    Despite recession-defying sales at the recent vintage car auctions in Pebble Beach and Monterey, Calif., all is not bright as polished chrome in the collector car world.
Some of the most experienced and expert leaders of the collector car world gathered during the Concours d'Elegance earlier this month to confront potential troubles on the horizon for those who love and want to continue driving automobiles built 25 or more years ago.
From environmental regulations to aging enthusiasts, industry leaders say they need to mobilize and educate the public as well as politicians about the value of preserving historical automobiles. They also want to be prepared for changes in society and public opinion growing more hostile to internal combustion engines that have moved the overwhelming majorities of automobiles for the last century.
Collecting vintage and historical cars, even those not widely acknowledged as significant, is at its heart a hobby that allows enthusiasts to form relationships with other people, Wayne Carini, car restorer and host of Discovery HD's Chasing Classic Cars.
"It's something that draws people together, and we have to protect that,'' Carini says.
He and others identified three main worries:
- Environmental regulations. While most collector cars are able to meet existing emissions and fuel requirements, increasingly strict regulations may make that more difficult in the future.
- Disappearing infrastructure. As automobiles have grown more complex and dependent on computers and electronics in the past two decades, the number of technicians familiar with and capable of working on older mechanical equipment is shrinking.
- Aging demographics. As one can see at most any collector car show, there is a lot of gray and white hair in the crowds. Some worry that young people who grow up with computers and social networking playing a larger part in their lives than cars did for their parents will not be drawn to the hobby as they grow older and wealthier.
The symposium was organized by Hagerty Insurance, a Michigan-based company that focuses on insuring collector vehicles.
McKeel Hagerty, son of the founders and one of the principals of the company, said he had taken steps to form an unrelated membership organization, the Historic Vehicle Association, intended to monitor threats to the hobby and organize people to press for protections that will keep historic vehicles on the road. It is the North American affiliate of a similar European organization known by its initials, FIVA (Federation Internationale des Vehicules Anciens).
Corky Coker, CEO of Coker Tire, a Tennessee company that supplies vintage-spec tires to the antique car market, says he was frightened by the potential of the Obama administration's "cash-for-clunkers" program that paid people to crush older cars and replace them with newer ones. While the program was limited to a narrow period of dates of manufacture, he says it could easily have been written in such a way as to lead to the demise of cars that have the potential to be collectible in the future.
Coker says the best thing for vintage car enthusiasts to do is show off their cars and try to interest others in them -- or at least point out how little harm is done to the air or environment by a small number of older cars still on the road.
"One thing we need to do is drive our dad-gum cars,'' Coker said.
Carini says the dwindling number of enthusiasts and the lack of interest by their children is his biggest worry. "That's a huge concern,'' he said, noting that in the future the market could be flooded with more collectible cars than there are collectors with the means and desire to buy and maintain them.
Michael Kunz, director of the Mercedes-Benz Classic Center in Irvine, Calif., which refurbishes older models of that brand, said keeping technicians who are able to work on all cars is a challenge for all dealerships. He noted that many of the most highly trained new technicians aren't familiar with points, the key electrical component of all cars until the advent of electronic ignitions.
There are other worries, too, including divisions within the collector car world. Those were clearly on display at Concours earlier this month, where Ferraris, Duesenbergs, Packards and other cars valued as high as $5 million or even more were on display at Pebble, while other venues touted far more affordable and modest -- but no less loved -- cars, from '50s Cadillacs to '70s Porsches and '30s hot-rod deuces.
The people sipping champagne around the 18th green at Pebble Beach may not give a hang for a Triumph TR-4 or a Corvair, but all groups need to recognize they have a stake in maintaining public support for the vintage car hobby so they can continue to get high-performance fuel and access to roadways.
Hagerty said collectors should be aware of some statistics so they can counter critics. He said the collector car universe in the United States is no more than 3 million to 4 million vehicles, and very few of them are actually driven. He said just three-quarters of 1% of all cars on the road in the country are older than 25 years, and the number of miles they are driven in relation to all auto miles in the U.S. is less than half of 1 percentage point.
-- William M. Welch/Drive On |
