Old cars

[panamericano]

A bit out of an article by Miles Collier.  The article is about a drive in his 1914 RR.  This goes to the point for some of us semi luddites.  

 

As the old adage goes, “they don’t make them like they used to,” and they don’t operate the way they used to either. What’s in play here is the concept of mastery. Mastery is one of the seven pathways by which we engage with historical automobiles. The other six are: nostalgia, aesthetics, history, technology, competition, and fellowship.  Mastery is the attraction of interacting with the automobile as active, vibrant, and working matter. Expert operation, tuning, maintenance, and just the sheer pleasure of driving are all aspects of mastery. Starting a pre-war Rolls-Royce on the crank from cold is a practical example.

Mastery is the ability to care for that automobile through correct praxis, the necessary strategies and actions to prepare, use, and maintain a specific automobile in all of its idiosyncratic technical complexity. It is this ability to care for that artifact in this physical way that creates deep understanding of the mechanical confection that is any given automobile. Mastery is a way to interact with the automobile as a dynamic archive of obsolete practices and skills. And, ultimately, it is a way to connect to the known and unknown geniuses who designed, built, and maintained the car in the past.

[panamericano]

From Andrew Frankel's very favorable review of the new Cat Super Seven 1600 in the November issue of Motorsport.  Applies to a lot of old sport cars, beside any Seven.

 

You may not be aware of it, but we’re always correcting and making allowances for modern cars because their weight, size and softness means they respond only in an approximate manner.