Early last May I finally got my ’68 Camaro finished up and on the road, unfortunately many people don’t pay attention while driving and as a result my car was wrecked on May 5th of ’07. Gone were my plans of a summer filled with cruising, racing and to be honest showing off all my hard work.

 Luckily the guy that hit me had insurance so she was fixed and after 6 long months is back in my garage. But I have paranoia. I intellectually know I shouldn’t since the odds of it happening again are slim, but when I stop I leave two to three spaces in from of me. Tailgaters make my eye twitch and I seem perpetually ready for the sound of screeching rubber and the jolt of the impact. But I’ll get over it. After all what choice do I have? Cars are here to server on single purpose, to be driven. It doesn’t matter how nice they are or how much they cost. If they sit in a garage or are only slowly rolled into car shows it’s really no longer a car. So I will drive Penny because that’s what I built her for. Actually I’m more excited about getting the car onto one of the local road courses. Now, I have too much cash and time tied up I the car to enter any “fender to fender” type racing, but open track days are a blast and, believe it or not, safer than the public highways. I’m sure I will collect rock chips and various battle scars from “off road excursions”, but it will be a blast and having fun is what this hobby is supposed to be about. It’s supposed to be about getting a stupid big smile on your face after pounding thought the gears and hitting the perfect apex. Or maybe from beating your best time through the quarter mile. It’s not about worrying over how a car show judge will view your effort and what other people think. Cars should be built for drivers, pure and simple. This isn’t to say that having a good looking car and a driven car are mutually exclusive. There’s nothing wrong with making your ride shine and wow the crowds at the local cruise spot. But, if that car is also driven those people will be even more impressed and you’ll have much more fun doing it.

So, build it, shine it, beat on it, fix it, break it and then fix it again. But most of all, have fun doing it.