There is a misconception among some car enthusiasts that your car is what makes you an enthusiast. Basically, you’re an enthusiast if you own a Miata, and you’re not if you own a Corolla. But that isn’t fair, nor is it really the truth. The person makes the enthusiast, no matter what they’re driving.
Griffin Riley, the cool guy who normally edits our videos, wrote a review on the first EV he’s driven, a GMC Hummer EV. It was a great piece! Thomas The Tank Engine:
I’m a car guy, and I’m definitely not just saying that because I’d be promptly fired if it came out I’m an atheist in the church of combustion
You wouldn’t be fired at all.
A certain Mr J. Clarkson once said “Cars themselves are not interesting. What you do with cars is interesting”
A car is freedom, flexibility, independence, the gateway to life and adventure. Whatever the propulsion source.
So many magical experiences happen with the aid of a car – any car – and we as Autopians should know and celebrate this.
It’s why so many of us don’t care about the latest mega-super-hypercar that can go a squillion miles per hour and cost more than the International Space Station.
We love all cars, and what we can do with them and how they work, how they intertwine into our lives.
It’s why we love David’s rusty jeeps, Jason’s taillight obsessions, Mercedes’ Smart cars, Adrian’s design articles, SWG’s rescue tales, road trips, fixing breakdowns with duct tape and twigs, Dacia Sanderos and everything else. And the non-car stuff like trains and so on.
Electric cars are just cars. And they are just as welcome here as everything else.
Mark Tucker wrote a Shitbox Showdown that featured a pretty suspicious Ford Mustang II. Rob Stercraw has really good eyes, and this can help you the next time you’re looking at a car on Facebook or Craigslist:
Mustang II: That gigantic zip tie on the column and the sticker on the corner of the windshield clearly identify it as a Copart auction car. Flipper selling it couldn’t even be bothered to remove that and take their own pictures.
Asshat.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: Griffin Riley
COTD! Woo Hoo!
Wil Wheaton (remember him?) says of science fiction and fantasy fandom, “it’s not what you love, it’s how you love it.” His point was to differentiate between a happy consumer of what’s called “genre” media and someone who could be called a fan. The line he drew was that a fan creates their own experience: cosplay, fanfic, convention(s), collecting, …it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do something.
A parallel can be drawn here. Lots of people use cars, but they’re just transportation. An enthusiast—a “car guy” of any sex—has a different relationship with their vehicle, though. And everyone reading this comment can figure out a definition for that relationship that is their very own.
For me, it’s making kits. I have a tool kit, and a first aid kit, and a disaster preparedness kit. And then I have all my kits for the Coast Guard Auxiliary: recreational vessel safety checks, commercial safety inspections, a boater safety booth (that one is mostly lots of pamphlets to hand out), and a marine radio base station. All of which used to get around in one minivan or another, but now live in a 2022 Kia Telluride.
But I still enjoy Mercedes and Torch and Adrian and DT and all the rest. I’ve even gotten to know the voices and backgrounds of some of the other members of the commentariat, here. And I learn from you all! Thank you.
I want to be inclusive, but this is enthusiast hierarchy imho:
Tier 1: Godlike. Insane skills and knowledge of all automotive subsystems, has built a car from scratch (kit car) or been through an entire car front to back, but not just stock, lots of custom fabrication abilities, custom bodykits, composites, great welding skills, CNC, etc.
Tier 2: Engine out procedures, engine swaps, decent welding, etc. Advanced fab skills and troubleshooting, not afraid of diving into the unknown.
Tier 3. Has removed a cylinder head, and put the engine back together. Or removed a transmission. Something along those lines; removal and restored a major automotive component. Basic welding. Basic fabrication skills.
Tier 4. Leases a sportier car. Maybe changes the wheels. Baby mods like rotors, pads, and maybe drop springs. Doesn’t really know much tho, lacks any fab skills.
Tier 5: Leases a newer CUV or mom mobile. Doesn’t wrench. But is technically enthusiastic about cars.
