I appreciate the compliment but....

Autralia! It's a series of Islands located between the South Pacific & Indian Oceans. I live at the south eastern end of the largest Island, in a house I worked very hard to pay for.

Much as I love America and all my fantastic friends who live there, I love my country even more and figure anybody should be able to understand and appreciate that.

 

If you said that to me at least we'd have a laugh cos I'd know you have a sense of humour.

Funny thing about hot rodders and modern cars is that they all look the same to us. Yet when one of the general population calls our ''33 Ford a '34 we get our panties in a bunch and go off in a rant and make ourselves look more stuoid then the people we call stupid because they don't know or can't tell.

Fact is there's a lot more visually different between two generations of Camry than two generations of early Ford (who can tell me what the visual differences are between a '28 model A and a '29?). And when we mix the bits from various model years, it becomes even harder to know exactly what car we are looking at.

 

who really gives a shit! this thread is retarded.

 

This will help...

 

Yep. The good ol' Fonz over the shark. The end.

 

Lexus=Thin skin.

 

the person may not know his cars but he liked what he saw and provided a compliment> take the pat on the back and move on. I am sure we all have been out of our element and thought we saying the right thing. As I grow older I realize that there are a lot of things I dont know.
chuck

 

Jeez Carps, never seen you so pissed off! I though it was kinda funny, you popped into mind because you have a 34 and a Lexus!
Doc.

 

Doc, my 'anger' has little to do with my daily driver, it's more about what the wider community think of us hot roddders based on the bad attitude and lip they get from too many in our ranks.

If a few more of us took the time to listen and talk politely to that old guy who had one of those when he was young, we might just learn a thing or three. Likewise, if we took the time to patiently explain to people what it is and how it came to be, they'll learn a few things and may be equally patient and polite in return. They'll also understand that Hot Rodders are not really rude, arrogant and abusive knuckle dragging neanderthals, but decent ordinary folks who are passionate about building and driving our old cars.

If people were to see us in a positive light, then maybe we wouldn't be fighting so frigging hard to maintain our existence in the face of oppressive anti hot rodding legislation.

 

Yup, the skin on my daily driver is about half the thickness of that of my old Ford.

However, from some of the comments here it appears that a lot of hot rodders have even thinner skin. Like what's so bad about an ordinary person who clearly appreciates but can't identify exactly a car that's been cobbled together from parts of a dozen different cars, that they need to be denigrated or abused?

FWIW, athin skin makes the new car lighter (one of the secrets to improved performance) and being of higher tensile strength than the heavy old car, it's also stronger at the same time. But of course everybody here already knew that, didn't you?

 

I'm well aware of where Australia is located. However, I wasn't aware that so many American made cars were sold in your country. I also support the way you feel about 'American Made' taking jobs from your countrymen! I know a lot of people here in the states that feel the same way when they see a Toyota, Volkswagen, Lexus, etc... As for your "Australian" roots- the problem with the WWW is that when reading type written forum threads, spoken accents are not detectable. And since I'm an ignorant South Georgia Redneck (my description of myself), I naturally assume that everyone one on this forum typing in English is from America. I would love to visit your country. If I ever do, hopefully you'll have an extra room I can borrow for a couple of nights. Tim.

 

Toyota build Camry and a localised variant we call Aurion, General Motors build a range of cars off a common platform called Commodore, Ford build a large RWD car descended from and still called Falcon. Everything else is imported (about 70% of all cars sold here). If just one of the local car makers closes, that's the end for our car industry. It's a very real threat, despite the fact that all three are profitable, as a result of the situation in Detroit, thousands of local jobs may go and an entire industry lost through no fault of anybody here. The components industry is already struggling due to poor sales of parts overseas, and without them it'll be too costly to build locally anyhow. Same result, entire car industry wiped out. Many American companies have already closed their doors here in order to save jobs at home. So now we import, instead of manufacturing their products locally as we have done for many genrations.

Most Australians have a good understanding of the need for international trade. However we get a little antsy when we are told by America we must accept American made goods yet Australian products are refused by America, or otherwise restricted by high import tarrifs and taxes or heavy subsidies on your locally made product. We have a saying here, 'you can't have your cake and eat it too.'

Banking and financial systemes are heavilly regulated here and our economy was/is strong. However, our country is now in crisis thanks to what most here see as the greed and poor fiscal management of America. So anti American sentiment even here with one of your most loyal and long term alies is currently strong.

However, my beef as state in this thread is nothing to do with that, it's that we have an image issue as hot rodders and the attitudes displayed by some here do nothing to help. In the current anti automobile environment of oppressive legislation designed to reduce the number of cars, a bad attitude is not going to help keep our cars on the road.

I probably know some of your relatives already.

Having travelled extensively I understand that English is spoken in most parts of the world. However, Georgia, well I'm not so sure that's English.

You're always welcome and we'll enjoy showing you what real southern hospitality looks like.

 

^^^^^Best comment in several useless pages on this thread^^^^^

 

Ugh. There's been more than a few mistakes or irritating comments made in regards to my rides, over the years.

- The '66 Olds being mistaken for a Mopar product
- The Olds' straight-six being referred to as a V6...
- The MG being mistaken for something Japanese. (It's British)
- Queries as to why use a GMC V6 in my '63 GMC instead of a Chevy V8 (don't get me started... I like the SBC/BBC just fine, but it gets used in everything! 'Sides... the 401M has some enormous pistons)
- Comments mistakenly alluding my Triumph Rocket III's engine to automotive origin
- Compliments on the clean job of removing the fender-mounted turn signals on my '74 1303S (that was an American market thing)

Most of the time I'll share my thoughts or knowledge on the matter politely, and most of the time it's accepted in a friendly manner. Every so often I'll run into a belligerant idiot, but it is rare.

 

Now that's funny...

 

shit you sure chopped that coupe hard.

 

"Say, is that a kit car?"