Time Makes Cars Classic And People Old

PEOPLE AND CARS. Although it’s wrong— logically, scientifically, morally, you name it—I often conflate the two.

Because cars are like people. You want to count on them. But often you can’t. You might love them both, but it’s not like either of them is never more trouble than they’re worth.

The care and feeding of cars and people is ongoing and expensive. But the car has the advantage of being a machine. A person is like a machine, only cleverer and much more complicated, totally amazing yet somewhat imperfect, and sometimes much harder or even impossible to fix. Needless to say, we humans come with no warranty, and there’s no money back if we go wrong. Quite the contrary.

People and cars both get old. And old cars can be like old people. They break down, and as time goes on they break down more and more. They are no longer in step with the fashion. They sag at the edges. They have a tendency to make bad noises unexpectedly and generally smell worse than they once did.

On the other hand, when they fail, people fail for keeps. But if you’re resourceful enough and so inclined, you can fix old cars forever so they never die. Not only will they outlast you, you can even fix it so your old cars perform better now than they did when they were young. And that’s a place no amount of Cialis or cod liver oil will take you.

Now to be fair, give modern medicine time. You don’t have to squint too hard to see the reality of 170-year-old humans out there on the horizon, the wealthy probably first among them. But as of today, you get old, you die, even if you’re rich.

A rich man’s vehicle, however? That need never die. And neither must a poor man’s machine ever perish, if somebody chooses to give it life. We might not ourselves witness the majestic wonder of a 170-year-old Pinto parading under its own power down Outer Space Boulevard, but there could well be future generations that will.