Let’s embrace the enthusiast passion… even if we don’t always understand it.
I was recently having a conversation about a car show, with a colleague, when he launched off into a rant on the inclusion of “Rat Rods” in this show. For those unfamiliar, Rat Rods are an “homage” to the early days of the hot rodding movement. However, these rods are made, by design, to look rough and unfinished—with flat black paint, or rusty panels, for example—to distinguish them as hot rods that are used and driven, as opposed to purely show cars. With oftentimes pretty sophisticated mechanicals underneath, they are intended to be a “counter-culture” automotive statement on substance over appearance. Anyway, they are one of many divergent branches of the automotive tree, but what surprised me was my friend’s invective in his loathing of them. Statements like, “sick,” “disgusting” and a “waste of time and money,” were used. Now, I don’t in any way begrudge my friend for feeling that way. We all have our own automotive compass to follow, but the knee-jerk intensity of his response kind of startled me and got me thinking about whether there is such a thing as automotive prejudice.
