In recent months I’ve had the good fortune to attend some excellent symposia (okay, so it’s Latin . . . Mea culpa) and get behind the scenes in some fantastic car collections. It has been great fun to listen to panels of serious restorers, writers, enthusiasts and historians discuss a number of the hot issues in our field. As to the collections, suffice it to say that my eyes were aglitter with some of the amazing historic vehicles that reside in a variety of locations around this country.

Although these cars were marvelous to see, I also need to give a few examples of the questions and problems that are being considered: Can automobiles be considered art, as well as just transportation? What is true authenticity? When does one undertake a full restoration, a sensitive refurbishment or just leave the car alone? Is there such a thing as serious overkill in papered treatment of very famous cars? What does one do about outright fraud, shading of the truth or even just a little subtle chicanery in the documentation of valuable vintage vehicles? And what is the role of the historian in answering these questions and may other of similar nature?

Without attempting to take on such a weighty list of topics all at once, my preference is to try to make a simple point. Although we might see the entire field of vintage automobiles as very fragmented, it would be a serious mistake to ignore the importance of the numerous elements that make up the very large enterprise of the preservation of automobiles and the promotion of automotive history. With a little poetic license, I’ll separate folks into what might be classified as two somewhat alien groups: gurus -- those of us who thrive on the intricacies of automotive history and the stories we uncover in libraries, archives, photo collections, industry records, etc. -- and the gearheds -- folks who cannot live without a wrench in hand, straining every muscle and brain cell to get some ancient motorized mechanical puzzle to work as it should.

Gurus read books, argue over interpretations, fuss over documentation and spend a lot of their time digging through mounds of papers, trying to figure out why someone made a particular choice in designing, building or selling one brand of vehicle or another.

By contrast, the gearhead is generally deep under the hood, confronting a pile of rusty parts. After many hours of frustration and hard labor, the reassembled wreck my roll forth as a gleaming testament to his undying love of the mechanical creature that has become an obsession and possible a living tribute to its manufacturer. Of course, I am overstating the gap between scribblers and wrench turners, but I have also witnessed many a guru or gearhead walk right by an absolutely fantastic vehicle or an equally remarkable historical exhibit with the offhand comment, "Oh, gears (or paper) aren’t my thing."

Well, not so fast! The reality is that we all need one another in ways that show up everyday. In one recent discussion, the whole subject of authenticity came down to a desperate need for the maintenance of proper registries of automobiles. Properly logged chassis and component numbers, owner histories and other such paper tools allow the fellow confronting a car to know what he is really working on and how he should procede. In the same way, the mechanical enthusiast, with his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of a particular vehicle -- variations in parts, working components and methods of assembly -- can trace extremely important developments in the evolution of the automobile, as well as some of the very weird tangents some genius once decided were the absolute answers to the future of motive power for mankind. Mechanics can also keep historians honest, in making the important distinction between what manufacturers might have said they did and what was actually done.

In the same manner, we can safeguard each other’s integrity. With priced of what used to be considered very mundane automobiles (not to mention true exotics) soaring through the rood, the potential for some fairly ugly business practices to become the norm is very real. We all know that the used-car business has a fairly shady reputation, and it wouldn’t take much to put the vintage-car field in the same camp. In our devotion to ferreting out historical truth (to the degree that we can) we place ourselves in a good position to maintain the respect of the world at large. Hence it is a small jump to say that a spirit of cooperation ad tolerance between gurus and gear heads should be the order of the day.

Thankfully, this would seem to be the case. There is hardly a respectable restoration shop in the country that does not have some sort of research capacity and/or historical resources to document the authenticity of the work it does. At the same time, what sensible automotive historian would attempt to produce a volume devoid of attention to the variety of mechanical twists and turns that inevitably make up the complex history of almost any motorcar? All in all, then, I figure we can rejoice in the diversity of interests in our field and at the same time be ready to make use of all kinds of knowledge in "getting it right." As the French say, "Vive la diffèrence!" For every needy guru there is a gearhead, and vice versa. We all contribute in our own special ways to the practice of automotive history, and to my mind, that’s just the way it should be.

- Joe Freeman, SAH President