Folks Of Interest Funny reaction from a tire store guy.

It turns out I needed to put new tires on the '62 Falcon we just bought last week. So I take the wheels down to the local tire store and I tell the guy I just want plain old tires, black and round, nothing fancy or expensive. I add that this car is just for daily transportation and running around town so I don't need anything special.

He finds a set in stock and we go in the office to do the paper work. While he's writing up the order he asks me what kind of car it is. When I tell him it's a '62 Ford Falcon he stops writing, slowly looks up at me with this incredulous look on his face and says; "You're going to drive THAT every day?"

"Yea, sure", I said, "why not, it's a car."

He shrugged and went back to writing.

I just thought it was funny.

 

new cars are for people who can't keep the old ones running.

 

He must drive a Presis or something like that....LOL

 

Man I get that all the time

just took a 3000mi trip with my daughter in my wifes 66 mustang people keeped asking "your going to drive the mustang what if it breaks down, then what are you going to do" my answer was fix it and keep on going it made it the first 250,000mi
ok another 3000 ant going to hurt it

 

Well if the guy was realatively young he probably thought: 1) doesn't ride good, 2) no AC, 3) no disc player, 4) doesn't brake good, 5) doesn't perform good, 6) not Fast and Furious material, 7) doesn't look like a tuner, 8) I wouldn't look good in it...9) he probably figured its too close to walking for him...!!

 

Lets face it,we are going to hear that a lot.Had one today,"Have you got it painted yet". Told him it`s never been painted since I`ve owned it ,probably never will.

 

When it was new...someone drove it every day. My OT everyday driver had 239,000 miles on it when I finally put it out to pasture

 

A friend of mine has a OT 73 Jag he has driven as a DD for two years. At his workplace co-workers would keep asking him if he was afraid if the car would break down and leave him stranded. When his co-worker's new cars would break down he would be sure to rub it in their face The car has been pretty reliable. He is now looking at getting an even older car for a DD which is a 63 Rambler Classic.

 

Could be he questioned it as a daily driver because its a classic. Daily drivers get a lot of wear and tear, dings, scratches, chips, etc. I think for a lot of people, it's not that the older vehicle can't be driven daily, its that most people don't want to expose their older ride to the scars of commuting.

 

No, I think the general consensus is that old=outdated=unreliable.


I too have heard the "what if it breaks down?" too many times!

 

For a summer i drove my 53 chevy daily and at the time it had the 235, 3 on the tree in it..I had a few people stumped.

I told one of them..it rolls, it runs and it always gets me back home. And if something goes wrong I can fix it at home...can you do that with your car..
with a dejected tone in his voice he muttered......No

 

i had a guy at a tire shop tell me that tubed tires were illegal in california. i told him he was full of shit, turned around and walked out.

 

I was just thinking about this lately...I've been re-doing my old high school car, a 1970 Maverick 2dr. My kids keep calling it an old car but it just doesn't seem like an old car to me.

Now when I was their age, a 1947 Ford seemed like an old car to me...it was built 20 years before I was born. My Maverick was built 20 years before my oldest son was born. I guess I see what they mean.

 

I had a manager at Pep Boys tell me that they could not sell me radials for my 61 Impala and that I would have to buy bias ply tires...because that was the kind of tire the car required. I told him thanks and walked out.

 

If the keys are in the column, its late model.

 

30 years ago a friend was building an A highboy roadster. He inquired about some skinny 15" front runner tires. The guy asked what are they going on? My buddy says the front of a 29 Model A Ford roaster. The guy says you can't put them on that...the front end will be very very low!!! My buddy said you bet your sweet ass!

 

shoot!!!!!..............i've been doing that since 5/18/09 and still driving mine!!!!!!! 62 falcon two door!!!!!!! i've put 23,000 miles on it so far and counting!!! currently in colorado springs right now.

 

The answer is fix it. What are you going to do when yours breaks down, call a tow truck and have it towed to the dealer?

 

I remember going into a Goodyear store years ago to buy a couple of volkswagen tires for the front of my 64 Dodge. I forget the exact size now but at that time when ya said volkswagen you were talkin bug or bus. So the counter guy asks what are they for. I tell him that I have a 64 Dodge 440 with 15x 3 1/2 front wheels. He then wants to tell me all about how those are the improper tires and on & on & on. After giving up on explaining that this is not a stock mom & pop car, I finally just had to say they were really for my bug just so I could buy em' and get out of the store.

 

Most people think that old cars are too valuable to drive as drivers.

 

...and THAT's exactly what I say!

 

good thing the Dodge doesn't fall under that category

 

Watson, is that you?

 

or too impractical by today's standards. what? no a/c? no mp3 player? no cruise control? no bluetooth? no dvd player? blah blah blah.

most people don't know of a time when cars were actually transportation and not entertainment death machines.

 

Nowadays, you go into a tire store, and ask for say, a 215/70/15, and the first thing the dipstick behind the counter asks is "what kind of car?"
The first thing I ask in a new parts store is for a water pump for an '80s small block.
If the guy asks "long or short?" I know I have a good counter man.
Spent ten years behind parts counters, spent thirty years in John Deere parts. New countermen scare me.

 

I get "aren't you scared to drive that" all the time about my Rambler wagon. It's not because of reliability or anything like that, it's because they would be afraid someone would hit it or I'd otherwise get in some kind of wreck and damage my good looking old car. I can relate -- the previous Rambler wagon this one replaced was totaled by an idiot in a year old Nissan Exterra. I wasn't really upset at the scene -- you drive a car you expect something could happen. Or rather I wasn't upset until the other driver looked at me and asked me if I knew I ran a red light (I didn't, he just wasn't paying attention, and was charged!). I looked him square in the face and told him he needed to stay the "f" on his side of the road! I had three cops taking my statement and one was over talking to him. When I asked about it being a bit unusual having three cops over here, one said "I know what I'd like to do if that was my car". Enough said!

 

I used to have an old VW bug that i had made into a roadster after one of my son's friends had rolled it. I whacked the top off, molded the leading edges in, replaced the bent up fenders, primed it black, added a set of Ansen Sprints, fat rear tires, a built 1600 dual port painted Chevy orange and chromed out and used it as a DD when the weather was half way decent. I worked swing shift (3:30 to 1:00 am). It was about 90 miles round trip. One day just as i pulled into the parking lot the throttle return spring broke and the throttle stuck wide open. I parked the car, went inside, grabbed a hand full of paper clips and rubber bands and made a return spring. People couldn't believe i just fixed my car with common office supplies. "Well when your 45 miles from home and it's 1 in the morning you gotta get home some way".

I get the same stuff with my T-Bucket. "I bought it to drive. It doesn't do me any good sitting home in the garage".

 

I'm painting some cabinets for a lady that is the original owner of a '65 mustang. I asked her if it had the 289 or the 6 in it and she told me that her dad wouldn't let her buy it with the v-8. He didn't want to her getting into trouble with it.

Everything is original excecpt for 1 repaint.


Larry

 

Imagine the look on the tyre guys faces when i buy 4x light truck radial tyres and then roll my kemp in to have em fitted up, man as soon as i crack the trunk lid they say, "Oh i understand", but only cause its loaded up with my carpentry tools.
What i dig the most is there cheap, most have a mile deep tread depth (great for housing sites) plus a vintage sidewall that holds porta walls flat against em and they come in tall but skinny sizes.

After last years effort working mainly in a office enviroment and copping not so positive feedback over my daily driver its good to be back on a worksite where the most common responces i get are, "What year is it" or "thats so cool".

 

I took one of my daily drivers into walmart to get tires replaced a few years ago and I told him what size tires I wanted. He asks me what year it is, so I tell him, and then he says he can't sell me that is one size bigger than what it had originally. I told him thanks, I'll just go to a real tire store then. Morons...