got no soul, no matter how quick they may be.
I'd think everyone has to go though it once and just hope your coworker survives the experience. That much horsepower in hands that aren't experienced at handling it is a disaster waiting for a place to happen. I've had one new car in my 70 years and that was a 69 Cutlass S that I special ordered when I was in Vietnam and was a damned quick car for what it was. 310 hp 350, M21 4 speed and 3.42 Posi with the fourth and last option on the list being an AM FM multiplex radio. 3656.60 out the door in Renton Wa. Car was fun and got street raced a lot but when it went away I really didn't miss it. Over the years we have had a lot more fun and adventures in the 48 than we did in anything else. I'd say that the satisfaction of driving something that you built from frame out and know every nut and bolt in across the country to a far flung event outweighs the momentary grin you have driving a new mega car that no doubt will be outdated in a year or two. I've owned a lot of daily drivers over the past 40 years that were just cars but all but a small handful of those came to me in pieces and I had to put them together before I or my wife got to drive them. Usually that involved building an engine to go in the rig. But there is a certain satisfaction in that including my latest daily that came cheap because it needed 200 bucks worth of pieces at Amazon prices and a few hours of assembly.
And then ask him in 10 years about the value of his 60,000,- Dodge Whatever and it will be a fraction of what he paid today, while our cars more or less hold their value. Besides passion this is also an argument for me.
Radical possession. Hot rods are radically possessable. You might even say that is their most basic function. New cars aren't: the sense in which they belong to you is daily more superficial. Boasting of a new car's performance is like sitting in an airliner at 33000 feet playing Need for Speed on a laptop and then claiming you were driving at 550mph.
When anyone (with $) can walk in, sign a paper and drive away with a new 800 HP "hot rod", I don't care how many articles about Hellcat engines and new Corvettes I have to skip reading in "Hot Rod Magazine" just to get to something I'm half interested in, it's all lame, just lame. No heart. No soul. Fred was exactly right, IMHO. At least in the muscle car era, people had to know how to adjust a carburetor and change plugs.
Not to steal the thread, or drive it off-course. You guys that mentioned Hellcats are giving them a bit too much credit. Roger
This is what the Millennials and the new "Peter Pansies" are about. For Now. And it will be a very limited market at that as time goes on.......trust me. When their parents money runs out it is all over! However if you read my blog from the beginning it might help everyone understand why we love old school hot rods. My blog: https://ontheroadtonowhereville.wordpress.com/ High Noon Speed Shop - Baltic, Ohio
Along with my post above maybe this photo just explains it all...Speed Mechanics Volume #1 Number 1 Copyright 1953 my blog: https://ontheroadtonowhereville.wordpress.com/ High Noon Speed Shop - Baltic, Ohio
If you have to explain it they'll never get it. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I call it smiles per miles.. I get great pleasure cruising around in my old cars. I like my v-8, I can pass a model T if I want. Most the time cruising at 65 and watching the idiots fly buy is good enough for me! I say slow down, smell the roses and enjoy the cruising! I get satisfaction knowing that I am driving my 401K around and enjoying it in the process!
Just for a little clarification - Talking with a Chrysler insider last week, expect the Demon to make right at 900 HP. The Hellcats already make 707 HP and this car will be 200 lbs lighter (still heavier than a Mustang or Camaro though) and price will probably approach six figures. it also includes a set of Skinny front wheels and front runner type tires in the trunk!
I didn't read every reply but several. The story nails it from one perspective, and in full knowledge of how I'm to be assaulted for saying it, PASSION is overrated. Often spoken with nearly religious tone or devotion there's something more human than simple passion. There's something like only 3-4 species of creatures on this planet that do things simply for the pleasure of it. Think on that for a minute. Do you eat sour bitter shit because you need it? Because it's healthy or nourishing? Fuck no, a little salt, pepper, or maybe sugar, cinnamon, maple syrup. We eat the things that stimulate our senses. Sure, you were hungry, but aimed for pleasure even in the base instinct of sustenance. Our cars, same/same. We don't NEED any of this. It's fuckin fun. It's a form of pleasure not everyone gets, but that's it. Passion? Nostalgia? Respect for the old fucks (like me maybe)? Chin music. We do it because we like it and don't need the punchline of passion or any other devout expression one can conjure. Those who don't like it are as entitled to their pleasures as we to ours. Now personally I take no pleasure in making big payments on something I'm liable to see 10 of on any given week. Sure, I've made car payments in the past but out of NEED, not passion, not the level of pleasure I get from the "good stuff", but I was and am happy with what they give me and Mrs Highlander. It pleases me to hit a show focused on the older hard core stuff that takes the same FUN to build as what I like. I feel good seeing the occasional similar model to whatever I'm in to at the moment. I'm not shitting on anyone who does have passion for their stuff/craft/tools/etc. Maybe I'm just not so heavy about it that I'd call it passion and I do have a tendency to over-simplify at times. Ya gotta admit, this shit is just plain kool and fun and, well, you fill in the rest.
