Kids Today Don't Care About Cars

Rob Sass of Haggerty Insurance, a leading insurer of antique and collectible automobiles, was interviewed in a recent issue of Car and Driver about the current state of the collector car "hobby".  He mentioned that it was strong and particularly strong in regards to certain European makes and models but he cautioned that if current trends continue, the collector car hobby and marketplace could be in trouble.

 

 

That current trend is that the generations after the generation that "founded" the collector car hobby, "The Baby Boomers", the so called "Generations X and Y", have significantly less interest in cars than Boomers. What's worse, the generation after Generation Y, now known as "Millennials", a generation that is, apparently, almost as large as the Boomers, has almost no interest in cars above and beyond the practical application of driving. Even that is questionable because when you're wired in as much as these kids are, why would you need to actually go anywhere? This means that as Boomers get older there's going to be no one interested in their cars. No interest will drive the values of their cars down. Not that real car people buy cars as investments in the first place but it is nice to know that you're not literally endlessly burning cash with your hobby.

 

With regards to the Millenials, the reasons for their ambivalence are varied but the biggest single reason is, again, how "wired in" they are. For instance our 17 and 15 year old need just pick up their phones and text their friends, either individually or in the dreadful "group chat" and they are as much if not more engaged with their friends than as if they were together. They have little need for transportation other than to get to and from school and hopefully, sooner than later, to part time jobs and back home.

 

Our 17 year old says he's "into cars" but I know him well enough to know that if it wasn't for his father's interest in automobiles, he wouldn't be able to tell a Camaro from an Accord. I asked him if any of his friends are into cars and he told me, flatly, "no".

 

 

I got a great deal on an old Camaro last fall and while our 17 year old thinks its cool, he's told me that he prefers our Chevy Tahoe. He likes the room, comfort, size, power and driving position of the Tahoe over the Camaro. Hrmph. Apples to grapefruit vehicle wise but his point was interesting; he'd forgo the stylish, sporty Camaro for the comfort and practicality of the Tahoe.

 

 

Cars and trucks today are more fabulous than ever and you don't need the new Corvette to have a vehicle that can perform at extremely high levels. Even the most plebian of today's mini vans has enough power and handling prowess to do respectable quarter mile times and zip through the slalom with aplomb. What's more, there's no sacrifice or compromise with today's cars. Even with my Old '96er (Camaro) there's sacrifice. Hard to get into, cramped interior, fairly punishing ride, clumsy driving position. It's a car you really gotta love because it does its darndest to make you hate it.

The general greatness of today's cars underscores another problem. Cars are so good today and reliable too, that they've become little more than soulless appliances. Like a good dishwasher or stove, it does what it's designed to do very well but leaves you with little to no emotional foot print. Because they're so good they've, metaphorically, ceased to exist.
 

 

 

New York Yankees Man Cave Shutters - Finally Done!

 

I've come to realize that my wood working skills, much like marriage, is a never ending series of compromises. Either compromises or rationalizations. Which ever floats my personal boat at the time I complete a project. For certain, I don't like to admit that I couldn't do something that I originally thought I could but in the interest of actually finishing this project, that had as much practical application as decorative, I moved on from my original design to something else the moment that I realized that I had bitten off way more than I could possibly chew. Or in this case, cut with my newly purchased scroll saw.
 

 

 

 

To review, the issue with our man cave was these glass block windows. They let in a ton of light during the day and that means a simulated cinematic experience in my man cave is not all that it could be. 

 

 

 

Those windows face north so I can only imagine what it would be like if they faced east or west. In any event, the solution, was shutters or some sort of sun blocking barrier. The boys had been using pillows to block out the sun; effective but it looked horrible. Something had to be done.  



 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, "The Scroll Saw". Quite possibly the most fiendishly addictive tool ever created. I say "fiendishly" because at first you think you're going to become a woodworking zenmaster and work with it 24/7/365 because it's so easy and fun. Yeah. And then reality hits and you find yourself wanting to throw it across the garage. Good thing it's fairly heavy.

