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well as for my kid...he'll be wrenching. my dad tought me and i'll teach mine. he already gets out there and helps me at 3.

as to the chettah...i didn't know what that was till Yahoo told me on the homepage, but then i understood after reading. so i gained knowledge.

alot of what i learn mechanical was taught to me through a bleep or bip of a modern computer these days, but before that my dad taught me. my pdf service manual from packard info that i can pull up on the computer in my garage on my 26" 1080p tv is just dandy ;0), but i do have a paper version too. heck i got it on my iphone too.

but i do get where you are coming from... alot of people i know have their nose stuck into there iphone on facebook or texting, so much that i think the evolution will ultimately be the death of our social skills and verbal in person communcation, not so much our ability to learn, but our ability to socialize with it. this forum isn't too far off from that, but we do at least meet up in our respects with our cars at local meets and talk in person, so we practice both in this hobby.

but i don't see a local facebook meet up around.....or texting meet up....yeah.....just think about that...one day we wont even know how to cry unless it is stairing at a computer screen reading whatever bad news was posted.

hopefully i'm dead by the time i talk to a kid and he looks at me like i'm dumb cause i didn't text it instead.

i tend to think of myself as having old school values mixed with new tech ways. i like the livelyhood of the 40/50s etc etc...but i like the new tech i get to enjoy too.

i guess i'm a hybrid of sorts and i hope i pass on that to my son too. i can do both old and new ways, i enjoy both.

Hank

also i'm glad there is a ""Tomorrow's Packard Owners" section.

This is Charlie my 4 year old, he loves to help around in the garage and pretend to fix stuff. The next generation of car lovers has arrived and if any of you are worried your car may not be appreciated in the future I'm sure he'd take it off your hands. That's a 1930 Packard 320 CI straight eight in the background. Picture was taken about a year ago.

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AL, I think all the reasons you gave for why kids of today have no interest in vintage vehicles are exactly why we should be cultivating the younger generations.

(o[]o)

John (JW) and Todd (tfee), I like both photos, thanks for sharing.

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Al, don't know if really of no interest because when I start to talk about bygone times then the kids listen carefully. But I endorse you that the gaps in knowledge are simply astonishing. Once a magazine lay on the kitchen table with pictures of the top ten or top twenty of historical figures and people in power during the 20th century (Einstein, Hitler, Stalin, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, JFK, Mao, ...). Okay, such selections are always subjective. I asked my daughter (at that moment at the age of 18) to name their names. She pointed a finger at Hitler and said "He is ... whatshisface ... I know him but I don't know his name yet." That was the complete answer a few weeks after graduating the high school with honors.
I think that every generation has the right of an own history. Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) is long gone.

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JW

You cannot teach those who WILL NOT learn. Sure you can instruct them in all the knowledge you have but when they try to use it, one of their friends will sneer and ask "why are you working on that old clunker" and there goes all of the teachng because peer pressure will take over. What's the old adage "all of my friends have euro-rods". The things is there is only one thing that will combat that and that is sex. When my stepson was 17 he wanted a 2 seater sports car, All I have was 1975 Chrysler Town and Country
wagon. So he used the 'all my friends' arguement. I countered with how many girls can you fit in a two seat sports car. Of course he said 1. I then said how many girls can you fit in a 9 passenger station wagon. He did not miss a beat, he said 'dad can I borrow the wagon tonight'.

Gusha:

What you say is true, John W. is gone so is Lex Barker, Jock Mahoney, Gordon Scott, but we remember who they were, along with other greats. But to not know who they were and what they were famous or infamous for. The old saying that 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. To not know Hitler, whats next? Stalin, McCarthy, Manson, Dahmer. We should all be outraged at this. I know this thread has gone a bit off the track but it is essentially the same thing. Someday not one child will know who Daimler was, or Ford, or R.E. Olds etc etc. It makes me sad.

Wow! This thread is going to be a lot of fun!

