AGREE TO DISAGREE

In this role, I consider myself very fortunate to have up-close access to some amazing vehicles and events. While it’s not getting any easier to find the time to attend feature-car photo shoots, I always prefer to do so when possible — it gives a far better sense of the work, thought processes, and passion that have been put into the cars, and that’s something that can be diluted over the phone or via email. Being able to see a car up close gives a feel for the way it’s been built, and I also find opportunities to question things. These aren’t blunt, ‘Why did/ would you do that?’ questions, but internalized I-wonder-why-they’d-do-that musings about certain aspects of the car that make me think the way the owner may have thought when building it. As an example, some people go to rather extreme lengths re-engineering their wiper assembly to hide the wiper motor underneath the dashboard to clean up the engine bay. Others fabricate custom bolt-on covers, while others leave things exactly the way the factory intended. There is never a right or wrong way to do things, but there is always something to be learned from the way each person elects to go about their build. That’s why, with most of the cars we feature, I tend to take away some new knowledge or a new way of looking at things through talking to each vehicle’s owner — and that’s something I’m grateful to be able to do. At the same time, I can’t help but look at each car from the perspective of what I’d have done differently if I owned it. Sometimes, it’s something as simple as running a different set of wheels or setting a more pleasing (to me) ride height, while at other times it might extend to the aesthetic presentation of the interior or engine bay, or even an almost entirely different build direction. This is not a matter of picking holes in other people’s cars, but of being able to acknowledge that everyone thinks differently and has different tastes and priorities — and I can’t help but think that it’d be a pretty boring world if everyone liked and did things the same as everyone else. I’m not generally in the habit of telling people what I don’t like on their car, but I do see it as a good thing if people are able to appreciate a car without necessarily liking every single thing about it or hating it because they don’t like the way something has been done. In the internet age, it’s all too easy to become desensitized to what’s cool or achievable in the world of automobiles, but let’s not get distracted by what’s happening in the real world. There are very few cars that I look at and think have been done perfectly, with nothing I’d want to see changed — although Dan Jones’ ’63 Impala low-rider is an example of one that is perfect — but that outlook hardly matters; the cars we get to check out and feature are their owners’, not ours, and I’m glad they’re being built the way the owners want them to be — that’s the only way a car should be built. Well, that, and legally/properly, of course.