 

 

My plan was to make life like, miniature wooden  facsimiles of the 1976 Yankee Stadium Frieze and attach them to the shutters. Actually, my original, original plans called for the both shutters to be like the Frieze but I though better of that plan. Suffice to say, I quickly realized how difficult "The Scroll Saw" is to work with. Those that have mastered it are true masters. This ain't easy, y'all.

 

 

I broke my first blade cutting the emblem on the right. Freaked me out. I thought a gun went off. Man, that was loud. After consulting with my scroll saw rabbi, I got back on the horse and got back at it. Several attempts later I got to the emblem on the left. Photos don't do it justice just how much better the one on the left looks compared to the one on the right.  

 

  

The Yanks old fashioned good start to the 2014 season makes this even nicer. I plan on adding some fill material to the back and top of the shutters to completely darken the Cave. I'm pretty happy with the way they came out.  

 

 

My next Scoll Saw project will be a Texas Longhorns logo. Stay tuned!



 



1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 - Possibly Two of the Happiest Days of My Life

 

 

History, at least from a vintage car collector's point of view, has not been kind to the 1971-1973 Ford Mustangs. The reasons are almost as varied as the option lists for these cars were.

 

 

To begin with, values are generally softer on collectible cars built after 1970. 1970 believed to be the last hoorah for muscle cars since beginning in 1971, compression ratios started to drop as car manufacturers began to ramp up to ever stringent government mandated emissions restrictions. High compression, incidentally, meant a "dirty engine"; a more polluting car. For whatever reasons, that drops the value of collector cars.

 

 

Secondly, government mandated, 5 mph "safety bumpers" were added to all cars sold in the United States starting in 1973. For 1973 they were added to the front and in 1974 they were added to the rear. While our '71 here was saved from that indignity, since it's lumped in with cars of that safety bumper vintage, it gets another ding in value.

Lastly and far from leastly, our lovely beast gets dinged because of what it ultimately isn't. That being at least a 1964 1/2 - 1966 or 1967-1968 Mustang. Mustang went through three massive styling updates in just seven years and the car morphed from a cute, bug like, diminutive little thing to a bar room brawler complete with an optional "big block" engine. With each update, Mustang moved father and father away from its original and very successful design or mission. Taste being like armpits though, I like these "Big Mustangs". Most Mustang cognoscenti have a much different opinion. Then again, I'm a GM guy at heart so what the heck do I know.
 

Rubber to the road, this car is typical of performance cars of the era. It looks great and can go from 0-60 mph and do the quarter mile with heretofore unimaginable aplomb. It feels faster than it is too. However, when it came to handling, much is left to be desired. With a propensity to do little more than under steer in corners with anything more than a gentle amount of throttle, driving this "sports car" is quite challenging. You don't drive it as much as plow with it. What's more, visibility is horrible with it's severely raked rear window, louvers and very low sitting position. 

I had passed on buying this car a couple of years ago because of all the above reasons and most importantly, the asking price was, I believed exorbitant. It was nice Corvette money for a Mustang. Sorry but no.

 

It's said that the two happiest days of a boat owners life at the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it. Same could be said for vintage cars.

 

1983 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - Grandpa Needs a Heart Transplant

Cadillac's 1980 reboot of the deVille brought elan to the lines of the car that were missing at best and clunky at worst when the car debuted as part of GM's massive 1977 downsizing.

 

 

The changes were subtle yet significant and made for an overall much more pleasant looking premium automobile. The car also appears to be larger than before. Not a bad thing considering the era and the mentality of Cadillac buyers at the time.

The interiors were also brought up several notches too. Fit and trim markedly better and the quality of the leather upholstery improved as well.

While certainly not to Mercedes Benz or BMW levels, at least what was offered was an improvement over what was offered previously. That was not always the case with General Motors offerings from this era. If you've ever replaced something with the same item and felt it not quite as good as it was, that was GM in the '70's.

