@Joel Roth posted:I am sorry, but I think you guys are making way (emphasis on the way) too big a deal over this.
Our cars are beautiful. They give us happiness and pleasure owning them, driving them and taking care of them. We love them. Who cares what other people think about them.
Oh, I hear you, Joel. I really, really (really) don't care what other people think
... I just try not to be a jerk, and every mother's son wants to figure out a way to talk to you when you drive a speedster.
Every.
Last.
Mother's.
Son.
Gassing up. At stop lights. When your garage door is up. When your garage door is down, but they can see it up on the lift through the window in the garage door. When you're parked and inside having dinner. "What year is that?" "What IS that!?!" "I love your car!" "I just had to see who owns that beautiful car!" "Is that a Karmann Ghia?"
It's like what it must be like to be a pretty girl in a bar - guys just walk up, tongues hanging out, having ZERO idea what to say, but just wanting to say something. Anything. Just to stay in it's orbit for a minute or two before they head back to their "compromise-reality".
It's easy to be callous, but you have to give them something, or you're just that guy. You've got to commit to never be "that guy". I can't ever let myself be "that guy", even if that's how I'm wired, or if I'm having a bad day, or whatever.
"That guy" is a tool.
I try to be especially patient with kids and old men... and I'm an absolute sucker for people from the wrong side of the tracks - their awe of this thing is complete and unvarnished. I was a kid like that - I never thought I'd have a beautiful wife or a really nice ride or a big house with a lift in the garage... but I have all of them. The young kids dream, the old men remember, and the beat-down guys just ache for what might have been. They know, deep down in the soles of their sore and swollen feet, that they'll never, ever own something like this, and they just want to tell you how much they like it.
It's humbling, if you let yourself be humbled by it.
It engenders a ton of stupid questions, stupid observations, and no small difficulty if you just want to go about your life. But it's important to have something to give them, without getting into all of the nuances of what it replicates and the entire history of the air-cooled automobile in post-war Europe.
I give them short answers that aren't lies, but don't give away the farm. If a guy wants to talk more in depth, I try to make time.
You don't have your car yet, but I'm telling you what is coming, and it's BY FAR the hardest part of owning this sort of vehicle. The "P" car morons are just background noise. It's everybody else you need to have an answer for.
Forewarned is forearmed.