I got interested in Packards because years ago the CCCA crowd threw fantastic parties. They even carried little martini bars that were set up on the running board. In those days the drinking age was 18 and the BAL .15%. So you could get pretty stoned and still be legal. Of course there was less traffic on the roads too. And I was never a really big drinker, but a good party is hard to turn down.

Today incomes are falling, asset values are falling, and tax revenues are falling so expensive hobbies like old cars are subject to retrenchment. Also, the industrial base is a shambles and little services are disappearing as well. Not to mention that certain specialists are not being replaced.

I agree as well that education is a wasteland. I made a living as a practicing mathematician for 20 years. Work and interest in that technology became harder and harder to sell until the bottom fell out. During that period the corporate foundation changed from value added based profits to some screwy political system of self-centered communication schemes whereby nonproductive and counter productive aggressives systematically got rid of people who went to work to actually do something. At least the Vanderbilts had a railroad. Today we have junk like twitter and fortunes based on pure baloney.

I think the biggest problem though is that back in the 1960's if you got behind the wheel of a good Packard, it drove better than a brand new Chevrolet. You can't say that today. Also, when I was a kid a blue collar tradesman could earn enough money to live well and have a car as a hobby. Those days are gone. Supposedly if you earn $16 dollars an hour you are even with the people building the Model T. And they didn't have to pay as much in taxes. Today car mechanics are making less than 50% what they did 15 years ago and being chiseled by flat rate as well. I would never expect any youth to put up with that. Old people like me know how to put up with hard times which is why the average age for skilled automotive service is over 50. It's fortunate that the cars today are so much better because in a few years the automobile will become like the PC - something used until it breaks and thrown away.

Really, the car companies treat their service professionals like - shxt - and are systematically starving the technicians into oblivion.

Why would any young person want to put up with that? I don't blame them one bit. The system today is geared to reward bxllshxtters and anybody who spends the time to learn something besides how to manipulate other people is considered a darn fool.

That's not to say that the engineers aren't operating on the bottom line, but they aren't doing so well either. If you look at the compensation granted for the level of technology for todays' engineers, they have taken a huge hit compared to the pre-computer control days.

It's the same everywhere, the more you have learned the stupider you considered.

When I was younger I absolutely loved cars. "Car" was my first word according to my parents. I would name every car we passed by on the road. The only toys I ever wanted had wheels. Hotwheels and matchbox cars were my toy of choice. Here I am; now 18 years old, and that passion and love for things old and automotive related has only grown. The car that was going to be handed down to me; a 1990 mustang lx, was totaled by my father. I look at it now, and i'm glad that happened. It was that eye opening experience that led me to my 1952 200 deluxe touring sedan. It was bought with my hard earned money and is being restored with my own hands and paychecks. I think the future is bright for old cars; Packards especially. My friends had no idea what a Packard was, and instantly they were interested in it. Where did it come from? What does it look like? I haven't driven a foot in my first car, which is frustrating to say the least, but the beauty and craftsmanship of that automobile drives me forward to keep working at it so she can take me back to a simpler time.

Hey Guys,
I find this topic very interesting and important. Aside from the Packard aspect of it, it also speaks to a situation common throughout the classic car culture. I live in northern Minnesota and belong to a local car club here and we in the club are having a lot of the same conversations. Our club if made up mostly of muscle cars and street rods but there are also a few of us who are into restorations. I think that we are coming to the realization that we are going to have to embrace that most common of all things--CHANGE. We have been (passively I think) encouraging whatever younger people in the area that have any automotive interest to come to our cruise nights. And once in a while one or two will show up. However, and I think this is where we are shooting ourselves in the foot, we tend to ignore them because they are more interested in what they are more familiar with. They tend to drive the later model mustangs and other small cars that I think we don't show much appreciation for. Oh, they do like to come see these cool looking old machines that we drive but they don't seem to have much on a interest in having one of them themselves. I guess that I hope that someday they will develop more of a love for these vehichles we have, but, if not, I guess that is the way of life. It kind of reminds me of my grandpa they way he used to talk about a spirited horse he used to ride or the team he had in the field that could out pull any of the neighbors teams. What is that old saying, "the only think constant in life is change itself".

Miles