image source: learnedalongthewayblog
In reality, there is really no conflict between “Real Car Guys” and “Tourists”.
One of my favorite blog sites has been “My Jaguar Experience”, which presented a dichotomy of this nature. The story was the experience of trying to daily drive a Series Three Jaguar XJ6. It covered the never-ending series of little problems that resulted in a major breakdown that ended the ownership experience in an unhappy end.
The author placed a lot of blame on himself, which I felt was pretty unfair and unnecessary. He was not a hands-on enthusiast and was not the kind of person who would diagnose a problem and perform the repair himself. He had never made any claims to the contrary.
He broke down the enthusiast community into two camps. The “Real Car Guys” and the “Tourists.”
The real car guy’s motto is: “We can do it!”
That’s the attitude! Image from the web.
The real car guys are those that have quite a bite of mechanical knowledge and experience, and will perform much of their cars needed maintenance and repairs. They also possess the necessary tools and equipment. The real guys also have the proper attitude, which is something like the following: “Any older mechanical device will eventually wear and need repair. This is no big thing. Identify the problem, secure the needed parts, and just fix it. When there are no apparent problems, just keep your eye on probable avenues of future repair.”
When a problem exceeds their level of skill or ability, then they just might perform part of the repair. Remove the transmission and take just that, to a repair specialist, for example. This alone will result in substantial savings.
“If you’re going to be a tourist, be a rich one!” Thurston Howell III image from web.
Tourists, on the other hand, are just visiting the territory you might say. They might mingle with the natives, assume some mannerisms in speech and dress. You would never mistake them for the real thing. So in the automotive hobby, they might even be described as “posers.”
They might have an actual interest or even a preference for vintage or classic cars. They can be quite knowledgeable and well-versed in the enthusiast lingo. Usually, they are not “hands-on” guys. They usually lack the skills or aptitude to turn wrenches on their own machines. Often they will say that they are “all thumbs” or “mechanically challenged” or use some other self-deprecating phrase.
I propose that what most of them lack is the real need to work on their own stuff. The tourist usually has more resources available than the grassroots gearhead. They can easily afford to pay for a shop to handle their repair work, or they choose to save up and budget funds for the inevitable repairs.
If they are not really affluent then they might have to restrict their hobby to a single vintage car. It becomes the focus of their carefully planned expenditures.
On the other hand, if they are really affluent, then they just buy the best example out there. Low mileage, well-preserved, or restored vehicles. They are the ones that pay top dollar for the best cars.
“…the gearhead will often brag about how much work they are putting into their cars.”
Compare that to the typical “real car guy,” sometimes referred to as the “gearhead.” He often acquires a stable of worn and broken down cars with the hope of someday fixing them up. He will often pile way too much on his plate. Oftentimes this gearhead is of the bucks down variety. As a consequence of this, many, if not most, of his projects will never see completion. He might keep several vehicles in service as runners or daily drivers. While a rich guy can boast about how much his project is costing him, the gearhead will often brag about how much work they are putting into their cars.
The low-bucks gearhead knows that the only way that he can own and enjoy “interesting” cars is to buy them in a “challenged” state. The kind that are advertised as projects that need a lot of TLC. As if love alone could ever fix up anything mechanical!
Having a stable of project vehicles reduces the amount of cash available to spend on any specific car. This will make anyone, even someone of average means, behave somewhat like a bucks-down guy. This provides plenty of incentive to do it yourself.
The fact that a “tourist” occasionally finds himself over his head in a certain car does not mean that he is a poser. Unless you are like old Thurston Howell III, where cost is never a consideration, everyone runs into their financial limits. People in both camps have run into that situation.
Most “normal” people have no real interest in buying, maintaining, using, or preserving a vintage car. They may murmur about some car from their high school days. Or wax nostalgic about their buddy’s ’57 Chevy or ’65 Mustang when they see one on the street. But their reality is about having a vehicle that takes all the risk and pain out of daily transportation. Who can blame them? We all have lives to lead. A brand new car, or at least the newest that they can afford, makes the most sense.
The old car enthusiast is an entirely different animal. For some reason, not only does he have an interest in vintage cars, he even wants to own one! Even worse, he actually wants to drive it, sometimes every day! Most older car cars are cheaper than a new model. Most of us low buck enthusiasts depend on massive depreciation to bring desirable cars down to our financial level.
