I see a lot of car and motorcycle

 shows on TV these days and know that a lot of it is made-up drama for TV. 

The impossible deadlines, the setbacks, the bids that leave little room for error and the usual things that make for a little interest in the show.

What interests me is the money that people are willing to pay for these various cars. Many of which easily run well over a year's pay for a working stiff.

Of course the money is out there because if it wasn't the guys would not be building these custom vehicles.

Still, I have a hard time justifying paying, say, $75K for a hot rod.

Back in the day, kids would build their own and by the time it was over and done with they may have had a grand or so tied up in the whole project. I would imagine that some of the machining was likely done in the school shop eiter as a part of class or after school. I recall that some of the guys got to do a few things after school.

One of the things I recall about the guys in school that were into cars did was to make their own. These days it seems that a lot of the hot rods seem to come out of custom shops. I wonder why that is?

I suppose that a lot of guys have more money than time and I look at things differently (as usual). 

I think that if I was a car guy that wanted a hot rod I would value the time to build one more than the money to have someone else build one for me.

I had a doctor that lived a couple miles away from me as a kid that liked to spend time working with cars and I remember he rebuilt a Jeep from the ground up. When he was done he had a brand new twenty-five year old Jeep. He was pretty proud of it and I heard he entered it in a couple of shows although I may be wrong about that.

I have no clue how much he had into it but I'd bet it wasn't a whole lot when you consider he did all the work himself. While he certainly did replace a lot of parts, there were a lot of them that were in good shape and only needed cleaning up, rebuilding or refinishing.

Still, he put one hell of a lot of work into the project and it came out a beautiful job and displayed his talents in a way that he should have been very proud of.

On many of these car shows we get to see guys building a custom car for someone else. The final owner brings nothing into it but a checkbook.

To me having something you bought out of the custom shop is nowhere near as nice as something one put together with their hands.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY