Practically Classics Forum

Great news. My 73 Midget becomes tax exempt after 8 years of ownership. Shame it's just about ready for a rebuild.

To be honest I am quite happy with a 40 year cut off if that is how it will roll from now on.
30 would suit me better as my 78 MG would come under that but 40 is 'classic' enough for me. I still don't regard anything post 1980 as classic and I am only 36 so I bet some of the older members scoff when presented with a '73 model that someone wants classic status for.
I like the freedom we have here though for our classics and don't want to see driving restriction put in place. I mean I don't really do more than 2000 a year in the MG if that and probably only a few hundred in the Daimler but I still like the option to do so If I so please.
I have some concern about our older vintages these days as well, I think that soon these will be more of a museum piece than a practical classic as the interest dies off with the older drivers.
there are not many 40 year olds for example that want to care for a 1930's Morris - there are some yes but not many, especially when they have the option of something from the 60's or 70's instead. I can see the era becoming more of an indoor museum piece like the 20's or earlier cars seem to have become now.
There were a fair few wooden wheelers about when I was a kid but now they are a rare one to see apart from the odd show.
Guys of my age seem to want things like an SD1 Rover or a Granada rather than a Rover P3 or P2 (someone please leave me one in their will )

Rootes1725cc wrote:Great news. My 73 Midget becomes tax exempt after 8 years of ownership. Shame it's just about ready for a rebuild.

Sounds like my Series III

cybermat wrote:To be honest I am quite happy with a 40 year cut off if that is how it will roll from now on.
30 would suit me better as my 78 MG would come under that but 40 is 'classic' enough for me. I still don't regard anything post 1980 as classic and I am only 36 so I bet some of the older members scoff when presented with a '73 model that someone wants classic status for.
I like the freedom we have here though for our classics and don't want to see driving restriction put in place. I mean I don't really do more than 2000 a year in the MG if that and probably only a few hundred in the Daimler but I still like the option to do so If I so please.
I have some concern about our older vintages these days as well, I think that soon these will be more of a museum piece than a practical classic as the interest dies off with the older drivers.
there are not many 40 year olds for example that want to care for a 1930's Morris - there are some yes but not many, especially when they have the option of something from the 60's or 70's instead. I can see the era becoming more of an indoor museum piece like the 20's or earlier cars seem to have become now.
There were a fair few wooden wheelers about when I was a kid but now they are a rare one to see apart from the odd show.
Guys of my age seem to want things like an SD1 Rover or a Granada rather than a Rover P3 or P2 (someone please leave me one in their will )

I think thirty years would have been better (Assuming or perhaps hoping that the cut off is now rolling) but it is an improvement on the Brownline. Whilst I feel that any car, that reaches a certain age, becomes historic (Irrespective of whether you like it; it's simply a question of time.....just like a silver wedding anniversary), I feel that the proportions of post 1980s vehicles, that survive to become historic, will be less than for those built before that time. I think we are already seeing that and not just because of cars like the MGB, which you could say distort the figures, due to exceptionally high survival rates.

I don't think the issue of older cars becoming museum pieces is too much of a problem. If anything puts cars into museums, it will be lack of suitable fuels (Older cars were actually less fussy in this respect, as when they were new, petrol wasn't as developed, as it became by the 1970s) and perhaps the investment aspect. Go to any VSCC event (http://www.vscc.co.uk/) and very few of the participants are as old as their cars; sadly in many cases, it's become a biological impossibility and there aren't that many who remember them when they were new.

In my case, I was taken to the National Motor Museum at a young age and I was very exited at the prospect. I suppose three things got me "Into" older vehicles. 1 - My father was interested in them, 2 - I was taken to the Morgan factory, when I was about six years old and that sparked something inside me and 3 was an LP, called "World of Motoring", that was made at Beaulieu, which I was given some time before my visit there. Of course, being sound only, you had to use your imagination and going to Beaulieu, to see the cars, was really something. Many of the cars (And all the trains), that interest me, are a lot older than me and this has always been the case. Because they made fewer cars before the 1960s (The Morris Minor was the first British car to sell one million and that wasn’t until the early 1960s), there aren’t that many to start with, so with natural wastage, you won’t need many to be interested in them (And in some cases to afford them). I think there are about half a million historic vehicles in the UK (I think about thirty million cars and no doubt a lot of commercial vehicles??????) and about sixty million people, so although a sizeable minority, we are barely one percent of the population (I don’t know how many of that half a million have the same owner).

As to vehicles of my own lifetime, most of my interest fades by 1980 or perhaps the end of old Y reg. Examples of post 1980 cars, that would turn my head, are the VW Corrado (The Mk 2 Golf GTI was a fine car, whilst the 205GTI may not have been as well made but it was fun to drive....a bit Minilike), most of the Lotus models or the things that are basically older models, that were produced out of thier time. As to the present, I don't really know what most of them are and I have virtually no interest whatsover.

