Someone Asked Me A Very Interesting Question About Classic Cars

I spent a wonderful afternoon at the Quincy Main Street Festival on Saturday. Friendly people, good fun, great music. One of the events was a classic car show. I was asked to judge one of the categories. And one of the people I was talking to asked a thought provoking question. "Do you think 40 years from now, people will be looking at today's cars the way they look at these classic?"

I'm not sure. Is someone who is, say, 18 today, as passionate about a Chevy, a Ford, as someone in 1966 was about a Galaxy (Ford, not Samsung)?

It's a tricky thing to predict, because so much of this is tied to a generation. The early 1960's were so much about muscle cars, The Beach Boys and the California dream. Then came the Beatles. And then everything changed again as young men were going off to war, dying in Viet Nam, and in many cities and on college campuses, protests supplanted those nights with the muscle cars and beach music.

My guess is, yes, today's teens, as they reach retirement age, will wax poetic about their first car, whether it was a Honda Civic or even a Smart Car.

A funnier thought is this. Imagine yourself at a grandchild's wedding reception in the year 2060, dancing to an unedited version of an Eminem song, or something from NWA. Oh, I'd love to be there for that.