It’s just how I see the world. I’d rather talk to the 17 year old who swapped his Civic than the 49 year old driving (leasing) a new Lambo.
Gotta say, I feel excluded. I’m probably between tier 3 and 4 and that also seems to be the line between cool and not cool. I own an older car that I’ve been maintaining and modifying myself with off the shelf part, but because of various circumstances I never got into fabrication and I’m not sure I ever will.
There’s a cavernous gap between tier 3 and tier 4, IMHO.
Probably. Didn’t say it was perfect, and just wrote it in 3 min or so. But roughly, that’s how I view the world.
How? You’re literally admitting what tier you are. Everyone is included in my list.
Fact is, people like this exist:
https://rungecars.com/
Barely anybody is this cool.
And you can be cool for a lot of reasons, but in terms of automotive enthsusiast levels, that’s how I view things.
Well said Mr. Tank Engine
Anyone can be a car person. In my experience it’s usually people who drive older, crappy cars that are the best car people. If you drive an older car that means you are probably working on it. If you’re working on it you’re learning about it. Having some basic car knowledge is what makes you a car person in my book. It’s not about what you drive. My brother is an attorney and had always driven nice cars but had never really been a car person. We went in together and purchased a delorean that we discovered in a storage shed. I fixed it up and got it reasonably reliable. I then shipped it to my brother’s house several hours away so he could drive and enjoy it for a while. Well, deloreans are not the most reliable cars on earth so my brother had to learn how to do some basic maintenance. He went and bought a basic wrench and ratchet set and got to work. He changed out the alternator, belts, the battery and even did some basic electrical work on it. Ever since then he has REALLY been into cars. He even likes getting his hands dirty every once in a while.
That’s how I feel. I love my darling little J-Body Pontiac Sunbird and I’m very enthusiastic for crapcan GM FWD cars of the ‘80s and ‘90s in general. Why? Don’t know. I guess because they remind me of simpler times, of the (admittedly seldom good) days of my youth, and they are just simple little workhorses – if not overly refined compared to the imports of the time.
I have some folks in the car community around here that are determined not to understand it. They have pristine lowriders, 1960s and ‘70s muscle cars, lifted Jeeps, new Challengers and Corvettes, etc. and they look at my Sunbird and just say “Um. Why?”
My bigger question is “Why does it matter?” I like what I like.
The car community is small and shrinking all the time. Gen Z by and large doesn’t care – a lot of them are delaying even learning to drive. Someday, we will all be in autonomous EV blobs with no soul. Why not cherish the time we have now and expand the camaraderie rather than being judgmental and creating division?
Big part of why I like this site and am proud to be a member. We appreciate it all here.
So for me its economic.
I am house poor, so having a cool new car is out of the question. I tell everyone i just love 90’s and early 2000’s cars because they are cool, simple, had better visibility, better looks, were smaller.. all of that.
but really its just that I got a salvage title E46 for like 3600 bucks and its cheap to keep it running. I always have a sub $5000 ca, its not my first choice, but its what I got, So i have just come to love what i can afford.
I wish i could have a new 500hp M car.. but that isnt in the works..
No kidding I’d love to read your adventures in E46 necromancy. I rarely hear them described as “cheap” so a change of perspective would be most welcome!
Well, might be cheap when you first buy it…..
the e46 is at the special place where parts are plentiful, youtube videos on everything you need to fix, they are fully troubleshot.
and they arent quite old enough for collectors yet, you can still get these cheap.
All that is true and helped sucked me in to getting one, but I got repair fatigue with my wife’s beloved E46 convertible after several years of her daily driving (It was knocking on 200k at that point). Almost every month something would break. Sometimes minor, sometimes not. Had to tow it home the 1st week we owned it after it blew the expansion tank while waiting in drive thru line (root cause: failing cooling fans. 20 min. to change out, including unboxing it). Pelican Parts got a lot of my business.
Took a couple of months to actually sell the car after we decided to move on because had to wait until everything was fixed/working at same time. Sold in couple of weeks for a fair price for both seller/buyer.