It's going to be much harder to preserve the current generation of cars because of the increasing use of components, such as plastics and complex electronics, that only have a limited life and can't easily be re-manufactured. Also specialised diagnostic equipment is needed to maintain them. Another trend is the increasing rigour of the testing regime and tightening of emissions regulations. It's going to be next to impossible to get the current generation of cars through the test when they're ten or fifteen years old. I can see the day coming when the replacement of safety related equipment such as seat belt pre-tensioners and airbags becomes mandatory at a certain age. The cost of this will effectively consign the car to the scrap heap. The good news is that it will help to maintain interest in older vehicles that don't have all this complication.

suffolkpete wrote:....specialised diagnostic equipment is needed to maintain them.....

And a few years ago, I'd have agreed with that statement without any hesitation but now, thanks to mobile telephones that do lots of useful things, software can be obtained cheaply and in some cases free and that software, when running on a phone, tablet or a traditional PC works every bit as well as the software that used to be exclusive to the dealers.
Even the notoriously secretive Mercedes "STAR" software is compatible with the application that I use on my (Android & Ubuntu) phone and this (Ubuntu) laptop. All I have to do to communicate with the small, plastic modern car's STAR control unit is plug in a bluetooth dongle (£18 from eBay, the cloned versions are cheaper still and apparently can work for some car makers' software) and read the system from the phone or laptop. It's all interactive too so if - for example - it's service time and I need to return the engine to its factory settings, that can be done by prodding a few keys.

As more and more people use these devices and the software becomes more and more accessible, then given that advances in home and mobile computing will at the very least keep up with motor manufacturers' systems, I would suggest that we're already at a point in time where an electronic issue that may have written off an otherwise viable car some few years back is already easy to address on a DIY basis.
And as for the materials involved, 3D printers are now used in many trim plants (VW Mexico make the Golf, Jetta and Golf Estate's dashboards that way though admittedly it shows and their finish isn't the best) and their ongoing development will soon bring 3D printing into our homes at a size which could create such car parts for us.

Home 3D printers on a slightly smaller scale are available now and cost only around £1500 for the best of the current crop, but think on; when photo printer/scanner/fax/copier combo machines first came into the domestic market they were around these kinds of prices and now a decent 4 in 1 need cost no more than £100 for the very best of the genre.

What I've said is that I think that home maintenance will not only continue to be viable but will become easier and cheaper than ever.

I would agree up to a point, diagnostic software is available for popular applications. I was able to buy the diagnostic hardware and software for all Peugeots and Citroens from the mid 90s to the present quite cheaply. It doesn't help if you need to replace a large sub-assembly containing a lot of custom made electronics though. That's the reason you see so many sound looking cars in scrapyards. Corrosion isn't the reason any more, it's failure of an expensive electronic bit of kit.

Seconded; you've obviously been past the scrapyards in Tredegar

Accident damage has always been a problem but I heard about a (I think) Fiat, that had taken a side impact (Not a huge shunt). The person telling me was the foreman in the repair shop and it seems that one of the side members had to be replaced and to fit a new one, the roof had to be removed and that meant a new windscreen, as the screens are glued in......it was not a very old car but it was borderline, as to whether it would have been written off. It sounded like rather a potch

A lot will hinge on whether anyone provides spare parts and I don't think there will be enough demand for this. Any thing, where spares are a problem, can be a pain but I think it'll be more of a pain, where the components concerned, require complex tooling and cannot be easily replicated by hand or as a one off. I think many plastic and electronic parts fall into this category.

I'm not sure that it's just the electronics that is causing moderns to be scrapped prematurely - they are treated as white goods these days. TBH I reckon many of the modern electronic systems are more reliable than older cars' points and coil systems and, if the demand is there, someone will stock the parts or make conversions for dedicated control systems.

I confess that I can't think of many post 80 cars that may be considered future classics; but I fear that the German Mini and Fiat 600 might be among them (though I hope not Clubman and 600L versions). Again, that's probably just because of my age and that I owned or drove cars of that era (as well as 60's and 70's cars). However, strangely enough (because I owned one and we had five or six in the family), I believe the Maxi is a classic - not the first hatchback, probably not the first with "overdrive" fifth gear and not an attractive car, but it was one of the trend setters and even VW copied it (to an extent) with the Mk2 Golf! Unfortunately they didn't make the Golf as versatile as the Maxi and, while I didn't miss the Maxi much when I had the Montego, I did when I bought the Mk2 Golf!

On the other hand, there are some late 70's and 80's tractors that I would like to own (space and funds permitting) and moving the cut off date may persuade me in a couple of years, as my favourite DB was introduced in 1974!

I'm sure that the problem with "modern" cars is more down to indivdual sensors rather than the ECU itself. I would agree that sometimes ECUs can go bad but more often than not a failing sensor is to blame.
There are a couple of companies that will repair an ECU but I would agree that for the majority of cars it is not worth doing. I had a quote for repairing the electric seat ECU on my RR when I first got it as it was DOA and had a quote of £260! Fortunately all it required to bring it back to life was some soldering to bridge corroded lines and a few pounds worth of components from Maplin. I wouldn't want to attempt the same job in the ECU/BCU for something more modern as the components are much smaller.
Knowing what garage rates are and having expereince of the time taken to diagnose an intermittently faulty sensor it is labour costs that put older cars to the scrappy rather than component costs.