We’ve all seen it. Hell, most of us have been this guy at one point or another. The dude that makes a short drive, or trailers his car, to a car show and then sits around all day in a lawn chair may be having fun with his car, but why won’t that same guy take it on a road trip? And why don’t you? Let’s face it, the guys that do Power Tour or Drag Week aren’t looked at like rebels because they are out racing or doing something hard core, it’s because nobody can believe you would drive a hot rod across the country regardless of performance level. That’s just crap.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s your car, or your neighbors car, or whatever, but for my money I want to be able to drive them. And it doesn’t matter if the car in question is a ’69 Camaro with a 14-71 Blown Hemi in it, or a ’34 Ford with a Flathead. Maybe you won’t cruise one hundreds of miles per day, but you certainly can drive it 20 miles to your favorite eatery and then 20 miles back with your wife riding shotgun looking like a hotty. To me, there is no excuse.
But, help us answer the question. Why don’t hot rods get driven more than they do?
Weenie owners.
Fear of a-hat drivers around where I live.
Those trailer queens were not built for comfort.
They are not reliable for more than the drive to the trailer.
nick
Well I for one will never own a car and not drive it. Sorry but cars are not static pieces of art to be admired from behind a velvet rope. They are motion, energy, sound and fury. They are most beautiful when doing what they were built to do. Movement is integral to the experience. If you don’t get that then you are a collector and not a car guy. IMHO anyway.
I use my car often, and the largest pain I run in to is safe parking. I usually find something with some extra effort. Aside from that there is no issues:)
I can’t speak for guys that don’t drive them at all, I’m not that guy, but I can give some insight from when I used to help out at a cobra kit car shop.
Lots of owners have a vision in their mind of what a car will be like when complete, an idealic vision. They don’t anticipate tuning issues, hot floors, seats that require a towel laid over them to prevent 2nd degree burns on a sunny afternoon…. back fires, gear oil smells, electrical gremlins, all the stuff that gearheads have learned to deal with, fix, and enjoy.
Lots of owners aren’t builders – and they get quickly frustrated with problems they don’t know how to solve…. so – they minimize dealing with the problems by not driving the cars much.
Or – they are simply afraid of them – either afraid that they will get damaged in some way – or – afraid that they really can’t handle the power of the combination they’ve put together…or paid someone to put together for them.
For fear of your prized possesion being hit by a inettentive, texting asshole without insurance.
I use my Chevelle every day..its a gas guzzler at 6-12 mpg,but thats forgotten every morning i fire it up and drives to work..its easier to wake up with a bigblock chevy over 6000rpms..must be alot of guys and gals that havent experienced this yet.
THese days its really just the gas.
amen. my junk runs and is reliable, but 15 mpg just won’t cut a 60 mile commute (30 each way) anymore. Would love to drive my 402 pickup, 355 camaro, or impala convertible every day, just cheaper to drive my 4 cyl shitbox.
Because I don’t go anywhere besides work, which I would use 15 gallons round trip, or I’m going somewhere no 2wd vehicle has any business going. I like my oil pan as is, attached to the engine with no holes, and wet grass is sometimes a challenge with my Charger.
What 75Duster said.
But even classic car owners can be careless around other peoples cars. I got a door ding in my 1/4 panel at a cruise last week.
As for driving more,I did get the bugs worked out ,took about a year,well enough that I took a 3300mile round trip from TX-CA in Mar. Since then I try to drive it at least twice a week.
Even with Haggerty backing me up I still can’t stand to park it out of site. I did park it near the grandstands at the Pamona SwapMeet in March though.Disabled,yes,but figured it would go out on a roll back or in a trailer.
I like driving my Mustang but at times I feel I have to force myself to drive it.
As to why old cars aren’t driven more,I’d say because it’s work…
The car has to be driven’ at all times,no help from traction control/abs.
Most dont have PS/PB. Hell you have to CRANK the windows up and down!
Add in the repair cost if somebody is suffering cranial rectal inversion…
Have you priced PAINT lately?
Lack of ABS was the problem for me this morning. I woke up and thought ‘sh!t, I’m gonna drive the Val in to work’. Seemed like a good idea until the early morning drizzle made the road slippery as soap.
But here in Australian summers we hit 40 degrees (that’s 104 degrees in yank-speak) and that gets hard with vinyl seats and no a/c.
And don’t even get me started on the bloody boot leak that i just can’t trace, so i don’t like to drive her in the rain.
I guess the answer to the question would depend on what kind of car it is.
If it is an investment grade muscle car, then each mile driven just devalues the investment. The “thrill” isn’t driving it. It is owning it. Showing it off to others.
It could be a “work of art” where everything is plated and polished. Part of the “Trophy Hunter Syndrome. What a PITA it would be to have to clean the entire car, top to bottom, let alone risking stone chips and such just to drive it. That wasn’t why it was created. You think anyone drives those Riddler Award contenders?
And of course the risks of taking the car out on public roads. All too often this can end in tragedy, We read about it ALL THE TIME.
Maybe that’s why Resto Mods are becoming so popular. Drive the wheels off it. When it gets olds and tired or even banged up, just start all over again. Nothing is lost.
