I’ve been around for over a half a century, and when you put it that way, it sounds like I’m old. People keep telling me, “you’re only as old as you feel” and that’s all cute and everything, but let’s face it – when I was a teenager, 50 was old, really old. Take my 1965 Plymouth, for instance. People tell me, “that’s a really old car,” and they don’t buy it for a minute when I tell them, “it’s only as old as it feels.”

The EFI system is new, but the car is still old – even though it feels new.

And why is it that cars can’t be treated like they’re younger when we’re supposed to be “as old as we feel?” My car has a new engine, a new trans, new drivetrain, new brakes, and a new interior with new instruments, yet it’s still an old car. I have an old heart, old veins, old brain (half-dead at that), and I’m not supposed to let on that I’m old, even though I really am. It’s not that I feel old, or that I act old, or even that I want to be old. I am old. Okay, I’m older. Is that better?

I see kids these days, and I know I’m not the same kind of old that my grandparents were when they were 50, because back then everyone over the age of 18 was Mr. or Miss. These days, young children call me by my first name, and the only person who calls me “Mr.” is someone who wants to sell me something. Kids these days wouldn’t think to call anyone by Mr. or Miss unless it’s a teacher. Imagine how I felt, at 51 years old last year and back in school, calling my 26 year old instructor “Mr. Gorman.”

My former teacher likes cars, just like me, but his taste is in the current crop of cars while I prefer classic cars. Maybe I’ve driven too many economy cars and have had to deal with all the modern refinements that are supposedly good for the environment, but I like my old car with no emissions on it. I like being able to tinker with it, work on it myself, and not have to worry about breaking out the oscilloscope to figure out if a thermal vacuum switching valve is working properly.

Modern musclecars don’t have the same, raw horsepower feel that classic cars have.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the modern crop of musclecars far better than the “musclecars” of the 1980s. Those weren’t really musclecars, they were de-tuned anti-smog devices on wheels. Remember when a 185 horsepower V-8 was about the best we could get from one of the big three? I think it’s great that we have big power coming from modern cars, but they still require that oscilloscope when and if something goes wrong, or some other fancy device I can’t operate.

Things have changed, though, but I’m old enough to remember cars that got 53 miles per gallon on three cylinders without a huge battery pack; and musclecars that got 6 miles per gallon while we complained that it cost almost 20 bucks to fill it up. And I’m also old enough to know that such refinements in cars, like we have today, weren’t the least bit important back in the 1970s.

We drove cars that had four-wheel drum brakes, they had a carburetor that needed constant adjustment, we needed a football field’s distance to stop if we were going over 70 mph, and we knew that the car would take forever to start if it was below 40 outside. We scraped our windshields, checked our radiators, checked our oil, and we also knew that on a hot day our only air conditioning was rolling down the windows, opening the vent windows in full air-plow mode, and driving a little faster.

We knew that our cars looked cooler with big fat tires on the back and narrow ones on the front, and the back had to be jacked up so it always looked like it was going down hill. We liked 14 or 15-inch wheels with 50-series tires, and we bragged about having Cragars, flipping the lid, a 650 double-pumper, and getting an 8-track tape player.

Believe it or not, some of us really liked this look back in the 1970s.

We were cool with our old cars, and they were the equivalent of using a rotary dial phone today, or sending a letter instead of an email, or getting up to change the channel on the television instead of searching for the remote.

The technology of today gives us quick off-the-line starts in an economy car that gets 35+ miles per gallon and can still do over 100 mph, we can talk to our friends through the radio speakers in our cars, we can access the internet on a touch screen in our car (but not while driving, mind you) and our cars are climate controlled. They can even be diagnosed by plugging a computer into the OBDII port. We have power windows, power locks, alarms that allow us to start our car remotely while we wait inside, so the car can get warm, and we lower the car so low to the ground that speed bumps pose a threat to our undercarriage. Times have changed, and I’m down with all of those changes.

I can get with the program, because all of these refinements in technology and all of these modern marvels of the automobile are cool to me. But they’re cool to me for a different reason: they’re cool because I got to see them develop. I got to see things change, sometimes for the better, and I got to compare the old with the new, to appreciate these refinements, and to respect them for what they are.

When I don’t have to reach across the seat to roll down a window, or when I get to roll the windows up and turn on the air, or when I can drive just a little bit closer to the guy in front of me because my four-wheel disc brakes allow me to stop on a dime, I can appreciate just how far we’ve come. Kids these days take all these advances for granted, and that ruins the emotion. A nice ribeye isn’t so special if you have them every day, right?

But I digress, and I’m reminded that all is not lost on some of these youngsters. Because, while I’ve seen spoiled kids complain that they got the iPhone 4 instead of the iPhone 5, or they didn’t get GPS with their convenience package on that graduation car they got, I get to hear these words from my best friend’s eight-year-old daughter as she climbs in my 1965 Plymouth and points to the window crank: “What’s that?”

The window crank: an eight-year-old’s connection with the past, making classic cars cool again!

“Well, Morgan, that’s a window crank, and you use it to roll up and down the window,” I told her. She smiled, and began to crank down the window.

“This is cool! I like this car,” she told me. The whole trip to the gas station, she was checking out the archaic and basic feel of the car as she looked around and asked what everything was. I don’t even have a radio in the car, and it didn’t bother her in the least. Keep in mind this is a kid who can probably set up my iPhone better than I can.

I still get a little choked up when I think about it; all is not lost – she loves classic cars and she’s only eight. He father is so proud of her, even if she did fall for a Mopar instead of his beloved Ford. Maybe if we share our love for classic cars with kids today, they, too, can learn to appreciate them the same way that we do, and that’s not half-bad.