Many, many years ago the Pontiac club tried to get help from GM and was essentially told that GM did not want to help generate interest in old cars because they'd rather have the people spending their money on new cars. Later on, GM did support the club a bit, but I think the same mentality was still there and is present at most automakers.

Now the new car makers are in trouble, while the old car hobby continues to thrive somewhat in a weak economy. Could we actually see a day when the automakers beg the old car clubs to promote their products? The old cars certainly seem to be the more interesting ones today.

The strength the hobby is showing also extends to the parts industry. More people than ever are reproducing old car parts. Over the weekend we visited with Paul Terhorst of Mundelin, Ill., a veteran vendor of Classic Car parts. Paul is now looking for someone who can help him reproduce Packard parts. Paul feels that he has the contacts and marketing savvy to sell the parts, but he needs help with making them. Once he has that nailed down, he thinks he can have a successful parts business.

The Wall Street Journal just carried an article about how makers of new car parts are struggling. Maybe some of these companies should be talking to vendors like Paul who can sell the right old car parts all day long. Very interesting situation! 

To a large degree, my career as a hobby "expert" has been largely a question of DO WHAT I SAY rather than DO WHAT I DO. In other words, over my nearly four decades in this hobby, my role as an editor/writer has let me see trends develop, even though I wasn't inclined to take advantage of the trends myself.

For example. one of the first stories I wrote for the old Special-Interest Autos magazine was a very early GTO piece. However, I never collected GTOs myself, since I prefer "flathead" Pontiacs. Therefore, I did not ride the GTO craze up to the top or benefit from it the way I could have.

As I grow older, this may be changing. Last year, I started collecting motorcycles. I purchased a vintage bike, as well as two Japanese models that seem to have the wonderful combination of relatively low price and growing collector appeal.

Over the weekend, I caught up with the well-known dream car collector Joe Bortz (the same guy that told me, at the first Harrah's Auction, back in the '80s, that dream cars were a great investment for the future). As most people know, Joe made millions on the dream cars. Now, he says he has purchased over 130 motorcycles in recent years, most of them Japanese models. Joe Bortz has always been great at predicting future hobby trends and he has me thinking I'm doing the right thing, too.   

The first car in my life was my dad's 1937 Plymouth. By the mid '50s, he finally wore out that reliable Mopar and purchased a gorgeous '49 De Soto that he drove well into the '60s. In the early '60s, we became a two-car family, but the '57 Ford didn't last as long as the Mopars and was eventually replaced by a '57 Chrysler Saratoga four-door hardtop -- the car I learned to drive on. Dad went on to buy a Dodge Dart later and that Slant Six powered compact lasted and lasted again. While he was still driving the Dart, I moved to Wisconsin to work for Old Cars Weekly and I purchased a '63 Chrysler Sport 300.Though it wasn't a letter car, the 300 suited me to a "T." That car lasted a good long time, too.

Dad's Mopars and my 300 didn't adhere to the concept of planned obsolesence. Anything Chrysler built in the 1940s-early 1970s was known as a well-engineered, long-lasting machine. Maybe the people at Fiat should make a note of this. If they really want the new "Franco American Motors" to succeed, they ought to just focus on building a car that you or I could count on for years and years. If Chrysler followed a simple concept like that, what other car would we ever want?