In article <001c01c1f7aa$523090a0$930a0150@u8p1p8>, William Davies
<bill@rarebits4classics.co.uk> writes
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Michael Hargreave Mawson <OC@46thFoot.com>
>>
>> Vintage
>> ^^^^^^^
>
>Vintage has a rigid definition and is applied to cars built before 1930
Dear Bill,
Thanks for not pointing out that I had got "vintage" and "veteran" back
to front!
I'm very surprised to hear that the definition of "vintage" has become
so rigid, and so elderly. Cars that were "vintage" in my youth no
longer are, it would seem.
>
> > Veteran
>> ^^^^^^^
>
>This is pre 1902 or thereabouts, but I believe the definition has just
>been changed, at least as far as eligibility for the London to Brighton
>run is concerned.
And this is just weird. The whole point of coming up with words like
"vintage" and "veteran" was to get around the fact that you couldn't
call anything under a hundred years old "antique". Thirty years later,
they redefine "veteran" to mean exactly the same as "antique". How
odd.
>
>> Classic
>> ^^^^^^^
>A while back I got dragged into the rhetorical discussion about this on
>uk.rec.cars.classic, where many people at that time were keen to bash
>the Morris Marina. Getting sick of people who were happy to dismiss
>anything once plentiful but not groundbreaking as completely worthless,
>I submitted the following:
>"Not having a copy of the OED to hand, I checked the dictionary.com website.
>I like their noun definition number 4 which states "A typical or traditional
>example. ""
>Of course there are plenty of other definitions of the term, but this
>one fits my vision of what classic cars mean to me.
I would find it very hard to argue that the Marina wasn't a classic
example of 1970s design, or a classic example of a typical car of the
time, or a classic example of late-BL production. I think I'd struggle
to call it simply a "classic," though. It was not a good car by any
criteria that I can think of.
Then again, if I was to exclude the Marina, obviously the Allegro would
be out, and the Maxi, and the Vauxhall Viva, and the Hillman Avenger,
and the Fiat 128, and the Mk2 Escort, and the Skoda Estelle, and the
Volvo 244. None of these cars do anything for me, but it would be
stupidly narrow-minded to pretend that they aren't worth preserving.
They typify mass-market car production of the 1970s, and, even if that
decade wasn't exactly a Golden Age of car production, it was certainly
an important period in its history.
OK, you've talked me into it. The Morris Marina is a classic!
All this being the case, it would seem that "classic" has such a wide
application as to convey very little information in itself, and that
there are no terms such as "vintage" or "veteran" for categories of cars
made between 1930 and today. I have seen entry forms for car shows
that break classes down by decade, but this doesn't seem very
satisfactory. Many early 1960s cars have more in common with late
1950s cars than with late 1960s ones, for example - both in terms of
styling and in terms of engineering innovation. If we go by styling
alone, we might come up with post-1930 categories as follows:
Pre-tail-fin (1930 to about 1952)
Tail-fin (1952 to about 1964)
Post-tail-fin (1964 to about 1982 - when was the Sierra introduced?)
Jelly-mould (Ford Sierra to date)
Of course, there is a strong relationship here between my age and my
perception of the "classicness" of cars. I was born in 1967, and it is
perhaps this that makes me perceive the mass-market cars of my youth
("Post-tail-fin" above) as comparatively uninteresting, and even later
cars purely as means of transport, rather than objects of desire. I
was talking to the apprentice at my local garage the other day. He
told me he was "really into old cars" and had got himself a 1974 Ford
Escort - not the GT or the RS2000, just a bog-standard 1300. To him,
and presumably to others of his age, that's a desirable, collectible,
old car; a link with an age that had vanished before they were born. I
still don't think it belongs in the same category as cars made in the
1930s, though...
ATB
--
Mike
Ellie - 1963 White Herald 1200 Convertible GA125624 CV
Carly - 1977 Inca Yellow Spitfire 1500 FM105671
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