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Classic, Vintage and Antique – How Can You Tell?
A decent slice of the driving population isn’t into new cars so much. OK, they might drive newer models to get from A to B and for general bread-and-butter driving. But when they drive for pleasure, they look to the past: to classics, vintages and antiques. Sometimes, you may hear the word “veteran” bandied about.
When we hear the word “vintage” pop into our heads, we usually get mental pictures of something with big goggly headlamps, seriously sprung upholstery, a square top and big mudguards. The Ford Model T would be a prime example. When “classic” is mentioned, mental images get a bit more fluid, with some people thinking about traditional VW Beetles and others picturing big old American numbers. Mention an “antique” car to the person on the street and he or she would probably give you a funny look.
So what makes a classic a classic? What’s the definition of a vintage car? Is it the age or the styling?
A Model T Ford from 1910: an antique or veteran car.
Defining veteran, vintage and antique cars is the easy part. Veteran and Antique cars are the same thing: anything that was made before the end of World War 1 (that’s 1919 for those who don’t remember history lessons from high school). A veteran car is something that was made between the wars, more or less: between 1919 and either 1925 or 1930, depending on which authority you listen to. This means that the classic Beetle just misses out on being a vintage car, as it was first made in 1938. Model T Fords, however, can be veterans or vintages, as they were produced from 1908 to 1927.
1926 Bentley: a vintage car
Defining classics is much harder. Exactly how old a classic has to be to count depends on where you are and who you listen to, with 15 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old and 27–65 years old all being given as the age for a classic by various authorities, clubs and insurance companies. However, there’s more to it than that. A classic car has to have “collectible” quality and to be a true classic, it has to be in original condition.
1961 E-type Jaguar: definitely a classic
Of course, the idea of what is considered “collectible” or desirable will vary from person to person. This is where personal preferences kick in. Obviously, luxury vehicles tend to make the grade (e.g. the E-type Jaguar pictured here). So do a lot of the big American muscle cars of the 1950s. But when it comes to cars that were once your typical family drive, things get a lot more fluid. A classic has to have a lot of sentiment attached to it in some form. It has to be “iconic” in some way. And that’s a quality that’s hard to pin down.
However, it would be fairly safe to list certain older family style vehicles as being sure-fire classics: VW Beetles (as already mentioned), Minis , Kombis, Holden Kingswoods, Ford Cortinas and Fiat 500s would be my picks. I’m sure there are lots more!
Picking what’s going to be a classic in the future is harder, although some enthusiasts have a go at trying to buy up “sleepers” and hanging onto them until they become classics. This is a bit of a gamble, as they may never get that collectable quality to them.
It is usual for articles of this type to suggest lists of future classics. I am not going to attempt this, apart from guessing that the hot sports cars of the 1980s and 1990s (Porsche Boxters , Nissan 350Z Roadsters , Mazda MX-5 , BMW Z4s ) will probably make the grade. However, I will propose a couple of rules of thumb:
- If it was your typical car driven by university students when you were a kid, it will probably be a classic when you’re middle-aged.
- If you drooled over it as the latest luxury car in magazines, car yards and dealers’ windows when you were a kid, it will probably be a classic when you reach retirement.
Happy driving,
Megan
Bad Driving Habits That Press Your Buttons
In my last post, I discussed road rage and how to avoid it. Now, in any discussion of road rage, there are two sides to the story, if not more. For nearly every incident of road rage (but not all of them), there has probably been a bad driving habit that has triggered it.
Some things really press other people’s buttons more than others. The ultimate way to avoid road rage, therefore, is to avoid these bad habits. Recently, I came across a survey from the UK that listed the ten most annoying driving habits that get other drivers steaming hot under the collar. I’m not sure how many of these ones are just as annoying here Down Under but most of them will be.
So it’s confession time. How many of these bad habits, presented in ascending order of annoyance, have you been guilty of?
10 Red light jumping. This either refers to that person who believes that the orange light means “speed up so you can get to the other side before the light turns red” or the person who knows that the light is going to turn green any second now and starts inching forward while the opposing light is still orange. Or else it’s both of these habits. Can anyone else see the major crash in the making here?
9 Being slow at traffic lights. This is the reverse of the person who inches forward before the light changes. This person has been quietly chilling out at the traffic lights while waiting for the green light and is now away with the pixies. Hopefully, they haven’t been trying to check their phone while waiting. The honk of a horn behind them is what jerks them back into the real world in a flurry of acceleration and gear changing.
8 Hesitant or tentative driving. OK, this is my bad habit, so I’m more likely to forgive it in others. Put it down to years of being a cyclist and to downsizing from my responsive automatic big engined Ford Falcon to a smaller engined and rather elderly manual Nissan ute that is a bit slower getting off the mark. Hesitation is also a hallmark of half the people on L and P plates (the other half are way overconfident). Getting angry at nervous drivers, yelling abuse at them and the like is only going to make them more nervous. This strikes me as a situation where patience is called for – but I’m biased!
7 Overtaking on the left. In most cases, this is illegal, unless there are multiple lanes (e.g. on a one-way street, in places where there are “vehicles with more than one passenger” lanes or bike lanes). It does happen when there is someone driving a snail in the fast lane on the right.
6 Sudden braking, especially at traffic lights. This usually gives the driver behind the heebie-jeebies. However, I can’t help viewing this “bad habit” in the context of Habit 10 and Habit 2. What’s more, we all know that there are situations where sudden braking has to be done – and sometimes, the car can do it for us. If someone brakes suddenly at the traffic lights, give them the benefit of the doubt: they might be able to see a fire engine with lights and sirens going coming that you can’t.
5 Using the flush median as an extra driving lane. OK, if you need to turn right and there’s a flush median provided, you need to go there. But if you’re just using it to overtake other drivers… don’t.
4 Dangerous overtaking. You know the person – the one that overtakes you and is about to overtake the car in front of you but then realises that there’s a B-train coming the other way so he/she cuts in between you and the car in front of you, forcing you to bang on the brakes to avoid rear-ending them.
3 Not indicating or indicating incorrectly. This would actually be at the top of my list and is the reason why I’m tentative at roundabouts – you never know if that nut indicating left at the roundabout is actually going to go straight through or if the person who looks like they’re coming straight through in the opposite direction to you is going to turn right at the last moment.
2 Tailgating. The flip side of Habit 6 and possibly Habit 7. Intimidates and annoys people, and if they have to bang on the brakes because a cat runs across the road, you’re going to ram them and the insurance company will probably consider you to be at fault.
1 Texting while driving. You may think that texting while driving only affects one person, but it’s usually the cause of people failing to look before they enter an intersection, indicating late (or not at all) or being slow at the green lights.
So did this UK survey miss anything? What presses your buttons?
Happy driving,
Megan
Calm the Farm: Avoiding Road Rage
Road rage is hardly a new phenomenon. Losing one’s temper and exploding at some dimwit who has got in the way of your means of transport doesn’t just pre-date the horseless carriage – it predates the steam engine, sprung suspension and four-wheeled forms of transport. Yep, back when horse- and ox-drawn carts had only two wheels and rivers were the best form of rapid transport, they had road rage. Or, more accurately, river rage. There is an Egyptian tomb painting showing two boatmen having a scrap, presumably after one has cut the other off or rammed the other. Archaeologists translated the hieroglyphics in speech bubbles and found that one of the boatmen is yelling “Take that, you f***er!” at the other.
OK, so it’s human nature to get annoyed when somebody just about takes you out because they were not looking when they were going. However, the authorities these days take a stricter view of having a transport-related punch-up compared to the ancient Egyptians, so how do you avoid road rage?
- Get a decent night’s sleep. This way, you won’t be as irritable and you’re also less likely to make mistakes that annoy other people.
- Plan ahead and allow plenty of time. If you do everything in a rush at the last minute, little things that slow you down or cause delays are going to get on your wick even more. What’s more, being late and in a rush gets your adrenaline going – the “fight or flight” chemical. You’re practically priming yourself for aggro. So allow extra time for your journey and don’t stress yourself out.
- Everybody has the same road rights, whether they drive a big-engined HSV Senator or a frugal little Suzuki Swift. However, cars have different limitations. OK, so that old clunker hasn’t whipped into a gap in the traffic at the intersection that you would have taken. This is possibly because said old clunker doesn’t have the quick acceleration of your car and the driver knows it. So don’t honk your horn. If you were going up a flight of stairs somewhere public and you were held up by an elderly person going a bit slow, you probably wouldn’t yell at Grandpa/Grandma for not going any faster. Have the same sort of consideration behind the wheel.
