Have you lost focus?

There are editors in chief of car magazines in Sweden and USA that only talks money. Money has nothing to do with the car hobby. 

What is the market value of an Eldorado from 1953? What does the market look like for cars from the seventies? What would a Chrysler 300 D be worth today, and even more important, what will it be worth tomorrow?

That’s not a car hobby. That’s old man stuff. Aged chit chat from men with nose trimmers. From being limber teenagers in jeans jackets that worked on cars in parking lots have grown into comfortable fatties in tiled garages, just counting money.
– That’s not a car hobby. That’s speculation. They could just as well be stock brokers, dealing interest papers or foreign exchangers.

It’s no longer about affording a lamina diff to the rear axle. The question is if it increases the car’s value. If you get your money back.
– Wake up! You’ve gone greedy, you’ve lost focus, you’ve lost it all. You’re driving Audi in December and keeping a close eye on the Barret-Jacksson prices in January. You’ve lost your roots, the origin, the red line.  It’s no longer fun to find a six volt horn on a junkyard in Georgia and pack into your suitcase. Nowadays you just want to calculate the profit on next container shipment.

B-but that’s no way for an editor of a car magazine to write. He’s supposed to pat the back of all car owners, shake all hands and think about his own magazine, his own success, his own likeability, his own money!
– And just like that, we’re back there again, feathered of a reduced way of thinking, inside the box were dreams and ideas go to die and were everything sums up to dollars and cents.

Yeah, really, so then all successful car enthusiasts are heretics?
– Not at all. There are lots of wealthy fifty-year olds that sustained their early love for old cars that really have made their dream come true. Happy-go-lucky enthusiasts with serious dough that spend their money on what they love the most.
Then there’s the cheap loser who just reads price lists and wants to know how rare that radio delete option of his is – and if that raises the value.
– It’s never about how much you have – it’s about the way you have it.

Worldkustom has received proposals about writing about the small, simple enthusiast. Krantz has always liked that notion. Always visited the young girl with the rusty Skylark. Krantz has never been to SEMA. Display winners worth millions, a cover of what’s trending now and awarded cars where the owner is simply a financier other magazines can write about.

I’m visiting Hälsingland, slumped down in a farmer’s kitchen I’m chewing on a cheese sandwich with a retired mechanic.