Well. In my neighborhood there sat this most beautiful Helrot red e46 convertible, it was in the “nicer” part of the area, so lots of really nice cars all around. but i noticed this one because it was in perfect shape for an older car, i mean perfect.
I would walk the dog by it every day and look at it. I finally got the courage to go ring the doorbell and ask if it was for sale.
the lady that answered was the owner, and just about crapped herself, because she said she was going to put it for sale that weekend, that she got a new convertible and never drove the old one.
So she let me know it was on a salvage title from a front end collision early in its life. It had been welded and fixed and reinforced with a strut tower bar. It had 111k miles and was other that stuff, just perfect.
it needed a valve cover gasket, bushings, some new hoses and rubber parts that had got old, and brakes and tires.
So purchase price was 3600 dollars, and i dropped about 5 grand at the mechanic .
but now i daily that car and have had no issues other than a fuel pump which was quick and easy to fix its been great.
Honestly I love that story. She got it off her hands, you got a really neat car that’s serving you well, and the E46 was saved from the crusher!
wow I feel very seen, I haven’t owned a car newer than 2008 lol. Though I think there is reality to this I’ve been car shopping and there is a dwindling selection (unless you’re rich) that keeps getting narrower as you go past about 2010 imo and the prices on that stuff have stayed stupidly high.
The thing I like about Autopian is that all the writers have such esoteric interests, it doesn’t make me feel like a such a weirdo in the enthusiast space.
I like minivans, I like my ecnobox Honda Fit with a manual and good tires. I like my 98 Jeep ZJ that I’m rebuilding for off road adventures.
I always feel a bit out of sorts around other enthusiasts that like things fast, loud and low when I’m happy driving and working on my couch, practical car that can haul anything (2004 Dodge Grand Caravan 245k miles).
I’ve said for years that a true car enthusiast loves driving, no matter what the car is. I absolutely adored the ’99 Corolla I banged around in for a couple of years. It was grandmother white, with a beige interior, and an automatic transmission. But it took whatever I had like an enthusiastic little puppy. I bombed around town, I road tripped with my daughters, I rallycrossed it. I had SO much fun in that unassuming little box, that I affectionately dubbed The Cracker Box. I sold it this summer to pick up an absolutely mint ’01 Accord with a manual, but I wish I had just kept that Corolla too.
My first car was a ~20-year-old Mercury Tracer, and it’s safe to say I’ve never had quite as much fun driving any other car. Partially because I haven’t been an idiot teenager since then …
That will do it! I’m in my 40’s, and was the whole time I owned that Corolla. I definitely did lest objectively stupid things in it than I would have as a teenager. Well, some might say making 27 runs at HooptieX and then driving 90 miles home with four blown struts and grinding brakes was pretty stupid, but all I have to say about that is old Corolla parts are REALLY cheap!
It is probably similar to the “Built VS Bought” mentality of some.
My first car was a 71 Mach 1, I took a loan out for a $1,500 dollar car in the 90’s, or well My mom did and I had to pay the nut from a busboy job at a restaurant. so obviously I was not rich enough to pay for a decent car that was already good to go, but I was enough of an enthusiast to be willing to live with repairing/upgrading myself as money permitted and not having a perfectly reliable transport method in the snow. This chip sometimes lead to a chip on my shoulder when a classmate was given a perfectly nice classic car that his pops either built or paid to have built. However I got over all of that pretty quickly, and oh yeah bought and flipped a bunch of beaters that just needed some basic maintenance in most cases.
Still, I think some still keep those chips on their shoulders to justify bad attitudes towards one area of vehicle enthusiasm over the next. Also I think the internet and the forums for one vehicle or another makes it even more of an issue for let’s say Jeep enthusiast to continue to bash other offroad vehicles or Mustangs vs Challengers and so on.
I think the most fun I had with any car as a kid was a 100 dollar loss leader 1978 two door Ford LTD. local stealership advertised it for 100 to pull in the cheapos and do the bait and switch. I was there for something else and it started and ran, so I bought it immediately so I could saw the roof off and use it for tailgating.