 

The 1982-84 deVille do have an Achilles heel thought and it's this infamous HT4100 (HT for high tech - kid you not) V-8 with Digital Fuel Injection. I test drove an '82 DeVille years ago and found it utterly unresponsive to even the hardest stabs of the gas pedal. What's more, in a car weighing as much as this car does, the lack of power makes you drive differently. While its said that driving a slow car fast is more fun than driving a fast car slow, its debatable that you could even get to a point where you could say you're moving fast in this thing. Upside, very respectable gas mileage. About 22 mpg. Congrats, GM. You made a big car that actually got decent mileage. Too bad that came at the expense of all driving pleasure.

It's a shame because these are very nice cars and this low mileage beauty in particular, for sale in sunny California, is in especially clean shape. Asking price, if you're interested, $10,000. All the money in the world for a thirty one year old car of any ilk let alone, "A Best of All It's a Cadillac", Cadillac.

 

Five grand, perhaps six and we have a sleeping beauty. Take it to a good shade tree mechanic and spend the difference giving Grandpa here a heart transplant. Let's do it right with a snorting Chevy 350 and an aggressive set of gears and turn this gem into a real Cadillac.

Miranda Lambert - Three On A Tree

"God knows that shifting gears ain’t what it used to be
I learned to drive that 55 just like a queen, three on a tree..."

My 17 year old son asked me what Miranda Lambert is referring to when she sings about a "three on a tree" in her new song, "Automatic". I laughed at the irony of his question knowing well that his not knowing what it means is part of what makes "Automatic" so memorable. 

 The column mounted three speed began appearing in America in the late 1930s and became common during the 1940s and 1950s. Balky, bulky and clumsy compared to floor mounted transmission shifters, "three on a tree" added much needed interior space to vehicles and allowed for someone to sit in the middle of the front seat without being unencumbered by the gear shifter. 

Nostalgia is nothing new and everyone's nostalgia is personal to them and them alone. Shared nostalgic moments can only be shared to a point since people experience the same things differently.

There was no "automatic" available on Chevrolet's 1955 pickup, only three and four speed manual transmissions. That fact serendipitous to the song or brilliant writing? We'll probably never know for sure.  

One person can have wonderful memories while another has a completely different view of the same occurrence. Same is true in traumatic situations where some are all but unscathed whiles others, sadly, have a difficult time dealing with the psychological consequences. 

Chevrolet didn't offer an automatic transmission on their pickup truck line until 1960.

Waxing nostsalgic about shifting a brutally crude device like a "three on a tree", especially in a 1955 Chevrolet pickup, more than likely for the protagonist in "Automatic" has more to do with the memories it conjures up than the actual shifting. Then again, everyone's nostalgia is personal to them and them alone.

It all just seemed so good the way we had it
Back before everything became, automatic  

1971 Cadillac Eldorado - Better With Age

 

It's the rare automobile that actually improved as their original design was updated. GM famous for updating great looking cars and turning them into plastic surgery nightmares. The all new for 1971 Cadillac Eldorado a prime example of a car that actually did get better looking as it passed through its design life cycles.

 

 

Introduced to much fanfare in 1967, the front wheel drive Cadillac Eldorado was arguably the most beautiful Cadillac of the decade and one of their all time greatest designs. What got lost in the drop dead gorgeous sheet metal was that marvelous front wheel drive engineering. Did people even care that this car was front wheel drive?

 

The 1971 reboot trashed most if not all of that 1967 styling mojo. The '67 Eldorado was the car of the Rat Pack; the 1971 looked like the car of the Fat Pack. It may have been nothing more than the fender skirts and the six inch longer wheelbase but the '71 looks like put on a thousand pounds. Truth be known the convertible was marginally heavier than a '67 hardtop and the car's overall length was but .6 of a inch larger than the car it replaced.