- Remember that L-plates and even P-plates mean “young and inexperienced driver who is likely to stuff things up, take things slow or do something unexpected”. You’re the adult, so act like one.
- Be a courteous driver. If you avoid sudden lane changes, tailgating or cutting people off, you’re less likely to tick other drivers off and get yourself on the receiving end of road rage. Look both ways before turning out of an exit before you move not while you move. And, for goodness’ sake, don’t text and drive! It’s illegal for one thing and it does make you less aware of what other drivers are doing. Even if you do have blind spot sensors, crash avoidance systems and all the other safety features that you get on the latest models.
- If someone does come storming up to your car swearing blue streak and waving fists around, apologise and admit you were wrong if you were wrong. Female drivers have the non-PC but effective option of getting tearful when menaced by an angry male driver. Forgive me, women’s rights campaigners, but this one did work for me once. Stay in your car and don’t rise to any provocation.
- Give the other driver the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that driver who seems to be up your exhaust pipe or who cut you off in a huge hurry is a doctor who’s had an emergency callout or is a parent who’s got a call from the school to say that their child is badly hurt. Perhaps the person who’s weaving all over the place has a wasp in the car. Perhaps the person who is going slower than the speed limit is from out of town and doesn’t have a navigation system, and is trying to read the road signs; or perhaps they’re taking something sloppy and sticky to a potluck dinner and don’t want to spill it by fast acceleration, cornering and braking.
Happy driving,
Megan
This Is Not A Dinky Toy
There’s been a bit of trend towards downsizing for a lot of folks, especially given petrol prices, concerns about peak oil and attempts to reduce carbon footprints. Small cars are no longer the preserve of little old ladies but are often the choice of the smart commuter, with hatchbacks being seen as fun, zippy and classy. However, how small is too small?
It’s not a stupid question, as an American designer has come up with an extremely small commuter vehicle known as the Elio. It’s an attempt to keep the prices down, both of buying a car and of running a car. And, given the diminutive size of the vehicle, it’s probably going to keep the cost of parking down, too.
So what has the Elio got to offer (or, more correctly, what will it have to offer)? For a start off, it’s got a price tag to match its size, with the estimated starting price of US$6,800 for a new car. Not bad value, really, but what do you get for the money? It has a teeny weeny engine (0.9 L) with single overhead cams and three cylinders. Presumably that is one cylinder for each wheel, as this is going to be a three-wheeled vehicle. The maximum power is 55 kW so it’s not exactly going to be a heavy-duty workhorse, but that’s not what the designers had in mind. It’s supposed to be thrifty and thrifty it is: it has a fuel economy figure of 84 mpg (about 3 L/100 km) on the open road and 49 mpg (4.8 L/100 km) around town.
The Elio is going to be a three-wheeled vehicle and although it can seat two passengers, they’re sitting one behind the other, if the pics of the vehicle are anything to go by. Each of them will have an airbag, and the body style does have a reinforced roll cage for protection. Good to know, as this vehicle is knee-high to most other vehicles. Because of its three wheel designs, it’s also technically a motorbike, according to US law, which probably affects the licence you need to drive one.
Yes, you can fit something into the boot.
The Elio isn’t in production quite yet. Right now, orders are being taken and the maker is proposing to manufacture the Elio in an ex-MG plant in Louisiana.
Call me cynical, but I won’t be signing up for my Elio just yet, even if I was interested in importing one Down Under (which I’m not, as I’ve got teenagers to cart about the place). You see, this isn’t the first time that a three-wheeled car with amazing fuel economy has been trumpeted around and orders taken ahead of actual production. It happened about 40 years ago with the Dale (see my earlier post on the Dale Debacle). Now, it could well be that the makers of the Elio are above board and are genuinely trying to come up with a solution to the issues of congestion and pollution. The Elio could be something along the same lines as the Smart or, looking further back in history, the Ford Model T in the US or the VW Beetle in Germany. And good on them if this is the case. But personally, I’d like to see a bit more of the Elio in action, and not just on the manufacturer’s website. (OK, OK, I am cynical!)
However, you never know. It could prove to be a big hit and it might even make it over here. Maybe. Have a look at the official Elio website and see what you think.
This should give you an idea of the size of the Elio.
Level 2, 9 Help Street