The Vintage Brits Metabolic Depression is Ending!

Here Beyond Thunderdome, the snow is finally starting to melt, the air is clearing and smelling much better, we are starting to see asphalt and the BTDOT is beginning to drop their orange barrels so they can fix what the freeze-thaw cycle has ravaged. All of this means only one thing. It’s car season. Huzzah, huzzah!

What? You’ve never heard of car season – that joyous time of year when the vintage cars wake from their long winter’s hibernation, rub their headlights, and begin to poke their sweet little heads out of their garages? What’s that you say? A car is only a tool by which you move from point A to point B? Who cares what it looks like, so long as it works, you say? Who cares how it runs, so long as it does? What’s that? Cars are little more than headaches and bloated money-sucking leeches?! Oh, dear readers, as I stand agape at such appalling but understandable notions, I thank goodness I found you when I did before any additional motoring hate speech entered your otherwise untainted, God-given intellect.

I once thought as you do now, but something in the back of my mind kept whispering that such corrupt notions weren’t accurate. And in fact were the result of bad PR on the part of the car culture, underexposure, and of course, a barrage of horribly uninteresting automobiles.

Allow me to explain.

You see, when we were kids, it was all about cool cars. We had Hot Wheels and Matchbox collections, Transformers, the ubiquitous Lamborghini Countach poster, James Bond (Lotus Esprit submarine, anyone?), Mad Max, cartoons in which our superheroes drove magnificent cars, … you get the idea. Then in Junior High, the Countach poster came down, and the Van Halen, and Def Leppard posters went up (or maybe The Cure depending on how you felt about your parents). By High School, girls, sports, and music took all the time, while school was squeezed into whatever space was left. Cars were interesting, but you wished you had something else drive the date around besides mom’s ’88 Mercury Sable. And then the college years - forget cars – someplace to live would be nice.

With college graduation came the gradual sluffing-off of the politically radical elements we eagerly sopped up in our early years. We get into a profession and that with money and the commute, we start thinking about cars again. Unfortunately the scenery is anything but pleasant. The cars have become huge, heavy monstrosities, without elegance, grace, or simplicity. Driving assists are so common that the driver feels no connection with the road. On top of that, it’s difficult to escape the feeling of alienation when you don’t have a sleeve of tattoos, an ample goatee, and deep affection for Mötley Crüe.

Simply put, a true motoring enthusiast is not a mere poseur: a poor soul whose fragile ego must be compensated by large engine size; or the volume produced by a beautiful powder-coated manifold, headers, and glass-packed exhaust system. NO! A true motoring enthusiast cares little for these shallow trappings. Actually, by “care’s little,” I mean cares a lot, but the true enthusiast is not defined by these things.

So dear reader, I understand your lack of interest. May I offer something that might pique that interest once again? Allow your eyes respite here -


I know. A moment of silence is certainly appropriate. Allow the awe to pass, and read on.

What you are seeing are the wonders of vintage British engineering. Notice the backdrop of classic stone architecture, lack of sleeve tattoos, the plethora of vehicles whose proportions suggest speed, taste, and simplicity; notice there is something intrinsically right about that design.

This phalanx of Austin Healeys represents one of the great British sports cars of the 1960s. Amongst this stately lot you’ll see Triumph, MGB, Jaguar, Lotus, TVR, Morgan, Cooper and others. This was the last time in motoring history that designers could design without the suffocating restraint of legislation. Most are convertibles. They were built before the Interstate system became the main arteries of transportation. Therefore you moved at a much more leisurely pace not being beaten senseless by the wind at 75 mph. This was driving the way it was meant to be: as much for recreation as for necessity.

You might be thinking “ok, I get it, no Mötley Crüe, no big block bad boy attitude, but a lot of stuffy old, rich folks.” That’s certainly an impression one gets at first glance. But remember, these are British cars, many didn’t make it there under their own power, and those that did left a few liters of oil behind them (to find their way home, of course), and others are held together with duct tape and bailing wire. That’s just part of the charm, and all British motoring enthusiasts recognize that. It keeps us a titch humble. Despite that, they can still perform well against something modern (ever seen gearheads sipping tea?).

So this summer, keep you’re eyes out for these beauties. You might see one archaeologist with a permagrin behind the wheel of a red TR6.