I want to like Casey's videos but damn he likes to preach and whine and complain.
His organization, Genius Garage, seems to be doing much needed work to get more kids exposure to motorsports and engineering so I really want to like what he's doing on YouTube.
I like Casey, he's helped me out with a couple different things and given me some good contacts. If I show this to Colin he'll probably be begging his mom to let him buy it, and he's only 8.
In reply to trumant :
This was my first exposure to him. YouTube suggested I watch. I love all things Corvette so there is that. Interesting proposition. The concept of vintage vehicle gentrification I agree with. Been to a number of vintage race weekends and worked in and around some older "classics" so I'd have to agree.
Yep...just like every other casey video I only managed to get 30 seconds in and regretted every second of it.
I at least like that Casey seems to be self aware when he goes on rants like this.
What is "young"?
People HATE this man because of one weird trick!
Daylan C said:I at least like that Casey seems to be self aware when he goes on rants like this.
He's also right.
I watched the video because insomnia, but you know what? He's right. Vintage racing cars should be exposed, and ran, and generate interest, instead of hoarded in cold storage somewhere. They are machines, not statues. And if you want to continue the wonderment, you have to keep them exposed instead of bottled up, maybe at best taken out to some grass parking lot for other people to contemplate how much it will sell for the next time it's up for auction. That's a depressing end.
The first half of the video, though, I got a creepy vibe that I always get when people talk about vintage cars. Like, I imagine my RX-7 on some pedestal somewhere (that Corvette is literally on a pedestal, I'm not hypobolizing), and some guy is going on about how in 2009 the car was campaigned with this suspension and those stickers, and this period where he was between homes so the car competed exclusively on snow tires because the rally tires were locked up in a housing dispute, and so on. He's talkign about this livery and that and I'm wondering if the car owner even cared to remember all that stuff instead of just letting everything evolve as necessary.
So... we should be saving these vintage race cars that are in storage, right? Maybe just sneak a few out, have a little race, put them right back where we found them?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:So... we should be saving these vintage race cars that are in storage, right? Maybe just sneak a few out, have a little race, put them right back where we found them?
As a motorsports enthusiast. Not as a commodities investor.
I have a low tolerance for annoying YouTube personalities and this guy didn't annoy me at all. Maybe I need to watch a few more hours?
In reply to Knurled. :
I agree with a most of what he says. Especially the few times he's mentioned collectors and the culture around that being harmful to the hobby. Even with just normal sports cars. Saying he wants stuff like the 944 to stay relatively cheap so they can remain accessible to normal people. If rich old guys drive the value of a car up to stupid high price points, then people like me stop caring because they can no longer imagine myself owning that car. That's true for air cooled Porsches, it's especially true for million dollar vintage racecars.
So, ummmm. Does the cars he have get raced? Just wondering.
In reply to noddaz :
This guys biggest project is Genius Garage. He helped a crew of students restore and race the yellow IMSA spec C4 Corvette that's in his shop. Before that his main involvement with cars was restoring and racing vintage racecars.
I can sympathize with not wanting these cars to become garage queens. Roughly 12 years ago my Turner 1500 FP race car was sold through Wire Wheel Classics to a gentleman that had several other vintage cars. As far as I know it has never been on track again. This was a fully prepared SCCA FP car that made many appearances at the Runoffs.
As someone who's "$500" ChampCar is currently bleeding him dry, I think it's real easy to sympathize with cool cars being left to rot and another thing entirely to figure out who's going to pay for them to race. How many 10s of thousands of dollars would it cost to get that thing safe and reliable again?
In a similar vein, Ross Bentley has an article in the Feb Road & Track about how "anyone can be a racecar driver if they want it bad enough," as though buying a $2000 set of Hoosiers is just about desire.
Cars are expensive; racing them is quintuply so. Let's be realistic.
In reply to steronz :
Why are you dropping a few hundred grand on an old racecar if a set of tires is too much of an expense? That's a reason not to buy a race car. Not a reason to buy a racecar and then hoard it in your private collection while not driving it.
In reply to Daylan C :
Per the video people are dropping a few grand on loan interest payments to buy these things on credit. I'll have to take his description of the state of the used racecar collector market at face value as it's not my world, but I look around and I don't see a ton of people wanting to drop 10s of thousands of dollars on vintage racing and lamenting the fact that they can't because rich investors are buying up all the old racecars.
Not to mention that there are plenty of forms of racing that do not require a $2000 set of tires. Racing is not a cheap hobby but anyone middle class and up can afford a race weekend here or there. It's a question of priorities. If you don't want to prioritize it, that doesn't mean it's not accessible, it just means you choose other things to spend your money on.
dculberson said:Not to mention that there are plenty of forms of racing that do not require a $2000 set of tires. Racing is not a cheap hobby but anyone middle class and up can afford a race weekend here or there. It's a question of priorities. If you don't want to prioritize it, that doesn't mean it's not accessible, it just means you choose other things to spend your money on.
And that was his point, that it was all about priorities, but it still seemed awfully tone deaf to assume that all race fans are "middle class" enough to even afford a race weekend here or there, and his example was a pro racer who talks about selling his living room furniture for a set of tires. At no point in my life up until a couple years ago could I have sold my living room furniture for any money at all, and I did consider myself middle class for a lot of that. I also know quite a few people who prioritized racing above their own marriages, so there's real consequences of spending every last dollar you make on racing.
He also mentioned Lewis Hamilton's humble background while completely disregarding that Lewis Hamilton is an extreme aberation on the F1 grid. Like, Lance Stroll's dad even bought the effin' team so his kid could race, but apparently Lewis being up there as well means anyone can! Which just isn't true. IMO.
In reply to steronz :
I don't think availability of the cars was point. It's pushing the cars to the point where nobody cares about them becsuse they only seem them at auctions. The history and the fact that they actually do racecar things is becoming irrelevant.
In reply to Daylan C :
I did not know. Thanks.
In reply to Daylan C :
What's the alternative, then? You can't force people into vintage racing.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
You saw that Porsche Superbowl commercial too?
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