WILL THERE BE ANY ‘NEW’ CLASSICS?

I, in case it hasn’t become readily apparent over the last three years, am rather fond of my Rover 800 Vitesse. Now, don’t roll your eyes. This isn’t a post about that car, which only seems to hold interest with me. No, instead I’m talking about age. You see, my car is a 1999. My other toy, a Citroën ZX Volcane is a 1996. And for me, the late ’90s and very early ’00s are where classic cars, or to be more specific, the potential to become a classic car ends. Of course, as with everything in life, there are exceptions to the rule. The expensive stuff, the supercars, the limited run stuff. But workaday cars akin to those we now see as classics? No, I don’t think there will be any more of them.

Think about it. We look fondly upon a 1976 Ford Cortina, or a Triumph 2000 of a similar vintage. Normal, everyday showroom models that we love not only because of design, but because for many of us, these cars were intrinsic to our lives. Our dads had them, we had them as first cars, we remember when they were launched and how we lusted after them. That kind of thing. I don’t see us doing that with a Nissan Qashqai or a 2018 Ford Mondeo. I don’t think we, as people in general, bond with modern cars the same way we would have thirty years ago. I don’t think we’re given the opportunity to.

I have nothing against modern cars. I have one, and it has been a trusty steed for over 55,000 miles of me driving. It’s reliable, comfortable and safe. However, as I type this, my hands are dirty from having put a new battery in it. To do this, I had to take half of the car off. Modern cars are not meant to be tinkered with. I have done the oil changes on it, but a fuel filter? Forget it. I’m pretty sure I need to take the roof off to get at it. Cars today are not cars like the ones we grew up with. They’re a consumable. People don’t keep them for long, as there will inevitably be an enticing PCP deal to sign up to when the first agreement comes to a close. And I’d know, as I used to be a car salesman for a main dealer, offering enticing deals to customers who’s agreement was about to come to a close.

So, even if you want to maintain your own car, it’s a bit of a fight. And manufacturers want to make it harder. There is currently a not insignificant battle going on in the USA based around the ‘right to repair’. Yes, they’re arguing because the car makers do not want them to be able to maintain the thing they own. Mad. Hopefully common sense will prevail and we won’t see such a battle here on home soil. However, even if we don’t, it won’t stop car makers from making it more difficult. Though I will concede that in many cases, the involved difficulty isn’t malicious. It’s a by-product of modern vehicle packaging. Designers and engineers have to get a lot in a small space, and it needs to not kill you if you drive into a bus stop. Hence my battery being under the glovebox of the car parked behind it.

And this all brings me on to the reality of my point, here. I could be all wishy washy and carry on with the ramblings about ‘bond’ and ‘relationship’ and so on and so forth, but I don’t need to. The fact is, there won’t be any ‘new’ classics because they’re simply not viable. Has you Capri got some rot in it? Cool, new metal, a wave of the sparkly spanner, lick of paint and you’re away. By and large, modern cars don’t really rust thanks to incredible advances in paint technology. However, with one rot-free hand they giveth, but with an electrical hand they taketh away. With a current classic, you can usually overcome faults and failures by being methodical and logical. It’s nuts and bolts stuff, or simple electronics. Red wire ouchy, black wire safe, etc. A current modern car? if the electrics die, the car dies. I’ve known cars being written off because the electrical system has thrown its dummy out of the pram. It’s not something the home mechanic can overcome, because the home mechanic is not, by definition, an electrical expert.

I think that as we turned into the giddy days of the ’00s, we also turned away from a world where any cars might become classics. Certainly, mine have enough bells and whistles to make them nice – air-conditioning, electric windows, ABS and so on – but not so many that they become intimidating or outright impossible to work on at home. Hell, I even re-soldered the fuse box on the 800 myself and that car hasn’t set on fire yet. I would not want to go near the electrics of my modern car though, replacement battery notwithstanding.

I’m not being negative, I’m just being realistic. Owning classics is to tinker, to fix and to maintain. We might bond with the occasional modern car like a GT86 or an M3 or an F Type, but we won’t live with them in the same way we would an AE86, an E30 M3 or an E Type. Or maybe we will. Maybe the future of the home mechanic is a clinical, software based one with white painted garages and an array of monitors and keyboards. Though I hope not. Instead, I hope the cars of the ’90s and early ’00s find favour in the same way as those classics from the decades earlier. But time will tell.