Today's youth are more Lazy with even less skill, than back then... it's kinda cool he even wants a muscle machine, and not the latest electronic gadget and a Prius to go to yoga class .. We're dinosaurs I think the generation gap is probably the biggest it's been in at least a century
When my wife and I got married, she had European Porsche 912 Targa that she dearly loved. When a neighbor decided to sell his 2006 wide body all wheel drive Porsche Cabriolet with 1800 miles, we scooped it up. Her passion for things Porsche is no different than some of the passion for traditional hot rods expressed here. And no, the 912 didn't have a VW motor, it was the same as a 356 speedster. Kudos to theHIGHLANDER.
Y'know, there's more than a little hypocrisy and envy going on here. I can't think of very many red-blooded males that would turn down any huge horsepower ride if was easily within their means. That's the catch; these cars aren't nearly as cheap as they were in our youth and sticker shock plays a big part in this. These cars are the direct decendents of and will be the future Roadrunners, Boss 429s, SS396s etc that our grandchildren will drool over, assuming that petroleum-powered vehicles will even be allowed. Given all the strictures that these modern performance cars are produced under, they're miracles of engineering. I suspect it won't last much longer, get 'em while their hot... And in all reality, these cars are only slightly more practical than their forbearers because there's even fewer places you can legally harness that performance. Are these the same as the cars we celebrate here? Of course not; my daily-driver late Mustang has superior on-road performance in every way compared to my avatar, yet that technical perfection has removed much of the 'flavor' the older cars have. And let's face it; that 'flavor' is in actuality the flaws, imperfections, and idiosyncrasies that gives these cars their personality. While I enjoy my Mustang, it does have a certain sterility to it, and it's not particularly user-friendly to work on. And people very rarely honk, wave, and smile at me when I'm driving it. Hot rodding has always been a game of one-upmanship (mines faster/more custom/whatever than yours!) and that's still at work. To a large extent, in this segment of the hobby IMO it's now who has the most 'desirable' thing going on, kind of a lower-budget Pebble Beach mentality. What's 'desirable' varies widely, with supposedly 'traditional' thought now broken into sub-genres with more than a little latter-day revisionism going on. Among some, innovation is actively discouraged although I still firmly believe 'traditional' innovation is possible. But finding anybody who still has a desire for a 'hot rod' (defined as ANY V8-powered American iron) should be encouraged; we all started somewhere, and once on that road, it can lead to here...
This. Too many youth of today, avoid doing any kind of work, unless they absolutely have to. They can't comprehend why someone would put so much time, effort, and thought, into something they can just buy. It's the reason Radio Shack's have all but disappeared. It was a hobby to make your own electronics. Not because you couldn't buy them, but because it was fun. It was a passion for knowing how things worked. Todays society is instant gratification, disposable everything attitude, driven.
Crazy Steve nails a couple points that are also sort of 'base' to what these pages offer. Not sure the one-up gig is visible or even primary in any measure, but it's there. We simply don't say it aloud and it has a way of speaking for itself at times. Sometimes the silence is deafening! Desirability? Well there we have that pleasure thing. The desirable shape of a Deuce grille has been there since it's inception. Even in a time when that shape was taken for granted, or perhaps a bit dated, it still said "V8" whether there was one in there or not. Then that said what else we like, power, because it's fun. Power back then, more power later in the same bolt holes (which also gave us the engine we love to hate, cough-cough-small block-cough). Within the foundations of this pursuit there was genuine one-upmanship that was incomparable to most any other form, competition. Some of us hear that word and don't think of tennis or baseball or golf, the very word says race, horsepower, speed, the moment we see it or hear it. Within that comes the purest form of sportsmanship and mutual appreciation for competitors in any other challenge. My 1st and only visit to the salt exposed me to the nicest, most honest, friendly, open, unassuming people I've ever met. Everyone spoke to me as if we'd been friends for decades. Name another pursuit where everyone involved is as cordial. Betcha can't. I don't count kids at the end of an 'X' game because, well, I dunno I just don't. The salt was different somehow and passion had nothing to do with it. It's like we were all drawn there as if a scene from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was playing out live. How many hot rods look like an Indy car? A NASCAR? An IMSA or Can AM? Onesy-twosy examples at best. But drag racers and salt cars, pretty much all of em. From the purest Deuce hiboy to the most fire-breathing early 60s anything, we'll see excess HP, big n littles, a rake, noise, gauges from hell, and while some of the same is sure elsewhere it's standard fare for straight line in-your-face contests of speed. The custom (kustom)? That's a whole 'nuther country almost. Maybe that's for a whole 'nuther topic too but they do deserve at least a passing mention, so I did.
