well... you all have told me what i wanted to hear. i hang with a really tight group. its nice to know that ya'll have the same thing running through your blood. its a disscusion that runs over and again. its in my opinoin a thing that is so core to any greaser or gear head is that something built and loved should be toatally respected. True a car is yours to do what is wanted with. but those truely tuned into the "frequnecy" are known and respected. its funny how the builders and TRUE reaspectors of the custom, lowrider, and hotrod gravitate towards each other. i love my cars, my front yard is a car show if you will, and i do god bless these cars running or not .
I'm gonna paraphrase Josh Mills and say something about a new fibregl*** bodied '32 that he wrote about in OSR a couple years back. A brand new 1932 Ford fibregl*** body and ch***is haven't been through World War 2, they haven't been through all the trends that we've seen in 70 years, they haven't lived. You can call this car a 1932 Ford, you can even have it ***led as such, but it isn't anything even close to that. I'm going to give those that have no choice a broad berth in matters concerning real steel versus 'gl***, but the truth of the matter is is that time alone can impart anything that comes close to giving an inanimate object soul. If Junior Parker had released Mystery Train last year it would not mean the same as having done it 55 years ago. It's just the way it is. I know I'm rambling, but I believe these things to be true, the way that I believe the act of putting a vinyl record on the turntable means more than downloading tracks from your computer onto your ipod. It's the interaction, it is the love that makes this whole thing different, it is what might cons***ute soul. I could be far off, but this is what I feel.
Great thread. Yes, cars can have a soul, or an imprint of a owner, or builder, or whatever makes them unique. My Dad bought and old show car that he dreamed about when he was 16. (That was in 1960 ). It was neglected over the last few years, and then changed by the previous owner. He made some improvements, but Dad is going to put it back to the way it was. "Rackety Boom" Popular Hot Rodding/September 1963. When you sit in the car you can tell it finally made it to its home. Dad missed out on buying it five times in the last 40 some odd years and he isn't letting it get away again!!! Well so much for my take on things.
Well It's been a long time since Ive posted here, I've haven't had anything to add but now I do. I have a bunch of stories about cars with soul. I'll start with my dad. Back in late 73 early 74 my folks went looking for a new car. I was only about 4 years old at the time, so this story came from the old man. Right or wrong he wanted a brand new GT falcon (Think Mad Max if you don't know what that is.) 4V 351 cleveland with all the goodies and it had to be a manual. I can just remember looking around the car yard at some of these cars. What dad ended up getting was a 1971 model fairlane. A far cry from a GT with only a little 302 windsor and C4 auto. He told me this story when I was given the car when I was 18. I asked what made him buy the fairlane over a GT, Thinking that if he had of bought the GT I would now be the owner. His said that Henry ( thats what he called it, and it had nothing to do with Henry Ford either) was sitting at the back of the yard not even for sale as he had just been traded in. Dad thought he would go over and have a look at him, opened the door and sat in the drivers seat. It was then that Dad and Henry made the conection. Dad had to have it. Mum had her heart set on a GT falcon but lost the fight and Henry came home to stay. Dad always said that car would be the last one he would ever own. And he was right, dad has not owned another car since he gave Henry to me after some 15 or so years of ownership. When Dad told me this story I thought whatever just give me the keys I got work to do, and didn't think much more about it. After a little while of driving around and working on Henry I started to get it, I mean I started to understand exactly what the old man was meaning when he gave me the keys. The car had personality, soul what ever you want to call it.This was something that I had never really noticed when I was growing up riding around in the back seat. I gave the car a quick fix to get it on the road when I first got the keys. Henry was in pretty bad shape. About 5 years later I stripped the car and restored it from the ground up. When we stripped the motor down my then father inlaw who was a mechanic couldn't believe that the motor ran as well as it did let alone at all. All the water galleries where filled with mud, about an inch and a half of sludge and **** in the bottom of the sump, every piston had every ring broken, the alloy timing cover was packed up with bog and newspaper to take care of the water leaks etc etc etc. I sold Henry about 2 years later, it was a dumb thing to do, I still wish I owned him.. In about 97 I had a similar thing happen to me. I had bought another 71 fairlane and I was in the process of fixing it up. Anyway I was walking around the Toowoomba swap meet looking for 71 fairlane stuff with my now wife and some mates when I found a 59 fairlane, totally original and in pretty good shape, with just a small amout of rust in the usuall places, very tired original paint with about 80 000 on the dial. I had to have it. It wasn't until I was driving home ( about a 2 hour drive) that it dawned on me what had just happened. I had just had the same experience that dad had back when he bought his last car. Just before I left the swap the previous owner asked me what I was going to do with it I said I don't know yet, probably just cut the rust out and repaint it. To this day I have not done either as I feel it would take away some of the soul that Gracie has (my wife named her Gracie).. I'm going to sell Gracie soon because she is getting close to the time that all the little things need to be done and I don't want to be the one that takes some of her soul away. I know that sounds all sentimental and ******** but that is how I feel about this one. So I agree that most old or hand made thing have soul. I have just moved into a house that is about 103 years old and in the process sold off most of our 50's and 60's stuff and am slowly replacing it with stuff from the 30's / 40's. Just about everything we have bought has some sort of story to tell and a little bit of soul to add to the house and the house most definatly has soul. More to the point we had been looking to move and buy a different house, a new or nearly new house. We started out looking at acreage in the middle of nowhere. Just by chance my wife found this place listed on the WWW. and for some reason desided that we should have a look. THe house is in the middle of suburbia on a semi busy road, Far from the peace and quiet of acreage living. When we first arrived I was wonder what the **** am I doing here, this place needs a lot of work. After spending some time looking around I realised that the house was talking to me and Maria (that's my wife), and I don't mean ghosts or **** like that, I mean it was making some sort of connection with us. the house had only been listed that morning and we were the only people to get to have a look at it before we signed the contract to buy it. I think the sometimes things choose us not the other way around. Sorry about such a long post but I hope some of you get it.
