Why Classics?

Old cars are really popular in America. Many of us hold them in high regard.There are those who cannot understand the fascination people have with old, outdated machinery.They cannot fathom why people waste their time admiring old things when today's technology is so much better.Allow me to shed some light on this subject.
To American's, cars are part of everyday life, yet at the same time, deeply personal. We grow up in communities where all households have cars. Most of us expect to have one before we graduate from high school.With cars playing such a common role in American life,we want our cars to reflect ourselves.Cars often are an expensive afterthought in many parts of the world. People buy them for a specific purpose and have no emotional connection to them. Not us. For a lot of us, our cars are part of our identity.Compare this with many other countries.Cars are like expensive computers. They serve a purpose, cost a lot, and are just inanimate objects that make life easier.The car is so central to our lives here that we have built a culture around it.
America is a country who's citizens often respect the past. People born in the 1990's go to thrift shops to buy hippie clothes, then crank up Beatles songs while smoking a doobie. They try to recreate a decade that went away long before they were born.In a country where radio stations and dance clubs play "retro" music, is it any wonder some people still like old cars? This is not a bad thing. I'm a proponent of remembering the past and honoring it when appropriate.In a lot of countries, people are very forward-thinking and always focusing on innovation and setting new trends. In Japan, televisions, phones, computers, etc are discarded after 2 or 3 years because they are "obsolete" and ultimately that amounts to poverty. Also, emissions and safety regulations are so draconian it is extraordinarily expensive to keep a car long enough for it to become a classic.In Taiwan, most people would be embarrassed to drive outdated cars.South Korea is another forward-thinking country with few or no classic cars, and general disinterest.People from these countries also use more public transit and disposable motor scooters than Americans.They don't expect to own a car immediately upon getting their license and many have learned to adapt without one.There is no emotion attached to the cars and an understable lack of interest in the oldies.
The reasons people love old cars likely has to do with sentimentality more than anything. For example, in the 1970's, a lot of people wanted to have a Corvette or muscle car but ended up driving a Ford sedan handed down to them from their father. Now, they can finally realize their dream.After working hard and saving for years, they finally buy the old car they have lusted over for so long.
Old cars also remind us of something.Unlike the old disco songs of the 70's, cars have a much shorter life span.I still hear songs from my childhood all the time. But I don't see the cars from my childhood.One of my favorite cars is the Chevy Vega, a terrible car if there ever was one.In my youngest years, we lived in a house backing up to a main road. It ended at a subdivision, which you had to zig-zag through to get to the next main thoroughfare.If I looked out through the doorwall, to the neighborhood at the end of that road, I would see a house that had 2 Vegas.An additional Vega belonged to one of the neighbors who lived right near the entrance to our subdivision.we moved in 1985, and a guy living nearby had 2 Cosworth Vegas decaying in his driveway.I have always associated those cars with my childhood.Music is timeless. Cars aren't. My favorite cars are still the 70's cars because those are the cars I remember. I'm now learning to love mediocre cars from the 80's for the same reason.We had a few Pontiac 6000's in my high school parking lot. Those are in short supply now.It's almost like someone going back to their old neighborhood and finding that half of the houses are gone, replaced either by vacant lots or new houses.Then, they see an old house and it looks largely the same as it did 40 or so years ago. About a year and a half ago, I saw a man driving a rusting white Vega on a snowy day and it made me very happy.It was sort of the missing link to vanishing childhood sights.Nowadays, I start to feel the same when a battered, rusted Pontiac 6000 passes by. Many of us like cars that represent a certain time in our life. Others, like the young hippies today, want to live in a time they missed out on.As long as people still like old southern rock music, muscle cars will remain the dream car of many adolescents.And as long as we have something to associate the old cars with, we will love them.Yes, new cars are better. But we already have an attachment to the old cars that we are still building with the newer ones.