Sure it does, I saw an old couple in a pristine original (unrestored) Chrysler, a moth or so ago at the local Target, I stopped him to ask what year, 1962. A few moths ago I saw a beautifully restored 1967 Rambler American convertible at the nursery. Old cars are all over California.
There are several 50’s and 60’s cars around here, apparently being used as occasional drivers. I saw a 51 Ford business coupe last thursday. Looked stock, except for the plumb purple paint. I see an old car about once or twice a month, mot are restored, but not all. I have a 51 Jeep, but I haven’t driven it for several years.
Agreed. There’s a couple down the street from me who are in their 60s and are still driving a 1968 Ford. They keep it in their garage when they’re home. It’s the only car that they’ve ever had (at least in my lifetime).
As every schoolboy knows, Henry initially offered his wares in several colors. But the bean counters found certain colors required more time to dry in the paint booth, and were more expensive. Black dried the quickest, and in efforts to offer the lowest price possible “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black” became the norm.
Timmy came to school crying. When the teacher asked him what was the matter he said, ‘My dog was following me to school and an old Model T came down the street and hit him, and the crank went right up his asshole!’ The teacher said, ‘You mean “rectum”.’ 'Wrecked ‘im, hell! It killed him!’
There weren’t even many Model T’s around when I was growing up during the 1930’s.
Indeed. I think that they don’t rust out, like they do in the East, means that lots of people drive them. I’ve got a ten year old Saturn which is as good as new. I doubt I’d have it for another ten, but I easily could - certainly the body would be no problem.
As for the OP, I spent much of the '70s in the midwest, then in Louisiana, and I saw model Ts but rarely - and then pretty much for events.
As for Pintos - I had a '73 Pinto, which ran just great. I kept it until 1981. It was a little shaky at the end, but I got rid of it because we had a kid and needed a station wagon. I sold it to an exterminator. That no one tailgated me was a big plus. 
I see the occasional old car around here (summertime only - anyone who drives an old car in Canadian winters is an idiot). These range from the 1920s up. In particular, there’s a late 20’s or early 30’s olive-green Chevrolet sedan that I see 3-4 times a year in my area, a local man has a 1950’s Morris sedan in his driveway, and I saw a 1950 Willys pickup in a Staples parking lot last Friday. Rare enough to comment on when I see one, but not exceedingly so. No Model Ts, though.
What do you do with the fleece when you SHEAR a car? Can it be woven into a suit like Merino wool?
The example of the “little old lady” driving a 30 year old car is pretty true here in my neck of the woods, too (southern Virginia.) One woman I know who lives not far from me is in her mid 70s and she owns a 1972 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham 4-door Hardtop link (the one she owns is even the same paint job as the one linked here.) Her husband has been dead for about 15 years, when he was alive he primarily drove his truck. She mostly drove the Chrysler to the store or Church. These days, her kids tend to take her to the grocery store so she doesn’t have to bother with carrying them all in, so the car gets very little road time today.
Last I spoke to her, it had around 50,000 miles on it (over a 35 year period.)
It’s certainly not more expensive for her to maintain it versus buying a new car. I’ve talked to her about it in the past, she says aside from regular maintenance that any car would have, she’s never had to have any major parts replaced.
She certainly doesn’t view cars as status symbols. If she heard someone thought it was trashy to drive such an old car, she’d probably scratch her head and shrug. She uses it because it’s not broke, and her feelings on the matter is, there’s not a good reason to replace it til it is.
I live near a busy intersection. Yesterday, I sat on the porch and watched the cars for twenty minutes with this thread in mind. In that time, I saw:
'74 Ford Ranger
'78 (approx.) Chevy pickup
'86 Ford Thunderbird
'85 Olds Cutlass
'68 Plymouth
None of them were restored. Also saw a couple of older Volvos (couldn’t say what year) and a couple of late 70s to early 80s Japanese cars. (I’m not good at identifying those).
That’s out of 400-500 cars passing by.
Wow, that kinda stings. I have the cash to buy whatever car I would like, I just can’t see the point. I drive about 5000 miles a year, and my 1966 Dart has no problem handling it. It’s paid for, and maintenance is very inexpensive, so being the frugal sort I just keep rolling with it. I do think this will be it’s last year, as enviroguilt is getting the best of me. As to this being trashy, I’ve always thought the “check out my new Hummer” mentality was ostentatious and embarrassing. Some enjoy flushing money down the toilet to impress with their car, some don’t. To each their own.
