11 reasons not to buy a vintage car–and why you should ignore all of them

"...and enjoying the whole experience..."

We married on June 22, 1991.. Our parents gifted us our honeymoon trip, but in order to use it, we had to get from Sacramento to the SF airport after the wedding.  We were broke.. so, so broke back then.  Our 'best' car to get us there was my Ratrod 1953 F100.. this was before Ratrods were a thing, but I just couldn't bear to call that truck what it was: a beat down, hope and a prayer POS..  Anyway, we were both exhausted and excited as we started our new lives together en route to our honeymoon, getting about 11 mpg, when the V8 under the hood became a V4.. My new bride groaned as we coasted to the shoulder outside of Fairfield.  "Time me- two minutes max!" I said as I clambered out of the cab to tame the dual points back to functionality- a task done many, many times on this truck.  This was pre mobile phones, but all I would have used a cell phone for was the light; it's dark under that massive hood!  Lisa bit her tongue as the truck fired right up, using all of it's 8 cylinders, and on our way we went. 

     All these years later, we're still married, but the truck is now gone, and other things have changed too.. She's much smarter now, and refuses to ride in the vintage stuff I build.. Can't say as I blame her.  She still tells anyone who will listen about how our old truck 'broke down' on our wedding night, and she's especially fond of telling the story about how on our wedding night, I blurted out "Time me, two minutes max!"  

Keith Tanner said:

I'd like to point out that I have many old cars, but they all have Pertronix Ignitors or equivalents :) Except the blue Cadillac, I should sort that out...

I can certainly put a Pertronx in my 58 Ghia, but I am staying with the points because I can carry an easy to replace spare in my tool box for under $10.  A spare pertronix would be about $100. 

Old cars that use points likely need "tune ups" anyway, so that is just part of that process.  The amount I drive it, and the amount that most people would drive points cars these days, makes failure between tunups highly unlikely anyway.

If someone is technically "unsophisticated", I would likely recommend a Pertornix, but I would probably also recommend not driving anything but a fully modernized old car.

All of the above, just bought a 63 Mercury comet s22 convertible exactly like my first car and have been dealing with just about all of the above issues but hey, it's just like my first car... The similar car was seven years old when I was 17, now it's 60 years old and I'm 71... Drove it 1500+ miles so far and fixed floor rust and doing repairs as I go but loving the car. Gets nothing but love wherever it goes... I have three older BMWs also, 99 m3 vert, 99 528i msport sedan and 96 328 sedan.. All some of the best cars BMW ever built...