Getting old..and relativity? .

[zipgun]

On another forum, i've been following a restoration of a Vauxhall Nova . Gaping holes everywhere..rotten Anyway the resto concluded this week..the car has its plates refited ,and it is 1990 GTE model on a G . Which surprised me somewhat, because it's not that old....Well TO ME IT ISN'T !
So i posted on the thread , "What a little rotter for 1990 !" and the reply was "it's 22 years old what do you expect ? "
Which got me thinking...I'm 50 ,(don't feel that old, but i am ) and in 1974 ,i was about 13 ,my Dad had a brand new Austin 1800..and also "as a project " bought a Triumph Renown 1952 , and it looked ANCIENT to me at the time .And in 1974 the Triumph would already have been considered a "classic car" so.... 24 years difference . O.K. ?
Now, we move on a few years....I've got a 1982 Fiesta MK1 "as a project " and thats 30 years old now, but it doesn't look much different to a "modern car "..well , TO ME , IT DOESN'T ! And i wouldn't consider it yet ,as a "classic car "..
So ,all you youngsters...does a MK1 Fiesta look "ancient" on todays roads ? Does even a 24 year old car look ancient ?

[JPB]

Yes, yes and yes! My first road legal car was a 1963 A40 Farina saloon, it was 19 years old at the time yet I took it to shows where there were some similar cars that were as new as 1971 in the case of the Farina Oxfords, some of which were in taxi service until the late '90s but that's a whole other thread.

Forward to 2012, I'm 47, my favourite trend is the increasing quantity of 1980s Japanese cars that are starting to appear at the shows but even the 30 year old ones feel and drive much more like modern cars than those 20 and fewer years old did back in 1982/83/84 etc.
The difference is that fewer show organisers now accept that - for example - the spotless 1985 Nissan Sunny my mate has just bought should be displayed so it's harder to get it in than it was back then to enter ADO16s, ADO17s, minis (still in production then, yet already earlier MK3 minis were becoming commonplace at shows), A40s, Minors (still in use as schooling cars by at least three local driving instructors in 1983) and the earlier Japanese cars that would have been the same age as my A40 and its peers, yet just weren't wanted on the displays.

You'd think that the reverse would be true as cars change more frequently now with an extra Ncap star every few years, more gadgets and more built-in expensive electronic crap that nobody wants or needs, (well apart from the wireless in my modern motor that has a USB in the glove hole, it's much easier to carry around 2000 tunes on a dongle than just 100 on Compact Cassette).

Brilliant opener for a thread chief, I reckon that the younger the members offering up the replies, the less idea they'll have of precisely what we "late youth" types are on about. Man, how much would I love to be wrong there though but.

[zipgun]

Thank goodness i'm not alone in my thoughts... and another thing ..Dad would have only paid £25 for the Triumph ,that would have been the going rate for an old car.. I paid £600 for a poxy old Ford Fiesta !! How does that compare ?

[suffolkpete]

My perception is that vehicle development evolved very quickly in the post-war years. If you go back to say 1960, you could buy a Triumph Herald or a Farina or a Minx, then go back 25 years and see what was on offer in 1935, a different world entirely. In the last 25 years, things have slowed down, the basic technology hasn't changed much, it's just been surrounded by electronics in the interest of efficiency. The oily bits of your 30 year old Fiesta aren't much different from the latest model. The other thing that's changed is that cars last a lot longer. In my formative motoring years, the average life of a car was less than ten years, with rust being the main killer, and your new Farina would probably have needed new sills by the time it was four years old. These days, I see still-shiny 20 year old cars on the scrap lorry, and they are probably only there because of some mechanical or electronic failure, with low second-hand prices and high garage charges rendering repair uneconomic.

[tractorman]

I may be the wrong bloke to ask - being in my late 50's! However, I wonder if there's the danger of going into the "What's a classic" argument again!

IMHO, if people think the BMW Mini is a classic and can enter shows, there is something wrong somewhere! However, as a tractor freak, I reckon the tractor fraternities' use of the term (any tractor over 20 is a classic) is fair and, as such, be it a '92 Rover "Metro" (that I hate) or a fifties Aston, they are classic. However, with modern paints and rustproofing, twenty year old cars (even Metros) are often in much better condition than the ten year old cars I looked at in 1970 (when I started driving).

