If you live in Auckland — hell, even the greater North Island — and you like cars, then you're probably familiar with Caffeine & Classics.
For the last five years or so, the dedicated C&C team have hosted one of the country's best regular motoring gatherings. These days it takes place at Smales Farm on the Shore once a month, and it does as good a job as any other to nail down New Zealand's wonderfully sporadic and eccentric car culture world.
But, there's a dilemma.
Photo / Shannons
Like many other events of its kind, Caffeine & Classics has become a victim of its own success. Its incredible popularity has seen the Smales Farm parking lot become bursting-at-the-seams at each event. And last month's show, perhaps the most crowded on record, was the tipping point.
In a lengthy, carefully worded statement posted on the event's Facebook page last week, C&C stated that it would be filtering attendees from now on to temper the amount of modern cars allowed through the front gates.
"If you own an “old” car (at least about 30-years-old) then your car can definitely be counted as a Classic in our eyes, regardless of make/model/country of origin or any other criteria," they said.
"If your car is newer than this, then we ask you to consider carefully whether it is suitable. If it is scratch-built, or an obscure or exotic model, one that you wouldn’t generally see being used as a daily driver, then by all means bring it along. However, if it’s a mass produced model and something you might see on your daily commute, then it’s not really suitable for Caffeine & Classics anymore."
You can predict what happened next, of course. The comment section split itself in two — between those who thought the decision was overdue, and those hurling their toys out of the cot at terminal velocity in the comment section because their 'modern' V8 or JDM machine can no longer come out and play.
But let's step away from that stuff and boil this down to the one raw question; what is a 'Classic'?
Photo / Getty Images
Search the question on Google (or Bing if you're a sociopath), and you'll quickly find yourself elbow-deep in an opinion tsunami. Some American clubs, like the Classic Car Club of America, have a concrete list of cars that are generally from 1948 and older. Their government is a bit more lenient, with their 25-year-old 'classic car' import threshold.
Meanwhile, the AA defines a classic as "usually older vehicles with historical interest that makes them collectable and worth preserving" — before pairing the story with a picture of a 'newish' Mustang GT ... a car defined by the social media peanut gallery as highly unlikely to make the Caffeine & Classics shortlist. Funny.
The most commonly repeated phrase throughout is that a car becomes a classic after 25 to 30 years — but, that hardly settles things.
Photo / Getty Images
You see, a 25-year-old car in 2018 isn't actually that ... 'old'. We're far beyond talking about old American tanks or adorable British sports cars when we delve into that kind of age range — in New Zealand that year group is the cusp of the bulk of our Japanese imports. Nissan Skylines, early Mitsubishi Lancers and Subaru Imprezas (plus the odd Falcon and Commodore); they're the typical 25-year-old classic in Aotearoa.
Then there's the vague everyone's-a-winner 'modern classic' term, which just about everyone else that owns some kind of limited-run Japanese, German, or Australian car can lay claim to ownership of. And in a more recent posting, Caffeine & Classics confirmed that cars like the Nissan GT-R are going to be allowed in.
Admittedly, it was with this 'modern classic' logic that I shoe-horned my Honda Civic Type R into last months show — most likely becoming 'part of the problem' in the eyes of certain attendees.
On one hand, it's a limited-run Japanese performance car and the last to use one of the manufacturer's famed naturally aspirated high-revving VTEC 'R' engines. Given they were only ever sold in Japan and Malaysia, it's not surprising that I only see a couple a month — far from it being something 'you'd see on your daily commute'.
And admittedly on the other hand, it's a bloody Honda.
I'll concede that I was somewhat anxious as to whether it would 'meet the threshold', but having followed a line of VE and VF-generation Holden Commodores (including a couple of stock standard SV6s) and watched them get allowed in without question, I was confident. Until an organiser stopped me, that is.
"Classic?" he asks.
"Probably more classic than the mob you just let in," I reply with a light chuckle.
"Whatever, good luck with that," the response. Message received.
So GT-Rs are in, Type Rs are out. Thirty-year-old cars are in, but if you post a picture of a 28-year-old BMW E30 in the Facebook comments and ask if it's a classic (as one brave soul did) you get pointed to the door by the community. It's a bit of a mess. Perhaps informing attendees of a parking numbers cap would've been a less controversial way to make room while simultaneously rewarding the dedicated souls that get there at the crack of dawn.
But, we're getting distracted here.
The answer to the original question is probably the most obvious answer of them all ...
There's no such thing as a definitive classic.
Yeah, sorry to adopt a Disneyist conclusion, but it's true. The world is always changing, opinions are constantly being formed and tweaked, and in that space it's logical to conclude that having a hard, concrete definition for what makes a car 'classic' is simply a waste of time.
Those from the US, or who grew up on a diet on American television are probably most sympathetic to American cars. Big fan of 007, or Top Gear? Then you probably favour European cars. And if you're young, facing a world where your whole generation is struggling to enter the housing market, the allure of cheap and infinitely modifiable Japanese cars is probably king.
One man's (or woman's) trash, is another person's treasure. A sure-fire classic to one, is a cliché bore to the next.
So let's put the pitchforks down and learn to appreciate everyone else's rides. In 30 years we'll all be getting shuttled from place to place in self-driving cars anyway — romanticizing to each other about CVT two-wheel drive compact SUVs and 'the good old days'.