  

Something happened, though on the way to the funeral parlor. Granny lost her fender skirts, her pointless, non functioning rear brake cooling vents and she gained some girth with the huge safety bumpers but somehow the old lady suddenly had some real charm. This 1976 was the same car underneath as the 1971, save for some soul robbing emissions plumbing, but think about which one you'd rather have?

 

1971

 

 

 

1976 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Parenting - Getting "The Call"

Got the call yesterday afternoon that we knew was coming but never expected. Our oldest son had been in an accident. Thankfully, it was relatively minor.

 

 

He was driving his girlfriend home after the track meet at the high school and he reached into a zip lock bag of pretzels the two of them were sharing. Literally, in the blink of an eye, he took his eye off the road, missed a turned and plowed head on into a mailbox. The mailbox post snapped in two sending the mail box flying but not before it bent over onto the car denting the hood. The front bumper cover was deeply scratched and a fog lamp was broken too.

 

It could have been so much worse. Had the mailbox not have been securely attached to the post the mail box itself could've gone through the windshield if it had broken free of the post. The fact the mailbox ended up as far away from the car as it did tells me he was going faster than he claimed he was going. Perhaps, just maybe, his speed played in his favor this time. The physics of what happens in an accident being the difference between nothing really happening, serious injury or worse.

 

He was rock solid on the phone with me when he called to tell me about what had happened. He has this unique ability, that he certainly didn't get from me, where he's able to defer reaction or emotion; he didn't break down in front of his girlfriend. He was remarkably calm, cool and collected. No sooner, though, than the second he got home that he turned into a pile of goo. He was trembling and he told his mother and I that he was "scared" because he didn't know how the homeowner was going to react about the mailbox. What? Yes. He also left the scene without notifying the homeowner that he had blasted his mailbox to smithereens.

 

 

On the way back to the scene the poor kid was a mess. I haven't seen him this upset in a very long time, if ever. It's at moments like this we parents must move into triage mode and at the very least, not make things worse. Difficult to do seeing how we're emotionally charged at the moment as well. The last thing he needed to get at that moment was a brutal scolding seeing he was already tearing himself up over what had happened. What more was I going to do to make him feel bad about what had happened? My job was to make him feel better.

 

 

He needed to calm down and that's what I helped him do. He's 17 and has never had anything like this happen to him before. I told him that accidents happen to all of us, we all make mistakes and that he needed to suck it up and calm down, to stop overreacting. As much as he can defer emotion, he can overreact like the best of us when the emotions do finally erupt. He kept ruminating about what ifs and what nots and I told him to stop. If anything, it could've been so much worse. Now, don't get me wrong, I was not happy about what had happened. He was careless and made a mistake but what he hopefully takes away from this incident was that he was careless and made a mistake. Not that his father eviscerated him.

 

He was nervous about what he was going to say to the homeowner once we got back to the scene. I reassured him that even at his ripe old age of 17, there are still things that his father should and would do for him. I would speak to the homeowner and handle it. Fortunately for someone who had left the scene of an accident, literally a hit and run, the homeowner was not home. We put the broken mailbox post by the front door of the house with an apologetic note on it asking the homeowner to call me.

 

 

On the way back to our house he had calmed down and I had him laughing when I told him stories of antics that I had gotten myself into when I was his age. He made plans with his girlfriend to come over for dinner and a movie at our house. When it was all said and done, save for the damage to the car, you'd never know anything happened out of ordinary yesterday. As it should be.

 

Oh, and if you're wondering, yes. He's going to have to get a job to pay for the repairs.

 

1977 Cadillac Coupe deVille - Concrete Lion

 

 

Regardless of whether or not they have any, in broadcasting, we refer to people on camera or behind the microphone as "talent". Many of those precious few "talent" that actually have any ability, though, have one thing in common - they don't understand what it is that makes them great. With regards to Cadillac, their product planners years ago clearly didn't understand what made their brand great. Our subject is a 1977 Cadillac Coupe deVille.
 

