Monty-4 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:24 pm
Well there is one perspective! As a young-ish (and vegetarian) Morris owner who has undertaken significant restoration work on my own car and helped friends with others, funneling hundreds of pounds to ESM and BullMotif, and driven my Minor for tens of thousands of miles, I'll try not to take offense.
The speed at which electric and driverless cars are being adopted is overstated. We have some time yet, and I look forward to converting a Minor to electric power in the future. Perhaps ESM will sell me the parts - we could certainly do with an off the shelf bellhousing to adapt electric motors to our gearboxes!
I can see why Jagnut is pessimistic about the future and as one a little older, I can say that I am glad I am not twenty years younger. I also take fully what he says about risk assessment culture, to which I would add flow charts and jobsworths. However, whilst I believe that a lot of youngsters are muppets, I believe the same of their parents and grandparents!! Classic car owners are a minority and this is what sets us apart and when I see a Minor owner, I think “There’s someone with something more than sawdust between their ears”. I can think of many, my age, who wouldn’t be seen dead in a Minor, which they would perceive as an old banger (Because when they had an old car, it was a banger…..just as many people, who don’t cycle, assume that bikes can only do 10mph because that’s all they can make on do), that would damage their street cred and make their tiresome friends assume them to have fallen on hard times. As a minority, we can make convenient scapegoats, for some politicians to blame for traffic pollution and in this, the late Charles Ware’s work on the durable car concept is useful ammunition, to fight unfounded assumptions with fact.
As a young driver, I wanted an MGB or Midget (Which I still have) and as a child, I loved to be taken to see Vintage Sports Car Club events (See attached photo taken at one). Ironically my Traveller is now as old as many of the VSCC cars were in those days. Amongst my peers, I was a misfit in that respect, most of them drooling over Ford Capris and the like. I can’t see modern cars ever being preserved as classics but even if any are, there won’t be many (A lower proportion than pre 1980s cars). Most Morris Minors have been scrapped too, so you don’t need that many people (Relatively speaking) to be interested to keep classic cars going. So long as we have the odd one or two, like Monty-4, that’s good. I see them as classic car enthusiasts, whatever their age.
As to electric cars, the assumption seems to be that if you remove the exhaust, there is no pollution. The problem is that too many people want to move too far, too often and I think electric cars are a kind of placebo, to make people feel that it’s OK to go on like this. Perhaps it’s putting off the evil day, when something (Perhaps personal carbon rations) will have to be brought in. I think fuel supply could one day be our Achilles Heel but whilst there are still piston engined aircraft, there will still be a demand for avgas (See my post in the petrol thread), which a sensible government could allow us to use legally.