So is there really a conflict (chasm?) between the “tourist” and the “real car guy”? I don’t think so. For one thing, there is actually quite a bit of crossover that takes place between the camps. Many car guys cross over into the tourist camp when conditions change or improve. Old age, physical limitations, and more disposable cash combine to limit the car guys’ direct involvement in the day-to-day wrench turning.
On the other hand, many tourists become quite familiar with their cars and will start to stick a hand under the hood once in a while. Even if they don’t start tearing down their motors, they can become adept at minor repairs; like tune ups, and changing belts and hoses. Little things like changing bulbs and chasing down minor electrical gremlins can make it easier to keep an older car on the road.
Besides, many tourists actually provide the paycheck for a lot of real car guys. A lot of real car guys are in the business of providing services to the tourists. Like the artist/patron relationship, some of the best and most creative builders and restorers rely on that blank check provided by the wealthy patron. It keeps them in business.
So what do I mean when I use the word “poser?”
I used to wear a gold chain, but it was much thinner. image from the web.
Or as they are sometimes referred to as, “gold chainers.” A much harsher term of judgment.
I don’t mean the guy who just recently developed an interest in older cars. Lots of guys couldn’t afford the money or time for a hobby car when they were in the middle of career and family responsibilities. It had been an interest that they had only been able to indulge as they got older.
And it’s not just because the owner is affluent, and can afford to have the work done properly by a shop. Or they can buy those best examples. I think that every enthusiast would choose to buy the best if they could afford it.
I would only refer to a person as a poser if they claimed that they performed the work on a car as something that they did, when they didn’t. Or if they didn’t bother to learn anything about the car that they had built for them.
The other case is when the focus of the car is not on the car itself but on the amount of money spent on it. And they make a point of constantly mentioning the cost of things in an obvious attempt to impress the onlooker.
Like many things in life, it’s not an either/or proposition. The tourist and the real car guy, and even the poser, are all in the same camp. They are all interested in vintage cars, as opposed to the greater car-consuming culture. They are like two ends of a continuum or just facets of the same gemstone. We have much more in common than the differences that separate us.
I think that wherever we currently fall on the continuum, we all got involved with old cars just to have a little fun. As long as the hobby is still primarily fun, we should just enjoy it, and cut our fellow enthusiasts, as well as ourselves, quite a bit of slack.
Interesting proposition. I suppose I’m in the “real car guy” camp mostly by accident. I’ve always loved older cars so when it came time to stretch my razor thin budget to try and buy a car, I figured a classic car with good parts support would just about pencil out in the end. It’s still working fine a year and a half later, though I’ve had my fair share of challenging DIY repairs.
I specifically am not in it to spend time working on it and money upgrading it, though learning new skills was a consideration. It was about the fun and novelty of daily driving a 39 year old car. So while I have done everything DIY, it was about driving, not wrenching.
Our focus should be the car, preserving it for the next owner and the one after that.
Obviously do not drive it in the salt.
Use conventional oil.
If it’s a fast car, enjoy that.
That said, there’s always more money.
There’s not always more time.
Looking back at the hours wasted keeping a useless rich man’s toy running will not be pleasant.
Put me in the tourist camp then, but then again, my “old” car is really not all that vintage, yet. She’ll finally be 20 years old and eligible for “Historic Tags” in 2027.
While I get much satisfaction in the little bit of wrenching I can do, I am extremely limited in my abilities, and more than freely admit this. As I get older, some of the things I used to do, I take a ‘leave it to the professionals” attitude.
Since I can only afford one hobby car, I’ve chosen to have a car I’ve always had, since just about new (1127 miles at delivery), and keep THAT one. Doing that, there are fewer surprises as I know the old girl’s entire maintenance history.
But I truly admire you “Real Car Guys” and love to read your stories here. Jose, Aaron65, David Saunders, DougD, VinceC, and many others here who can really wrench amaze me. Keep up the good work!
