There used to be a BMW 2000CS in my home town, on a street I periodically rode my bike past. Silver. Covered in dust. Never moved. I always dreamed of rescuing it one day, but never did.
It was an automatic, and it would never really be as good as I dream it’d be. But still, I think of that car every time I see an old BMW. I wonder what would have had to have happened for it to stay on the road and not get abandoned, probably junked.
This thought came back to mind when we read about this guy who still keeps his 50-year-old BMW 1600 on the road:
A conversation sprung up about how many more of these cars will be easily run in the near future as electrics. OEM parts from Tesla and Nissan are only now getting crammed into the shells of old classics, taking away all the need for mechanical knowledge that’s fast fading from society, as reader tulleytwo and teamtestbot noted:
Some people said they’d never give up the smells and the sounds of internal combustion engines, that the 2.0-liter inline four would never leave their 2000CS, so to speak. Reader NegativeEd wasn’t among them:
All of this makes me think about how much I would miss internal combustion. Maybe I wouldn’t miss gas- and diesel-burning, I think, if I was able to see more old cars still on the road in the face of endless coming scrappage schemes and thrown rods and other car-culling happenings.
But I’m a nostalgic person. I can’t throw it away. Even when I commit myself to not being nostalgic, I miss my more nostalgic moments. I’m hopeless. Maybe I shouldn’t fight my feelings, just know that they’re wrong, and embrace progress anyway. Maybe I need to throw my nostalgia down a well, and weep while it falls.