Remember.... Same Team.
ccasion14:
I believe it. And the guys I hang with believe it also.
I think my prospective comes from being a restorer for eight years. Sure, I made money off the antiques, but the passion which drove me to do my best wasn't based on money, it was based on the owners' own passion about the vehicle. A lot of what I restored wasn't based on the monetary value of the vehicle, anyway. What drove the owners was usually sentimentality. "My dad bought this car." "I've owned this car since it was new." "My late husband kept this car stored all these years, hoping to do something with it." When you have a car owner standing in front of you relating stories of his or her youth, or how much a certain family member meant, it's hard not to get involved with the history of the car. Making dreams come true, giving 'em back a piece of the past. Hell, even with Jamison's J-body build it's not about the money that it will take to make it a car again, it's about the memories he'll have and the experiences he'll gain. He'll be talking to his grandkids one day, telling stories about how he and his Uncle Robert built that car. You can't buy that.
While a '69 Camaro may not be my thing - I'll usually walk past 'em at the shows to seek out the Mopars - I can appreciate the work that went into it. Even the check writers rides. Unless the car is a survivor, someone along the line put some work into the car to make it what it is. It's that work that I can appreciate.
It was disappointing to say the least to have folks make fun of others' rides. When we were getting the crap over on FABO for being there, I argued on behalf of the guys who were putting some serious work into his ride to make it what it was. To dismiss the work and sense of pride one has for simply not having an A-body was a reality check. Where I come from Mopar guys help each other. An LA is an LA, an RB is an RB. A bolt is a bolt, a weld is a weld. Rather it's a Hemi powered E- or a slant powered J- they all start with the same nuts and bolts, they all paint the same.
There were non F-body owners coming to our defense. (The sub-forum didn't "include" M's of J's, officially.) These were the guys who hold to same idea we're discussing here. The same guys who see a Mopar and think it's cool.
I generally ignore the people who say "nothing good was coming out of Mopar after 1972." That statement is full of ignorance. Our F/M and J's have literally billions of real world mileage on 'em and proven themselves time and time again in fleet usage in terms of durability and longevity. The L'il Red smoking the Vettes of the day. 440 powered Coronet and Fury sedans from the late '70s being the fastest sedans on the planet in the day. The turbo cars of the '80's beating on the V8's coming from the other two of the Big Three. No, the person who says that isn't a Mopar fan, he's a fan of
his Mopar and that's it. If Chevy had made his car, he'd profess to be a Chevy fan, but only a fan of
his Chevy.
Every car has as story to tell. Some of us want to listen to that story, want to understand that story. Some folks just don't know how to listen or don't care to learn how.