All the responses are good and a lot of valid points have been made. But my point of starting this thread was to get opinions on whether or not these new high powered factory cars would somehow effect guys who like to build and drive Hot Rods, which is what happened in the mid to late 60's. And kinda off topic, but IMO a Hot Rod is a stripped down "CAR" built for the purpose of going fast. Also, IMO, "ANY V8 powered American iron" isn't a Hot Rod. I guess I go with the definition I grew up with. Pre 1948 and a roadster or coupe. Narrow minded? Perhaps. I have full respect for the new factory Muscle cars. I wouldn't want to own one, though. If I was given one, I'd sell it and use the money to build a few "Hot Rods". I've read the word "envy" in this thread. I have none. The guys who are able to buy one of those new rides are more than welcome. Me, I'll take my little home built and smile. No envy at all. Don't get me wrong. I REALLY do admire the new cars, but they'll NEVER be "Hot Rods". Hot Rods, by the definition I stated, are in a genre all their own and I like it that way. In the years that I drove my T Bucket around Houston, only once did I cross paths with another one. It feels good to be a part of that sub-culture. Hot Rods and they're owners are a whole different breed. It's why so many of us dislike going to an event and seeing a row of NEW Vettes, Challengers, Mustangs and Camaros. They just don't belong.
Build or buy, it's an age old question. Buying is quicker to get into, building you have more say so in the finished product. With buying, the pain comes every month when the payment is due, with building, the pain is spread out in finding stuff, being able to buy it, putting it together and hoping it does what it's supposed to do. Both are just different routes to the same ending, the pleasure of driving a performance automobile. How many guys pay to have their hot rods built? I'd say there are a bunch. They are the guys who may not have the skills or place to build a rod, but want one, so they open up the checkbook. I see nothing wrong with that, or the 1-800-parts places, unless you try to pass it off as something you did yourself. Buying new from a dealer is much the same, it's just a different kind of car, it's new, has a warranty, and you don't have to get your hands dirty. The big thing to me though is the pricing---If a new musclecar was $4000 in 1969, it was much more affordable than a $60,000 vehicle is nowadays. And that 1969 model was a lot like a 1959 model in that you could still work on it yourself---try that on a 2017 model. That being said, my drivers are a 1999 and a 2000. I can't do much to either, then again, they don't require much as everything lasts so much longer. I'd just as soon drive my 47 {when I get the new engine in}, but I can't haul much more than ass in it, sometimes you just gotta have that pickup bed or SUV cargo area. A new anything is not in my budget.
It's goofs like him who keep the consumer economy going. chained into debt for some inbred, over engineered, over priced, soulless, blinged-out, POS that they can't even work on! Buying any new vehicle is the poorest investment anyone will ever make. A fool and his money are soon parted............ -Dr. John Bridges' Defence of the Government of the Church of England, 1587:
You know, its funny, I know a guy that has a collection of cars the guys on here that are bitchslapping the "new muscle" would literally fucking kill for, including a full fendered steel '34 roadster, two '36 roadsters, a '53 Stude coupe, and a steel late sixties survivor L-78 4 speed t-bucket with an edelbrock Ram Log. A couple years ago, he bought a new black ZL-1 Camaro... and hes a professional rod builder, not a gold chainer dilettante. But hes just a hot rodder, not a "traditional" hot rodder... my guess is, some of the lower mainland guys on here will know who I am talking about...
I don't have enough disposable income to buy the new Mopar but if I did, hell yeah I'd get one. Thank God there are people out there that can. I am just glad that they are still making them. Back in the 70's when the gas shortage hit I thought high powered cars were done, never to be seen again in the US manufacturers line ups. The 80's saw some of the biggest crap to come out of Detroit and we got eaten alive by the foreign market. Like them or hate them, the future owners of these "muscle cars" might be right beside the Hot Rodders fighting against regulations to save our hobby-life style or what ever you want to call it. Strange bedfellows indeed.
I just don't like car payments. After the buzz and the new car smell is gone, the payments go on and on and on!
