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Talking to JT I realized something.
I'm not going to pay a premium for the car I'm going to hot-rod because I'm going to have to toss a lot of it away.
This is because I've come to genuinely believe that the value of such cars is entirely emotional.
You don't build and own a hot-rod to make money. You do it for the love.
You love the car. You love the research. You love the work.
Love doesn't add monetary value to a project unless the buyer loves as you do.
Hint: The buyer doesn't love as you do.
You're not getting your money back, and if you do you're not getting your time back.
Hot-Rods are net losses.
It's why I'm not going to be buying the checks-off-all-the-rational-boxes Chevy Caprice PPV.
Totally modern, V-8 powered, rear wheel drive car with all the desirable safety features.
And it doesn't speak to me.
I would not hate it, but neither would I love it; and the first string of irritating failures and their attendant repairs: I would hate it.
What speaks to me, though, is out of reach. I love the '62 Chevys. They're just out of reach because I need to maintain a portion of the insurance pay-out for modernization. Shit like air conditioning.
Brake upgrades.
Other safety stuff.
But they speak to me.
I think there's a bubble in these old classics, and it's set to burst.
I will wait.
It's nice just having something that starts when you want it to, stops when you need it to, and gets you where you need to go without a constant level of tinkering, replacing, searching for ever-increasingly scarce parts and all that.
ReplyDeleteAnd, sometimes, something modern has more soul than you'd expect, and you'll fall in love all over again.
The extras they toss on a PPV or any police-modified vehicle, heavy suspension and all that, is an extra nice thing.
If it only spoke to me.
DeleteThe Biscayne SS was a former police car. I'm familiar with the breed.