Thinking back over the years, the first car I remember was a very early MM Minor convertible. It was sold when I was about five or six (about 1958/9), so can't have lasted more than ten years - the next owner couldn't understand why we sold it until the undersealed felt fell off from under the floor! We had two more Minors (Travellers) up to '69, both died at about seven years old (we lived on the Solway Plain, where the tide often comes over the rod). Then a "banger" - an 8yo Herald that was rotten within a couple of years - it cost £150 and was used for p/x for the £200 62 FB Victor - which was probably the only rust free car we sold (in 72)!!

In those days, "Classics" were almost unheard of - a MkII Consul was an old banger and I remember seeing a MO Oxford (about 1954) in 1968 and being amazed that such an old car could pull a caravan! People hardly respected pre-war cars and I was offered a 50's Ford Pop for a tenner in the same year! I didn't buy that one as a 61 100E Pop came up for £18.00 and it was a runner with little rust and an MOT!

As suggested, with age, what some see as a classic, I see as an old car! While tractors are automatically classics at twenty years old, I reckon cars should be too. That is a logical idea though: as I get older, I still (naturally) think of 50s and 60's cars as classics and cars of my early driving years as "bangers" - or, more kindly, "old cars"! As paint technology and rust prevention have improved, "old bangers" are less obvious - a neighbour has just swapped his 92 Merc for a 2005 Jag and neither look very old - even if the lacquer has flaked off the Merc in the last couple of years! Ten year old cars no longer look like piles of rust - a neighbour just bought a 2001 Vectra that, apart from a scuff on the front bumper, could pass as a two or three year old version. However, I appreciate that a younger person would notice a five year old car as an "Old Model" - or banger, and a twenty year old car as a classic!

Thus, while someone of my age might think of a Mk2 Golf as a fairly new car - even if it is now approaching thirty years since the first Mk2 was made. It's not ignorance or stupidity - it's old age and human nature! Believe it or not, I often see "W" and "X" prefixed cars and think that they are quite new and almost think that they are newer than my 2002 Golf!

[suffolkpete]

In the words of the chairman of our local club "If it's got wheels and somebody cherishes it, then it's a classic"

[Luxobarge]

However, I wonder if there's the danger of going into the "What's a classic" argument again!

Yeah, and if it does, we'll be locking or deleting it.....

For the benefot of newer members, there's a sort of unspoken rule that the "what is a classic" topic is taboo. The reason is that there are as many widly differing views as there are enthusiasts, and an answer satisfactory to everyone can never be reached. Therefore, every time this subject comes up, it ends is lots of flying handbags and dummies being spat, with folk insulting other members both personally and against the cars they drive. This is all totally pointless and in nobody's interest, so we'd rather avoid the topic and all just talk about whatever "old" cars we like.

Nevertheless the OP does raise an interesting point about the perception of what is "old" being different accoring to one's age, so let's just discuss that eh?

Personally, as a 53 year-old I agree with him - as far as I'm concerned it's not properly "old" unless it has running boards, but I'm happy to accept that this isn't the case for others.

Cheers!

[OneCarefulOwner]

My Lexus had its 21st birthday last month & scuffs aside, it's still factory fresh; the Allegros are all in different states of (de)composition, even the best one has some spots of rust on it but they're tiny - not bad considering they vary from 30 to 38 years old!

Then I follow 5X-plated cars into work & see bits hanging off them & gaps in panels that were never meant to have gaps in... I don't know if they really do make them to fail nowadays, but it sure looks that way!

[arceye]

Hmmmm, "old" and "classic" could be interchangeable words..

Think I'll find me tin hat and watch from the sidelines

Just got to check how the boys getting on with that new fangled '78 mini first though

[zipgun]

Oooh didn't know it's taboo , what is what isn't All cars are great to me. Poor old Renown went for scrap not long ago ..I asked a few owners if they wanted any bits off it for free and they all said no thanks Now it's mentioned though , maybe it is " Running boards" make them look ancient .. hadn't thought of that ! Feel free to delete i won't take offence