Quote:
Originally Posted by Fe26
The last picture of the interior of the Panel van, says it all doesn't it. We crave the genuine, we want to see the evidence of a genuine experience, a genuine life. We know we now live in different ways than our fathers did, and we got a taste of that life as children, then we grew up and our world was different and so we learned what nostalgia is. We crave the genuine because it satisfies our need for nostalgia.
The interior of the Panel van is reconstructed to appear genuine, good enough for some and who is to argue with the honest intention to indulge in some nostalgia. It's a pastiche of how some folks actually lived and is therefore valid if not strictly 'correct.' But we still crave the genuine.
And the same sentiments apply to our cars; a couple of members here have commented 'it's not genuine unless it's a museum piece, change one thing and it's gone. From that narrow and strict point of view to the 'She was repainted some time ago but has aged beautifully' genuine is obviously very subjective. I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle ground which says; the life that is lived is the genuine life, that means every blemish records an event in the life of the car.
Someone mentioned the state of some houses dating from the Civil war, and I imagine the same thinking applies to Conservation in the USA as it does here, and the mantra goes 'Save as much of the original fabric as possible' further to this 'the repair(s) should be made using the same materials and techniques as were the originals and the repair should be obvious with a close look.
So to apply that thinking to the bodywork on our cars, what would your approach be? Would you apply a patch to a panel using oxy/acet welding, and how far would you take the painting? How many patches or percentage of body area would it take before you decided to go the whole hog and restore/repaint the car?
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Very well said! When I bought my coupe from my buddy I promised him that I would retain as much of the "originality" of the car as possible, because that's what he wanted and that's what I like, and he knew that. It's got lots of marks and tears and through research I know where they all came from, and that's cool.....it's all part of the car. I LOVE the "aura" of the car......."feeling" where it's been over the years!