What is the futureof collecting?

What is the future of collecting?

During the Monterey car week The petersen Museum promoted a high-level debate on a very important contemporary issue. Bruce Meyer, Miles Collier, Jon Shirley and phillip Sarofim, coordinated by McKeel Hagerty, drew everyone’s attention to what has become a significant matter.

By Dan Kahn

Arturo Keller's 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Autobahn Kurier, Best of Show Pebble Beach 2021

Passion Continuation

The future of collecting is central to those who love Classic cars. Defining the path we need to travel for a sustainable future of classic cars requires an understanding of the motivation behind the passion.

Here are 3 good reasons:

1. preservation of the cultural values of a car through its history. Every car from the past carries a message linked to its particular moment in time that goes beyond the mere function of the vehicle itself. values that derive not only from the country of production and fashion of the time, but also from the marque of the vehicle and the history of its manufacturer.

2. The well-being that luxury brings. This is of course a subtle issue: Luxury does not just equal wealth. As Coco Chanel once said, luxury is the opposite of vulgarity. In other words, the cultured luxury of owning a classic car is the same whether you can afford a Bugatti or you settle for a small cheap classic. The curiosity, interest, care and pride of ownership will be just the same. This is why there are no obstacles to collecting for the younger generation.

3. The pleasure of using them. Collectors' cars are magnificent objects that delight their owners with the pleasure of being driven, admired and cared for. Everything that contributes to this supports its future. So, it’s worth certifying the quality of events and inventing new formulas that stimulate the pleasure of using these cars. We need to work hard against the limitations of using them. Developing non-polluting-fuels for classic cars might help to support this goal.

I had the honor of being invited to moderate this roundtable. Restrictions on travel to the USA due to Covid prevented me from doing so. However, ever since the creation of The Classic Car Trust and publication of this Yearbook, I always aimed to help find ways to safeguard the future of collecting. In a world that changes so rapidly, protecting the past and the possibilities they create for the present are great opportunities. However, this requires accepting new realities and thinking and acting in new dimensions to navigate the world of collecting on the right side of change. Taking passion into the future will help to enable the Tomorrow of History.

Fritz Kaiser

The magnificent setting of Pebble Beach 2021. On the left McKeel Hagerty the esteemed moderator of the round table. Above the collectors Jon Shirley and Miles Collier.

Monterey Week is one of the world’s centres of car collecting and combines events and auctions with significant debates on the values of Collecting. At the Quail Lodge & Golf Club, on 13rd August, inside the Bonhams tent, McKeel Hagerty, member of the Petersen Museum board who organized the meeting, commenced a discussion on the future of car collecting together with some of the sector’s leading proponents. Phillip Sarofim, a collector of Meyers Manx, Petersen board member and lifetime member of the Petersen Checkered Flag 200; Bruce Meyer, founding president of the Petersen Museum and member of the CF200; Miles Collier, founder of the Revs Institute; and Jon Shirley, former president and chief operating officer of Microsoft and a member of CF200, spoke strongly of their experiences with the renowned teams they represent. During the discussion, three main obstacles that today’s and tomorrow’s car collectors will face were highlighted. The most damaging blow, as explained by Jon Shirley, will be the push for laws that favour autonomous vehicles and limit the public’s ability to continue to drive. While fully self-driving cars are still years, if not decades, away, the speakers agreed that enthusiasts should remain vigilant about the actions lawmakers will take to move the autonomous technology agenda forward.

“The greatest threat to what we do and how we enjoy cars is not going to be the tech of new cars, it’s going to be whether or not there will be efforts to prevent us from driving our cars,” Shirley said. “That’s something we need to deal with as proactively as possible.”

Miles Collier brought up the second challenge, which is the lack of expert mechanics and restorers who can work on specific vehicles, especially those with more complex electronics and made of exotic materials. While technologies such as 3D printing have made sourcing components easier, the number of people who have the expertise to service high-tech cars and components is dwindling. The panellists added that this will be a growing challenge over the next 10 to 15 years and be most prevalent in supercars and hypercars, which are becoming increasingly complex and expensive to maintain. Along with talented mechanics to service these vehicles, the demand for original parts for both classic and modern collector’s cars will become unsustainable as materials such as fabric and composites continue to decay.

The group agreed it will become more difficult to find people who can renew these components and many collectors will have to turn away from maintaining the originality of their vehicles.

“We need to respect each automobile individually,” Collier said. “You need to, as the custodian, design your own program for those cars and you need to recognize that all use is consumption, and you need to come to some resolution as to what kind of consumption is acceptable.”

The final but most immediate hurdle is that younger generations are quickly losing interest in car collecting as a whole. Classic cars have become more expensive and thus less accessible to college-age students and below. Fewer teenagers are getting their driver’s licenses - this belief, fortunately, is contradicted by the results of the survey we published on page 999 - while city traffic worsens, making ride sharing services and alternative forms of transportation more convenient and more popular. “At the Petersen we’re constantly finding ways to engage young people and entertain them, but you almost have to figure that some kids are going to get it and some kids aren’t,” Meyer said. “So you have to appeal to the ones that get it... We just keep changing up and hitting every hot button that brings people in, whether it’s movie cars, rock ‘n roll cars, Porsche Le Mans winners or lowriders.”

The spectacular presentation of Porsche 917s on the 50th anniversary of their last victory at Le Mans. On the right from the top, three eras in awarding: 1910 Winton 17 Seven Passenger Touring, 1937 Cord 812 Phaeton and the 1964 Ferrari 250 GTO

One of the many elements that continues to bring new blood to the hobby are racing video games such as Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo.

These games feature massive collections of cars for players to drive around and game developershave made an effort to create more authentic driving experiences in a relatively affordable package that millions of people can enjoy at home. “Social media platforms, online forums as well as gaming are other tech aspects that are changing the world of collecting and bringing so much attention to collectors,” Philip Sarofim said.

The panel agreed that it is the current car collecting community’s responsibility to help nurture younger enthusiasts’ passion for cars if they want to preserve the hobby for the future. This includes not just storing them, but sharing them, taking them to shows, letting children sit in them and anything that creates memories for budding car lovers and drives them to pursue their dream cars.

“Automobiles are active matter,” Collier said. “They are an artifact that was designed to function in some way and you can’t see it as active matter if you don’t see it in the real world. “ ■

A visionary car journey through the 20

Martina Mazzotta, exhibition curator and academic, specialises in how art, science and philosophy relate to each other. What follows is her imaginary journey through the 20th century"

By Martina Mazzotta Illustrations by Massimo Grandi

Photo Editor Stefano Beloni The following pages are devoted to a journey through the 20th century, a trip in which readers can take an active part, imagining themselves at the wheel of a variety of cars that will lead them along parallel roads and in different directions in an interplay of shared experiences, sensorial input, individual memories and fleeting references. It’s a journey through time, occasionally visionary and unfailingly rich in elements destined to stir up feelings of admiration, but also of criticism and doubt.

Each stage is enriched with boxes featuring the leading figures of the visual arts, fashion, architecture and music of the period, along with their works. What comes to the fore is the interconnected nature of creativity, including that of automobile design. From this vantage point readers can enjoy new insights and perceptions regarding the range of inspiration, invention and originality captured in Massimo Grandi’s wonderful watercolors.

The 20th century was full of interesting contradictions, of contrasting solutions that gave rise to competitive challenges. Various epithets have been adopted to

By framing the QR code with your smartphone you can hear the selected music.