In reply to preach :
Thank you for noticing our foot wear, it is an odd recognition to our developmental years that ran curiously parallel in different far flung states.
Did you just now sit down and ingest my post. If you did it in one sitting I may owe you a beer?
The story is transportation and if that was enough for me I would be driving a 4w/d mid seventies pick up with a 292/six and a 5speed. We currently live on the road in a 40' motor home full time, seeing the US. My wife is a project manager working in computers and I am retired. She works all week in the passenger seat and I keep this barge functioning as our home. Weekends we tour and visit cities and parks, maybe do minor off roading in our Jeep. Constant change of scenery and hopes of only staying where the daytime temps are around 70*. That part is working out pretty well.
Here is the rub for me. My favorite cars have always been ones reassembled by my hands, a point of pride I suppose? I like the challenge of buying for next to nothing and then fully using it up. I was born in 1962 so the dream cars of my childhood generally span the mid sixties to the late eighties and a bit beyond. The automobile IMHO hit a wall about 1990 where virtually everything became front wheel drive. Trucks were and still are on the rise due to the fact that many people prefer the feel of rear wheel drive, though front wheel drive does have some advantages. BUT front wheel drive vehicles generally lacked the easy modification to hot rods. The stand outs were few, Subaru's and 240Z's? ETC
I've seen some fantastic looking FWD vehicles come and go. I think one was a 95 Dodge Avenger, great body with the soul of an under powered minivan. Handling was great, accelleration, I was disappointed. Some good looking bodies were built but their drive line's let them down. I began to look at castoff cars, nice bodies, but the engine driving the wrong wheels IMO.
Then I stumbled in to a kit car Called the DF Goblin! Taking a favorite idea, making a body RWD, in this case Mid Engine! There were many post war European cars with rear engine layout similar to the Bug and Porsche. A transverse mid engine design is hardly new, Lamborghini Miura broke that ground in 1965. It was repeated again and again by X1/9, Fiero and MR2 and others. I'm next. The first hurdle was "an envelope"(body). I was not a fan of the exo-skeleton chassis of the Goblin, but it's existence gave many parts of my build premade. I am not in Love with the Cobalt body style, but it will keep me indoors!
My Big Picture is that "out there" is a body YOU find acceptable, functional and maybe even like-able? But the engine needs a relocation. I have seen that by comparison, newer cars are dang near disposable and some of the prices for minor wrecks proves that. Dig in folks, I'm out to show one way to get there! My slowdown is I'm never in the Garage. But I am working on the wiring while I am on the road! And visiting junkyards doing research on these bodies.
In short, It Can Be Done! Very few cars have been from scratch, from one clean sheet of paper. Builders put together parts of existing cars in different ways, maybe refined some bits, styled the body. Cars like the Shelby Cobra and kit cars like Factory Five and others prove that. Viola! New Car!