Re: Re: November/December

Going back to Tripyrenees first points, in terms of getting more and younger people interested, there are a lot of problems with getting people into most older classics, not least of which is that of cost. As a trend, the classic car movement now definitely seems to be drifting more into cars of the seventies and eighties. I saw this at the NEC the other day and also noted when we were manning the club stand in Manchester in September, that the number of pre and immediately post war cars on show is undoubtedly dwindling. I am sure that the root causes are cost,and perceived (economic) availability of spares and that a lot of expensively restored older cars are spending less and less regular time on the road. It is a shame that they are disappearing in terms of their show presence, but we should at least be thankful ( and not that surprised) that they are being replaced by the Capris and Cortinas of our(my) youth, and that the Classic Car world is still moving forwards, even if the emphasis on what constitutes a Classic is changing.
I think that it is inevitable that many Classic owners will be older. It would be interesting to know what the current age profiles of club members is, but I am willing to guess that many of us are at least in our early sixties, and that is as much as anything to do with the fact that it is, for most of us, only our later years that provide sufficient spare time and money to indulge such an interest. A longer term problem with this, in my view, is now going to be that of the current trend with regard to occupational pensions of one kind or another. Even decent public sector deals are starting to get rather scarce and I fear that inevitably there will be much less money about amongst the retired classes, who historically have been those with the time and money to run and restore classics. This is coupled with a definite fall off in the number of individuals who have themselves maintained an old technology car ‘hands on’ and hence have the experience to do their own repairs and maintenance.