Charger restoration another 30 years

[DixieRestoParts]

If you want the hobby to exist 30 years from now, take a kid to a car show today........

[Budnicks]

Aren't we supposed to be flying around in our space cars like George Jetzen by now, they have been saying that in one generation to the next, I remember this argument back in the early 70's, "gasoline will be obsolete in 20 years", now they have been saying that for probably over 50 years now...LOL... IMHO As long as there is profit to be made in the oil industry, gasoline will still be around....

[Ghoste]

You don't believe in the great green car revolution then?

[Mytur Binsdirti]

Being "green" is just a fad, turbos were in the late 80's & early 90's. the first "green" fad was the big push for solar panels in the late 70's & early 80's. Fads come & go & sometimes flop. unfortunately, government pushed and subsidized fads just end up costing us a lot of money.

This is a little off topic, but I have a couple customers with "green" houses. Between the high installation costs and cost to run the electric pumps to power the geothermal and solar panels, the customers aren't saving anything. In fact, if it werren't for government incentives, iall that green crap would be cost prohibitive., much like hybrid vehicles. Good luck 10 years from now when all that crap starts breaking down.

[Ghoste]

Good point and the geothermal stuff isn't new either, there was a big push on heat pumps and geothermal same time as those solar panels.  This one with the government push and cap and tax and EPA and CAFE and blah blah blah does make me wonder though.

[Budnicks]

You don't believe in the great green car revolution then?

I've been hearing that crap for too many years now, especially her in Calif., freaken Hippie type non-bathers/Eco-Nazis/Environmentalist Activist/Terrorist we have here, they all seem to not last very long or be way too expensive for the average person to own & be cost effective alternative so far... I'm all for it, if they can last or be affordable alternative... They also supposedly cost a fortune to replace the batter cells when they go bad... There isn't enough "old used French fry oil" to go around for everyone, to have the bio-diesel either.... Maybe the natural gas idea, but any alternative fuel needs an available widely spread infrastructure system to distribute it, or it will just fail, just like all the others....

[69_500]

Here is my thought. 30 years from now a 1969 Daytona will probably set you back about 65-80k. Down from what it is now but still not dirt cheap. You have to remember that in 30 more years the generation that was in high school when those car were new will be nearing 90. For a clue compare the prices of cars 30 years older right now compared to where they were 10-15 years ago. The 40's and 30's rods are still in the same price range as they have been in for the last 10-15 years.

[Mike DC]

I wonder if the appeal of the muscle-era stuff will last longer than previous generations of cars though.  In the 20th century cars were evolving so fast that anything 50+ years old was so obsolete that it could hardly be turned into something fast.  But the evolution has settled down somewhat, at least in body & suspension designs.  We can make a '69 Charger pretty darn comparable to modern cars these days in performance.  Eventually I think cars will reach a point where the "old" designs stop looking so much less desirable because the new ones have stopping leaving them so far behind in every way.  I wonder if we are reaching that point now.


Just look at stuff like XV Motorsports.  Bottom line, they made something modern-car decent using a hardly-modified unibody shell, and a V8/5spd/solid axle layout that isn't radically different from stock.  That is 45yo stuff they're starting with.  



And then there's the retro musclecars.  Retro cars have been around for a long time, but these days they're doing it more seriously.  The '05 Mustang or the '08 Challenger didn't just come out looking like the vintage ones just to please some old farts nostalgic for their originals - they came out looking like that to please EVERYONE, because most everyone thought that look was as good as anything else they could have given it.  How much longer those cars will maintain that look remains to be seen, but the bottom line is they wore the retro look and it appealed to everyone including some young people who had no clue what they were even referencing.  


The XV Motorsports stock-based project, the retro new styling & layouts of Mustangs & Challengers . . . I can't picture those kinds of things happening with the '32 Ford design in the 1970s/1980s.  The situation is a bit different this time.  

[1974dodgecharger]

Cars these days of age have no 'soul' they have no history they churned out daily with no love. Once the money has been made after RandD fees, production fees, etc..they are disontinued that can take 5 to 10 years till they get their money back....