Steven Newell wrote:
> While Kai comes with a finer pedigree than me (as I have only Chevettes
> and other small hatchbacks in my blood) <g> I have to respectfully
> disagree. Little British cars have a long tradition as college or high
school
> transportation, and past and current student owners often manage to keep
> their cars on the road on a shoe-string budget -- better to spend their
> dollars on books and beer I suppose. Frankly, a TR4 or Spitfire is still a
> great, cheap student car -- and a good starter car for a young person with
> mechanical inclination. How many list members bought their first Triumph
> as a used car for college? More than a few, and why shouldn't today's
> students have the same chance?
When is the last time you saw an Triumph or MG or anything remotely related
on a university campus, in a student parking lot? Well, Steven since I know
you went to PSU (main), I can tell you that there was an MGB in the parking
lot near Pollock halls this past April... but that is one student out or the
40,000 or so at the main campus. In Ithaca? Never saw an LBC driven by a
student while I was at Cornell, or on the IC campus... roughly 33,000
students between the two campuses in Ithaca. As for me? Well mom was aware
of the proximaty of Watkins Glen, and I was barred from taking the TR6 when
I went away to school.
I don't hold today's youth in very high regard at all, and I suppose I'm
making that very obvious. While there are surely exceptions to my
arguments, I don't see young classic car owners being helpful gaurdians of
the marque. Enthusiasm is only one character trait needed to keep up with
these cars, and when the enthusiasm is gone the car will languish.
To answer another lister earlier, I recieved my MGB when I was 14... the TR6
a few days after my 17th birthday. Along the way, seeing numerous butchered
LBCs and knowing the kids who owned them and also through working at an LBC
parts supplier in past summers dealing with kids fixing their cars the wrong
way and in general buying cars on the cheap, and doing repairs on the cheap.
I just cringe and think how can that be preserving a car that is already 30
years old, which is all ready rotting away only to be accelerated to death
through poor maintenance, repair and use. After all everyone is arguing
about preservation of the cars... There are already a lot of people who
shouldn't own these cars because of reasons already stated, I just don't see
how that is going to get any better by inviting relatively unknowledgable,
potentionally unenthusiastic (in time), young owners into the fray.
Unfortunately as of this writing, I will have to withdraw from further
arguments; there was a passing in the family last night and I'll be inactive
on the list for the next week.
Kai
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