| Group 1. These people believe that the car must be absolutely authenic to
| some period in its history.... These people tend to
| have factory race cars, specials or cars that were mofified for racing back
| when & all have a varifiable race history.
I think the causality goes the other way. That is, these people insist
on authenticity _because_ they have "real" racers that most people can't
afford. Keeps the riffraff out, don't you know.
Basically, the problem with vintage racing is that it's an attempt to
freeze time, to recreate the era of those cars that we like so much better
than modern racers. We want to run these cars as they were meant to be
driven, and that includes competition and the desire to go faster. But
it's that same desire that caused those cars to evolve into modern racers
in the first place.
So how do we enforce nostalgia without turning it into a land-bound yacht
club for those rich enough to afford hand-crafted reproduction parts for
their one-off factory specials? Beats me. Maybe we should just give up
and use Pebble Beach as the tech inspection.
Dave Van Horn
|