Interesting, I guess I’m a “real car guy” but sometimes I’d rather not be. Somehow I am compelled to do these things, old machinery and laborious tasks call to me and I have a hard time refusing. I was talking to a young lady at work about cars and she said “I should really fix my own can, I am a mechanical engineer after all” but I told her “Yeah, but you have to enjoy the work, and have the tools, space and time. If you don’t have all those things don’t do it.”
As I age I farm out difficult or heavy tasks to the professionals, but finding someone to work on old stuff is an increasing challenge.
I don’t really like the word “real” used in this context. Reminds me of “real men” do this or that, which I think is BS. Remember Pinocchio was obsessed with becoming “a real boy” because he knew he wasn’t.
I don’t really understand the meaning of the distinction made.
A bit as if one wanted to make the classification as a “foodie” dependent on whether someone swings the wooden spoon themselves or “just” goes to the restaurant.
All the more irritating as the existence of smooth transitions is acknowledged in the article itself.
I think that your last paragraph, where you state that there’s a continuum between the two categories you create, is really spot on. As I’ve gotten older, I realize that pretty much everything in human experience is on a spectrum or continuum. Where one or one thing falls on its spectrum is what makes one thing different from another. And difference – as maddening as it can sometimes feel – is a fact of life. That’s my take at least.
You raise a number of good points as well about why some car-afficionados (I’ll use that term to cover both the “car guys” and the “tourists” end of the spectrum) wind up at different places on the continuum. I think that there IS something to whether one’s brain is wired in such a way to understand basic mechanical systems (really, simple machines…you don’t know how many folks simply cannot really grasp how a pulley or inclined plane works) work. And whether one has that ability/wiring is a gateway to how far they might get from the car guy to tourist end of the spectrum. And so on and so forth.
Good food for thought here, Jose.
Oh, and I’ll just mention – in case Thurston Howell III were ever to be asking me – that if he knew just a bit more or took a bit more interest in the details about yachting (an activity he clearly enjoyed), he MIGHT have done a bit better than winding up with Gilligan and the Skipper as the operators of his three hour tour…his three hour tour…
I think I have mostly straddled the line between “car guy” and “tourist”. Is there an advanced tourist or a car guy lite? I have never had an engine or other major system apart, but I am passable at diagnosis and am not afraid to wrench on more basic stuff. Like DougD,I have done less wrenching with age. In general I hate repairing a daily driver but enjoy fixing a car kept as a plaything.
I became a ‘car guy’ out of necessity – if I wanted to go places in the already-well-used ’71 Vega Dad gave me for my first car, I had to work on it. A lot. But I also got the bug for modding, and the car eventually got a Buick 3.8l swap.
A few vehicles later, I drove a ’71 VW Campmobile (gutted the interior) for eight years, followed by a ’64 Beetle for the next six, both of which required constant maintenance and sometimes major repair work.
After starting my own business, I decided it was needful to have a vehicle I could count on to start every time, and the ’64 was succeeded by an ’00 New Beetle TDI, which moved me more into the ‘tourist’ camp, although I’ve continued to do my own maintenance and non-major repair work.
Drove the NB over twelve years, and I’ve had a string of ‘purchased new” vehicles since. Now that I’m retired, I’m finally “working” (albeit sporadically) on my two early-60’s Beetle projects. I’d call that more of a ‘hobbiest’ category…
I worked as a mechanic for more than 30 years, I’m also a farmer. I’ve always run old trucks and equipment they were cheap and could fix them. i.e. in the late ’80s my daily was a ’49 Chevy pickup which I replaced with a ’68 Chevy pickup, moved up 20 years but still 20 years behind the times. We pulled a stock trailer with a ’79 K10 until 5 years ago when it started to get unreliable. Fixing it was not the issue, being broke down on a hot July day with a finished steer was. So I bought a leftover ’18 RAM 2500, strong truck pulls/ carries anything you can put on, but I hate all the bells and whistles, poor visibility, crappy HVAC and if anything happens It’s dead in the water. I miss the K10 and cuolda/shoulda rebuilt it front to back but that was more time than I could spare. For the 3K we put on the RAM in a year it will finish us out (I’m 68) and the new ones only get worse. I don’t know if driving a new truck that I let someone else change oil on changes my status but I’m still a Getter’ Done gearhead 99.9% of the rest of the time.