To paraphrase the worst pirate you’ve ever heard of (but you have heard of him):
“Wherever we want to go, we go. That’s what a car is, you know. It’s not just an engine and a transmission and tires and shocks and timing belts and chainsaw batteries – that’s what a car needs. Not what a car is. What a car really is, is freedom.”
That is definitely ONE important form of car enthusiast, but I consider myself an enthusiast because I love the weird mechanical tech and I love working on my 2CV, possibly more than I love driving it. So, I’d hate to see that as the definition of enthusiast.
That’s a very similar thing though. The 2CV is objectively not a great or exciting car to drive, at least not in a modern context, but you love the experience of it.
I have a Corvette, a half-ton truck, and a Prius. I love driving all of them because they’re all really good at something. Different somethings in every case, but something nonetheless.
It’s fun rip backroads in the Vette, fun to haul stuff in the truck (and I just moved, so I got to have lots of “fun” 😉 ), and fun to drive places for pocket change in the Prius.
That’s an outstanding fleet!
Like @Eggsalad says, I grew up with Matchbox and Hotwheels, We built go karts out of scraps and wheels we found. I read nothing but Hot Rod, CARtoons , and 4 wheel and Off Road, magazine, when I wasn’t building Model cars.
Relegated to holding the flashlight, and fetching Sockets, while learning from a very Frugal father how to fix almost anything from body work to mechanical things. I was just doing the same is all my friends were doing it.
I can ID a car withing a couple of model years looking at it, and I still Work on my own cars.
I agree that being an enthusiast is not about a specific model ( though you learn a lot with the latest “obsession”). Cars are like Art Work, You can be an enthusiast without owning it.
I was a car enthusiast as soon as I could hold a Matchbox in my tiny toddler paw, and I still consider myself to be one. I’m over 60 now, and still consider myself to be an enthusiast (otherwise, why would I be here?) but it no longer extends to my vehicle ownership. I’ve just got other things to do with my money and time.
When I met Torch and the gang at the gang in Vegas on the Crazy Cross Country Taxi Tour™, I somehow felt it necessary to apologize for driving something as boring and ordinary as a CX-5, but Matt was really sweet and gracious and told me it was a neat car.
Reader for life.
They were driving Vegas? Obviously, kidding.
It’s a shame Chevy Vegas were so bad. They looked so much better than Pintos. The station wagon Vega was particularly fetching, back in the day (HS and college). I did drive a Pinto of uncertain vintage (maybe ’75?) once, back in 1977, but my ’68 Datsun 510 s/w at the time was so superior to it.
Long story, short. It was the Pinto owner’s birthday. A car belonging to a mutual friend of all of us broke down on the way to the party. My companion for the evening and I got mildly stoned at a little pre-party, and she tried to walk through a sliding glass door as we entered the party. So, maybe not quite so mildly. Birthday boy tossed me the keys to his Pinto to retrieve our friend who got stranded 5 miles away. I told him I would do the task in my own car, but he insisted. The stick in my Datsun was much nicer. But everybody survived. No cars were damaged.
It was an interesting and unforgettable evening for me. I can’t believe that was 48 years ago.
NEVER do that math. It was not “48 years ago”, it was just the other day. Nothing makes you feel so old as counting the years since X and then relating that back to the younger people in your workplace.
Yep. Was recently telling one of my workmates a story about blowing the engine in my first car, then realised it happened the year before he was born!
Similar here. Since as early as I was 6, I could remember being autistically obsessed with some early 2000’s Opel Astra and Vectra estates being used as taxis in Italy.
It wasn’t because I loved Opels, I just happen to really like mundane cars that exist for a purpose. A taxi only exists to carry passengers and luggage, and it has to meet the almost impossible criteria of being as cheap as possible to buy, operate, and be spacious enough all at the same time. I think that’s cool, because that’s what a regular car is by definition, in my opinion.