You didn't marry schoolteacher Maria Nolan by any chance did you??? Parents own a dairy farm in Cambooya. Anyway most of you guys "get it". Old car do have "souls" and if you don't think so then you've never met Big Olds.
cars definitly have soul!!! my '63 ranchero's been my daily for just shy of 4 years. i bought it, got it running did a few small things to it and basically BEAT THE $HIT out of it the whole time i've owned it. treated it like a red headed step child, shes been dependable as hell and seems to actually enjoy getting beat to ****!!! i finally decided, i was going to give her some LONG over due improvements, fresh 302, new disc brake upgrade, finally add an ignition switch, well this poor car does NOT like or at least DOES NOT know how to react!!! she's been fighting me with EVERY single improvement!!! it's been about 2 weeks and the gremlins are almost gone, she's FINALLY getting used to being treated right, now on to body and hopefully paint.... hope she can adjust to a new color!!! wish me luck!!!.....
Nah sorry Denise my girls a city chick thru and thru. I don't think she has ever set foot on a dairy farm. Although she does get a little upset when we see a cattle truck heading towards an abatoir and I point out some poor cow and say I think we will probably be eating that one for dinner one night next week. ..
The parts don't have a soul. It's inherent on the way they are put together. M*** produced, robot welded, computer aligned transporters do what they are supposed to. A tricky linkage on an old Holley that simply will not let a big block Chrysler start unless you pump the pedal 3 times, release it slowly on the last and say please quietly, but out loud? That is soul. Gently blending the nose of a '40 ford just enough to balance the rake of the hood with the roof line, that is soul. When you sit in a car and can understand what the builder or owner was thinking, feeling.. That's soul. If you buy a car with so much soul, you may just 'Get' what the car is saying, or you may find that it just missed it's message. How you proceed will say as much about you as that car's soul says about the last guy. Be careful, it's no fun driving around with stupid tatooed on your forehead...
I cannot actually believe I am going to reply to this stupid thread.. debating over soul.. soul is a city in KOREA.. my hot rod has never been to soul.. but one day i hope to drive it there.. what the hell am i doing awake at this hour.. damn cars again..
I don't think emotional people get angry really, they just build-up a lot of slobber and gush effusively or incoherently.
Wow, thank you! That is the first time I have ever been told I am emotional. I tend not to use emotions, usless things.
In a recent conversation at work someone asked why I only drive old cars. I replied that 'new cars don't have any soul'. My boss said 'my Lexus has a V-8--it has soul' and I realized that he'll never get it. And I'll never manage to explain it to him because I can't even articulate it to people who do understand. I'm a firm believer in personal property rights, as in its my car, I'll cut it up if I want. I guess that means I have to allow others the same freedom, but it doesn't mean I'll always like their choices.
The car is what each owner wants it to be. Alot of guys that buy prebuilt cars change stuff around because if not it will always be so and so's old car and never theirs.
I've learned to not over think things. Whether or not a car has soul is one of those things. Gl*** or steel is another. Sure, in a moment of deep reflection, it feels good to think about what an old car would say if it could talk, but that can be said about anything. Even whether people have a soul is up for debate, so that should make a person think before they say a car has one. Cars are not born, they are/were manufactured. They don't grow up, they get built. They don't die, they stop working. By all definition, they don't have a soul. What they do have is the blood, sweat and sometimes tears of what YOU decide to put into them, but it ain't soul. It's pride of ownership. In my opinion, it's the owner or builder that makes a car what it is. When you see a friends car go by, you don't say there goes a "(insert year, make, model)". You say, "there goes Mikes car." When it gets sold to Bob, it's Bobs car. If anything could be said to have soul, it would be the owner. Bottomline, when you over think a hot rod with talk like this, you're wasting your time. Time that could be better spent, planning, building and driving. Especially driving.
Gordon Baxter wrote about airplanes and soul for FLYING magazine. He was tremendous, and imparted some indelible images and ideas.
well Im in Japan, and every time I see an old cl***ic, I can hear its soul CRYING from a broken heart!!!!
Everyone has a soul. They're like opinions. That's the problem. And since that pun's already been made, some people like to be soulier than thou, too. I guess the question I'd ask this guy is if he doesn't like so many things about the car, why did he buy it to begin with? I mean, wouldn't you notice the rattles, the smells, and so on, on the test drive? Or did he just buy it to be cool and have a known car? Ultimately it's his to do with what he wants to, he can bag it so it will rear up on it's rear bumper on 13" wire wheels if thats what he likes, but it would make more sense to buy another car and build it the way he wants it to be than start changing this one - you start changing things, then you start noticing other things you don't like, and before you know it there's nothing left of what it was.
Bouncing on 13" wires is more of a Hydro thing. Persoanly I like bagged vehicles ride nice with a really low ride.
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