I was driving through the "village" in my town and the abnormal congestion and presence of some very old beautiful cars reminded me that the summer vintage car season was upon us. As I slowly rolled down the boulevard, admiring the vibrant colors and shining chrome of the classic cars, I began to form a train of thought. The first car in my train of thought was an admiration that someone could care for and maintain a material object for so many years and have it look like it just rolled out of a showroom the day before, as if time had stopped for that vehicle. I looked at the beautiful lines and curves of the Thunderbirds, Speedsters, Packards and Cadillacs and wondered if any of the new models of cars on the road today would be considered classics in the future. For some reason, no matter how well I maintain my Santa Fe, I can't imagine that one of my children will be showing it at a car show 40 or 50 years from now. That lead me to the next car in my thought train. We are very materialistic these days. We spend so much money on things that we are fully aware are not going to last a whole lot longer than a decade, a year, a month etc. This consumer society we live in drives us to constantly purchase newer and better models of the things we already have. In fact, many things that we own are not designed to last very long without breaking. How many of you are still using the same cell phone you used 5 years ago? I get new phones, not because I need the new amazing tech, but because the memory or some chip in my phone is worn out and it is cheaper to buy new than to fix what is old. This got me thinking about the cars again. Classic cars are a vintage form of materialism. A kind of materialism that you don't see as much today as you did 50 years ago. The time and effort and money that people poured into their cars, rather than just scrapping them and buying new. A 2012 Lamborghini Murcielago is an impressive sight to see, but it doesn't stick with me as does the sight of a perfectly restored 1965 Porche. I think I prefer that vintage materialism to the consumer materialism that we have today.