I have no idea. I don’t even understand why so many guys don’t drive to drag week. Although I do understand why some of them don’t drive home from DW!
That’s why I love going to the PSMCDR (pure stock drags) in Stanton Michigan every year. The race cars run like stink and look good doing it. No pansies in that group.
the heartless human question again – awesome!
Chad, really… it’s just to piss you off. I used to think it was just to piss me off, but now I know. It’s you.
When you travel to a gig, do you drive Rusty?
I get both sides of this… and it’s all good. 🙂
The price of gas is not a good excuse. Just think how much gas a $500+ car payment and fullcoverage insurance can buy you a month. Drive what ya got!
I drive my wagon all the time. work, the store, on the hiway @130mph the usual.
I got my 67′ GTO back on the road in March and drove it to work every day this summer that it wasn’t going to storm out. 455, 5 speed, Moser 9″ drivetrain. It’s about 15 minutes one way to work. With the Q-jet on it, it pulls as good as, or better mileage than my 02′ Durango and is a lot more fun on the black top on the way there. The way I see it, is in 30-50 years, no one is going to care a bit about muscle cars. We may as well enjoy them while we can. I’m 30 and ive had the car since i was 13. I worked on it in highschool and drove it then. People then, thought i was kind of strange then for playing with old cars. The generation behind me has even less interest in them than my generation does so we may as well use them up. Drive em’
I don’t understand people that would build a car from scratch, but build something they don’t want to drive…(I take the point that someone else made about chequebook builds where the owner thinks he’s getting a vision rather than reality) My car’s a 73 Aussie Falcon coupe, 351C 4 speed, and it is my only car. I can’t see the point in owning a car you don’t want to drive…mine goes to the shops, carts kids around, gets driven in the rain, on dirt roads, whatever. It is a piece of machinery and this is what it was designed to do. People that trailer to a show, push it off the trailer, polish the crap out of it then trailer it home again astound me – I cannot understand the logic. Why bother? If you just want something to look at buy a nice painting….
1. You can’t sit in your painting
2. You can’t polish and wax your painting
3. You can’t drive your painting around the block
4. You won’t win any awards for your painting
5 Most people won’t even know that your painting is valuable unless you tell them. But they will sure recognize a 60’s Muscle Car. They may even tell you they onced owned one way back when – bought it brand new.
True points. You are hinting that if you take your car to a show you can sit in it, polish and wax it, drive it round the block or talk to people about it. There’s this other thing you can do with it, drive the crap out of it !! Like I say, I drive my car everyday, everywhere. All of the above happens ( except for the waxing it bit – its currently in primer) to my car anyway AND it gets used as transportation (which, as I say, it was designed to do in the first place) The painting analogy was to point out that just sitting there admiring it is NOT the most important thing you can do with a car….
There was just recently a 1969 Boss 429 Mustang with documented 91 miles . . . repeat . . . 91 miles on the odometer for sale at a Mecum auction. The owner turned down $270,000. It is the lowest mileage Boss 429 in existance.
You going to drive the crap out of a car like that? Or would you trailer it to car shows to let others see a one of a kind car they will probably never see again in their lifetime.
You want to drive the crap out a collector car – buy or build a clone. You can buy a 1970 Hemi Cuda Convertible clone for about $125,000. A real one will cost you at least $2,000,000.
I don’t think it’s the price of gas. In 1981 I had to work an entire day to fill the tank of my ’73 Torino that got 10 miles to the gallon, today I’d only have to work 3 hours. I think it’s by far the number of distracted morons clogging the roadways. 30 years ago I don’t remember this many bonehead drivers, or maybe I just didn’t realize it. Cars are actually easier to fix now than they were back then with so many repro parts available. Unless your driving a totally oddball car, If it gets hit, just fix it. Every day I see the same gal in her really nice gold ’68 Mustang coupe flying down the freeway with the rest of us and it makes me smile.
I don’t drive my Mustang on the street but I do pound on it mercilessly at the track on the weekends.
Does that count?
I think this is part of the reason of the rat rod/patina trend. Driving a car that you don’t have to worry about dents and dings has a level of freedom attached to it.
Around here its called Winter, in the summer I drive my cougar mainly. will drive the mustang as much as I can. Do have to do research on the classic car plates I bought though for it. Seems I am only allowed to go to and from car shows.
Yet Murry Pfaff took the Imperial Speedster on the Power Tour.
When I talked to him he had about 1800 miles on it. passed me twice on some two lane
somewhere in the tour.
Nick
I drive my junk all the time when the weather is decent. I recently took my 57′ plymouth on a little jaunt from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Joplin, Missouri and back. It was a beat up rust bucket when I started, and when it becomes a beatup rust bucket again, I will just rebuild it again.
I will take it off the road after halloween to save it from the road salt they dump everywhere during the winter to try to keep the body nice. My Exploder gets to wade through that. Funny thing is they get the same gas milage.
People love keying nice cars! a $10,000 paint job will be much more to fix than the dickhead who keyed it own car. I love my wheels and will (once its finished) drive it til the wheels fall off , but god help anyone who takes the time to go out of their way to damage it. From all the above answers it seems the mighty dollar rules! ie, repairs ,maintenence and above all fuel and insurance.