In Mass., cars rust quickly. The humidity is high, you get salt mist from the ocean, and salt used on the roads in winter. Visit New Mexico, or Arizona, or other places that don’t need to salt the road, and have low humidity…You’ll see 30 year old cars with origional paint and no rust. When you have an enviroment where the body doesn’t rust out, it becomes practicle to rebuild the engine a couple of times and drive the thing 3-500,000 miles.
Also, into at least the late 70s, you could get enough spare parts from JC Whitney to build a Model A from scratch. They had a lot of T-Bone parts, too, but not nearly so many. You can probably get them from somebody else, though.
Like others have said, the Model T was not really a practical car on modern streets. However, the Model A could, for a driver making short trips, be a daily driver and, because of the broad availability of parts, more practical than any of its contemporaries and even quite a few cars decades younger.
On the other hand, compared with the cars built from the 90s on, old (meaning anything built before 1990) cars are dogs. They just weren’t built to last, foreign or domestic.
Is this a bad time to admit that my first car was a '73 Chevy Vega?
As long as you keep the Dart well maintained, your enviroguilt is misplaced. Yeah, sure, your Dart pollutes more than a modern car, but given how little you drive it, it doesn’t make that much difference. Then there’s what’s going to happen when you sell the car. If you sell it to a scrapyard, it’s probably going to sit around for a number of years before being crushed (Darts are collector’s items), thus it will leak all kinds of fluids and contaminate ground water sources. If you sell it to a private individual, odds are they’re probably going to drive it as much or more than you do. They might even turn the car into a hotrod, thus causing it to spew out more pollution than it already does.
I assume that if you do sell the Dart, you’ll replace it with a used car, and not a new one. A new car purchase by you, would create more pollution than you’re currently doing, since there would be all the pollution produced when the car is built. Oh yeah, since you’re not running your Dart on leaded gas anymore, it’s producing less pollution than when it was new.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, could you elaborate? I still see a lot of Mercedes 300D’s around, that car is built like a tank and the 5cyl diesel engine is nearly indestructible. From here:
“Production of the W123 chassis ended in 1985 but in many countries as many as 75% of the cars originally registered remain on the road today 20 years later, a testament to the quality and durability of the original design. The 300D badge continued on in the W124 chassis family until 1993, but as a completely different design. The W123 is an ultra reliable automobile which routinely goes over 500,000 miles in its lifetime.”
Are you referring to body rust, obsolete technology, or what exactly? Which cars built since 1990 do you see as being built to last and why? I’m only asking because I would love to buy the mid 90s version of the Mercedes 300D.
Oh, and on preview, thanks Tuckerfan. I have safety concerns as well because of the lack of shoulder belts, but that would be easy to rectify. Maybe I’ll just see how far that old slant6 can go. (Rebuilt in 1998, 300,015 miles as of today. I should break 400,000 sometime around 2030.)
I’ll tell you right now, you can’t kill that slant 6. A buddy of mine tried. Seriously tried. He drained the oil out of the engine, fired it up and let it run. After a while, he got tired of sitting there with his foot on the gas, so he threw a brick on the pedal, and went inside the house. An hour or so later, he heard the engine cut out. Going back out to check, he discovered that it’d ran out of gas! :smack: When he poured some gas into the engine and fired it back up, it purred just as pretty as you please.
About a week ago, I saw a '59 Cadillac being driven on a West Lafayette street. Now, a car like that will always catch my eye, but what was most noticeable about this particular vehicle was that it was a beater. Cruise-ins are held fairly regularly in this area in the summer, so my hope is that the Caddy was a junkyard or barn find whose new owner was planning to restore it to something approximating this splendor.
I’m 47 years old, and know someone about my age who uses an aqua 1965 Ford as her daily driver. I occasionally see a certain green 1952 DeSoto tooling around town, as well as a 1964 Fury (even the same color as the one in the link), a red 1950 Mercury, a couple of circa 1960 Corvairs, an early-'60’s Chevrolet Greenbrier, and a bunch of original-run VW Beetles.
Among the cars I’ve seen in store parking lots (apparently being used for errand-running, at least on that particular day) were a 1960 El Camino, a Buick much like this one, and an Indiana-manufactured Auburn. A few years ago, I spent a bit of time on the campus of IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis), and saw a forest green 1958 Chevrolet parked in a student/faculty lot on each of two consecutive days, and in a different spot each time. Obviously that auto was no trailer queen!
I could keep going (I’ve thought of other local classics as I’ve been typing), but you should realize by now that it’s not only the warm, dry states which are home to some roadworthy older vehicles. Of course, it is rare to see any of these older beauties during the Indiana winters…
Older pickup trucks sort of slip under the radar. Outward appearances have changed - but a 40 year old pickup doesn’t look that out of place. But in 1965 a 40 year old pickup truck would have looked like something out the Beverly Hillbillies.