  

The 1977 Cadillac was no atonement for the transgressions of their recent past. Handsome as it was it in it's downsized glory, it offered nothing more special than what was available at Chevrolet. In many ways, it actually offered less seeing than it's large, heavy and thirsty engine made its handling far more ponderous than the Chevrolet with significantly less miles per gallon.

 

  

Not that people shopping for a Cadillac back then cared much for such things; they never looked at the car as an actual car. More like a concrete lion perched in front of their driveway. "Look at me, I'm rich". Whether you or not is of little consequence.

 

 

What made a Cadillac "a Cadillac", however, was more than just being at the top of Alfred Sloan's famed pricing ladder or offering styling that some perceived as premium or exclusive.

 

 

  

It was engineering and innovative features, that were more than just gimmicks, that weren't offered on "lesser" GM makes and models that elevated Cadillac to the lofty status it once had. Everything else was window dressing. Subjectively tasteful window dressing but nonetheless frills.

 



 

Once features at one time exclusive to Cadillac trickled down to lesser GM makes and models, without Cadillac continuing to pioneer engineering innovations, and Cadillac focused exclusively on design, what made the brand great, the "talent" so to speak, was lost. What's worse, instead of engineering, Cadillac, for decades, had relied on what the brand once meant; how else to explain the horrible "Best of All it's A Cadillac" advertising shtick of the 1980's. Not unlike a "talent" who believes in their talent lies elsewhere from where it actually is.

Frieze Shutters - Back to the Drawing Board.

Congratulations to my beloved, pugnacious, over confident younger son who scored his driving permit last weekend. No sooner did he get his permit that he nearly killed himself and his mother whilst out "driving" in nothing less than my precious ride. Thankfully, nothing serious happened but his confidence was battered a bit when he found himself driving on the wrong side of the road with traffic bearing down on him and his mother. All this happening in less than two shakes of a lamb's tale.

 

Same kind of experience I had last weekend when, armed with a hefty birthday gift card from the mother in law, I finally bought a scroll saw. The only thing stopping me from making painfully exquisite wall art and furniture was my imagination. Oh, so I thought.

 

 

To review, I want to make Yankee Stadium Frieze Shutters for our man cave. The shutters, they're actually panels, themselves came out pretty good. I finally finished them to such a point that I could test them for fit and their light blocking effectiveness. They leak a little light but I think that an easy fix with a little Styrofoam or other dense material, perhaps cloth, that will blot out any light getting through. This photo actually makes them look less effective than they are. You have to have seen how much light blasts through these windows during the day to see how much darker, cozier and movie theater like the space is now with the shutters/panels in place. Save for some trimming on the one on the left and paint touch ups, these are good to go. Now, we fabricate the Frieze. To the Bat Poles. Yeah.

 

 

To start, I took the above image of the 1976 - 2008 Yankee Stadium Frieze and blew it up on my son's computer monitor. At 5 1/2 X 11, it would be of ample size although I would've liked it to be a tad larger. The stock I bought is roughly 5 1/2 X 11 so I was stuck with that size. Swimming in a sea of blue, it would look great. And it would, if I was confident I can do it. The scroll and its demons had somewhat different plants.
 

 

Making a template out of copy paper? Not a good idea. Even packing paper is a better material for a template than this stuff. It's way too flimsy. I guess my success with the Jets logo using packing paper as a template gave me a false sense of confidence that I could do this using just plain old paper. Fail.

 

Second problem was transferring the itty, bitty outline of the Frieze onto the stock. Even though it's just paper, packing paper, which, again, I used to make the Jets logo, is much heavier than regular paper and lends itself to stenciling much better.
 

I also plan on making the Frieze larger than 5 1/2 X 11. I learned quickly that it's way too small for a first time scroll sawer like myself. Scroller?  Once again, my ambition is greater than my ability. Back to the drawing board.