Where’s the Kids?

I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but at least a half dozen times—throughout the course of this August’s Monterey car week—I was asked my opinion of where tomorrow’s collector car enthusiasts are going to come from? In one case, it was a concours organizer, in another it was someone from the management of a major national collector car club. After about the third time, I started to get a little nervous, “What do these people know that I don’t?” It was starting to feel like everyone knew that there was some impending automotive apocalypse coming and that we needed to load the spaceships with young collectors to save the future of the hobby.

Despite the obvious drama, the underlying question in all of these cases seemed to be what is going to happen to these old cars as their owners…gulp…head to the big concours in the sky? As I mentioned to the person that originally posed this question to me, in reality this isn’t a new issue. As far back as the late ’60s and early ’70s, enthusiasts of veteran and pre-war cars were asking each other the very same question. What would become of the Bugattis and the Alfa Romeos when their then-current custodians passed away…in the 1970s! Obviously, younger enthusiasts stepped in and these cars continue to survive, be used and appreciated, some 40 years later.