Not a "real" classic car?
04/16/2020
I'm sure everyone has heard this in a petrol conversation: "That's not a 'real' classic car".
What this usually means is that a certain car doesn't feel like a really old car, but has more of a used car feel, looks too modern or isn't "special" enough.
Of course, this cannot happen to pre-war classic cars. Cars built before 1945 are real classic cars for all observers. Even the cars of the 1960s would hardly be denied classic car status. But things can get trickier as early as the seventies, and by the time we reach the eighties at the latest, the debate about what constitutes a "real" classic car becomes heated. A Golf II quickly has to jump the razor's edge, as does a BMW E30. Even a Mercedes-Benz 500 SL from the R129 series is too young to be considered a classic car.
According to the rule "30 years old = classic car", these can of course all be classic cars today, but if you already knew the cars as youngtimers (or even as new/used cars), then it is obviously more difficult to grant them classic car status. And if they were produced really frequently, like a VW Polo/Derby or an E-Class W124, then it gets even trickier.
For us, this hardly makes a difference, because we like almost all cars that have matured well and have something about them that makes them seem special today.
P.S. Incidentally, we wrote a report on the 1989 VW Golf II GTI pictured here some time ago, when it was actually still a youngtimer ...