There is a sense in which the new performance cars are emphatically not conceptually contiguous with the old musclecars. The US motor industry has a long but not very proud history of underestimating the intelligence of its public. Some of the worst clangers it has dropped stemmed from this: the Cadillac Cimarron failed because Americans weren't too stupid to see that it was a Chevy Cavalier with a few coats of arms on the outside and a Victorian brothel on the inside. But in the case of the musclecars and especially the ponycars this worked distinctly to the industry's advantage. Doubtless Ford had thought with the Mustang to stick a Falcon in a slinky cocktail number and pass it off as a sort of junior Ferrari which they were miraculously able to bring to market for $1.49. The Mustang succeeded not due to nor even despite the success, but due to the complete and utter failure of this subterfuge. The ponycars worked because their obvious connections to proletarian sedans picked up on Americans' senses of democracy and personal ingenuity. They worked, as by extention did the other musclecars, because, 1. the difference between the most badass Camaro and your mother's Nova was basically a matter of shuffling parts around; and 2. you could, at the very least in theory, do the shuffling yourself, with no direct assistance from the OEM. Thus the Barracuda was only a Barracuda because there was also a lowly Valiant which was much the same thing, even well after the Barracuda stopped being quite visibly a Valiant coupé. The Hellcat is nothing of the sort, because the new Fiat-based Dart obviously has nothing to do with it. Turning the second-hand Dart you bought because you needed something to commute in into a for-all-intents-and-purposes Hellcat would require far more than shuffling parts - indeed it might require shuffling governments. Apart from retro styling references and sheer numbers the Hellcat is in this more like a '70s European exotic. theHIGHLANDER makes a good point above about need. But there is another way to see it. A lot of people are really into hot-air ballooning. Now, there might be a far safer, more efficient, and more comfortable way to be 1500' above that particular spot, perhaps something involving electromagnets with opposed polarities or something. But were it not for the intention to go there by balloon, would there be any point in going there at all? Now consider that by some force or fraud a situation were contrived which, contrary to your own direct purposes, required that you go there. And because the electromagnet things are no fun at all the whole business ends up being an unmitigated pain in the ass. Likewise, if I can't have a hot rod, why would I want a car at all? To get from A to B? The obvious next question, Why isn't B a ten-minute walk away from A? might seem like a stupid question. My years of experience as a built-environment professional tell me it isn't a stupid question at all. The deeper you dig in the history the clearer it gets that modern cities didn't get shaped the way they are by themselves. I can't say much more without getting political. Suffice it to say that not having enough money (nor energy nor liberty) to build the car I want because I have to pay for a car I emphatically don't want is something I would seriously resent.
I am too young to remember the hot rod era, or the Muscle Car era. However my Father grew up in the height of the Muscle Car era, he graduated in 1967. He also worked in the local Chevrolet dealer, and he talks about guys buying a big block Chevelle pulling the engine doing cam, and intake swaps, putting on headers ect... Although this is not the same as building a car many of the Muscle Cars were modified. This was also the era of 55-57 Chevys with no front bumpers, fenderwell headers, ball joint spacers, so in a way it is a kind of hot rodding. Plus my father started building stockcars at this time so their were still guy building cars, just not hot rods. My Dad Willard building his first racecar.
Great post. I think your are exactly right about the way our lives over generations have been engineered to benefit large corporations (if that's what you were inferring). I think it is at the heart of politics. I think your first case would be proven by this (impossible, I know): If GM or Chrysler came out with a 2018 muscle car that was more of a spot on version of of something from 1968, including carbs, dizzy, no computers, 4 speed, no sculpted modern interpretation, but essentially a remake down to the trim. (Kind of like the Mexican Bug that was produced until 2003, if we were allowed to buy one) I think a lot of luddites and people who usually only like old cars (I count myself in that population), would actually be enthusiastic about them and sign up. If I could buy a Mexican Beetle this moment, I would, but I have zero interest in a new VW, or any of the beetles since the nineties. When I drive in my friend's '67 Fastback Mustang I think "Oh yeah, I'm Bullit!!!" When I drive in my other friend's new Charger I am NOT thinking "Go faster, we have to get away from Bullit!!!"
Car Guy I recently bought a new truck and while waiting for the prep to be completed I looked at a new 2016 z06 convertible. The sales manager (a friend of mine) cane over and said he could make me a hell of a deal on the Vette. His proposal was to take my 57 Vette in trade on the new Vette. His offer was the 2016 plus $5k for my street rod Vette. Sounds like a pretty tempting deal but I turned it down. Next year the 2016 will be worth $20-30k less while my 57 will be worth the same as now or maybe a lirrle more. Just one more reason why new may not be better. Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
I had a response about con games and stupid intimidated buyers but that's not what this should be about. Its a good thread that was bound to get some heated responses. I try and have respect for all things automobile. The metal work and go fast knowledge here amazes me but so does the guy taking a 4 cylinder import down the quarter in under 10 seconds. A car dealer selling a 900 HP car to the masses is pretty cool too. This isn't the place to talk about it pro or con but next time instead of throwing bricks, invite the tuner guy over and show him your stuff. You might be surprised at his response. They all got to start some where.
I have to agree. I'd like to think I'm a car guy I've grown up on hot rods and enjoy all cars I have friends with tuners,hot rods, and muscle cars. I enjoy them all and some hot rodders love to go for a ride in my SRT8 challenger just to be set back in the seat.And also some tuner guys love the thrill of taking the deuce coupe for a cruise. It's passion of cars.
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