(By Loren Krussow) – A few weeks ago, BangShift.com member Rebeldryver (Scott) posted a link to a CraigsList ad for a ’59 Chevy bench seat. For a tattered original with nothing usable except the basic frame and springs, the seller was asking $700. That was a laughable price (it should’ve been $100), which I believe was Scott’s point.

Yet looking at the ad I felt a little anger rise. Why? Who cares what some fool wants for a rotten seat?

Perhaps as an old-car guy who has saved a thing-or-two from the scrap heap, I feel a certain sense of entitlement when I come across interesting items that have been ill-maintained and are near ruin. I feel that if I should wish to fix and use something then I will be the better caretaker and it should be handed along to me for its own sake. After poking around something long enough to identify, assess, and make the decision for a rescue, to come across a big you-can’t-have-it price tag is a like a bucket of cold water to the face.

Well, whatever one’s intentions or feelings may be, the truth is that even the worst-condition popular old parts are increasingly no longer affordable. Items that were once a couple-hour’s pay at the Pick-Your-Part or through the want-ad, or even free laying out on the landscape, now may be on eBay instead, where you will compete against the deepest pockets in the country. It seems that after starting out so shiny-new and desirable, then becoming worn and valueless, some cars rise again to where even the little pieces are out of reach. That isn’t unfair. Whoever has a part can decide for them self what they want for it. We just get annoyed when things are priced so high, either sitting on someone’s shelf in a box or left outside to decompose into the ground.

There is surely an element of this type of frustration along with the sense of opportunity when someone says, “Forget this, it’s only plastic and metal, we can make the thing ourselves.” If there are enough people out there whose projects are being held hostage by the cost or unavailability of some particular component, the answer is to step up and get a new run going. A fresh supply is created to meet the demand and prices get real again. In fact there aren’t many in the old-parts reproduction business who are not themselves car guys as much or more than their customers and didn’t begin with some personal aggravation over having to grossly overpay for some poor-condition original. Not at all like with new-parts knock-offs, where a part number is already being made and price-cutting is the only goal.

It’s fortunate for the hobby that this is so often done.  However, these relatively low-volume parts will be made in a different way than the originals and I’m sad that so much of it has to be manufactured overseas, regardless of what country the people financing and needing it live in.  Holding a part in my hand and imagining some factory in China is worth less to me than picturing the old Detroit assembly line that the original came down, manned by tough American guys who could’ve been your grandpa. The foreign reproduction is a lesser tribute. However, if the men who built the original cars were proud enough of those iconic vehicles to hope that a few would make it past the day they became functionally obsolete, to be stored away then cared for once again by people who might not even have been born yet, I think they would forgive us an import part here-and-there, if that’s what it takes to keep the car they crafted running.

So I believe it will never quite completely be the end of cheap old car parts or at-least attainable ones.  Not as long as there’s ambition and ingenuity to go along with desire.