Very accomplished! - well done. On the subject of teenagers in old Lancias, here's my son Theo at the helm:
He's a lucky lad. It's good to try and get the olio into young veins, I think.
I was talking to Martin Cliffe of Omicron this morning, who ventured the thought that there is likely to be much less interest in old cars / steam engines etc. in 20 or 30 years’ time than today.
This is based on Martin’s observations that the events he goes to (for enthusiasts for these nice old things) are full of grey hair and also that young people are generally interested in video games not oily mechanisms.
Based on the so-called '30 year rule' (my paraphrase of which is that middle-aged men who've accumulated a little money spend some of it on the things they lusted after as teens) we should be in a boom in demand for cars of the 70s and 80s... but that doesn't seems to exactly be the case, and in fact cars of the 50s and 60s seem to be very much in vogue at the moment.
It strikes me that this might be something to do with;
1. the better intrinsic quality of the machines of the earlier time (there's little doubt that the 70s was a nadir for construction quality), and
2. the greater aesthetic merit of the earlier era (very, very subjective I know), but perhaps most of all
3. the older cars are more 'different' compared to today's machines. Why use them otherwise?
If this 3rd point is the most important one, then it helps explain why pre-war (both wars, come to that) machines continue to enjoy a very healthy scene (specialists, events, values etc.). Is the 30-year rule becoming less of a factor?
So perhaps the old car thing will hold up, always supposing we’re still allowed to drive them. Talking of which, does anyone here think that the scrapping of the MoT for pre-’60 cars (announced yesterday, active from 18th November) might be the foreshock for legal controls on their usage?
Keith Martin (Sports Car Market) wrote an editorial a few years back about this subject and made the very good point that people are allowed to keep horses, which are an interesting eco-comparison to an old car (they both use energy, have emissions), the car’s major advantage being that it isn’t using energy when it’s not in use. Try putting your horse on blocks for the winter. KM suggested that old cars might end up like horses – an outmoded means of transport that enthusiasts keep for their leisure and pleasure. Makes sense to me.
