Many thanks for the kind words and encouragements.

Although I did my best to avoid old age, it is here and demands its tithe.

I'm not cut of the same cloth as the majority of car enthusiasts in that the purpose of the car for me, first and foremost, is to be driven. I don't collect them in the sense that their possession is the goal, they are not part of some "portfolio", and polishing them up to show them off to others is an activity that rather mystifies me. To be honest, I find that whole world rather nauseating in its peacock-feather-strutting self-promotion. It doesn't help at all that the culture depends on flocking together when I'm a very solitary creature.

For me, a car has two functions. Most of my life I've had to maintain two very different ones to meet those requirements. One is to haul me and whatever freight might need hauling this day from Point A to Point B. Simple, reliable, some level of comfort, the essential daily driver. The other is for the simple joy of driving. It needs to allow me to practice at a skill-level I can enjoy, and be perhaps just a little bit better than me, if that makes sense.

In my younger days, if there was to be a social setting, it would be based on competition of skill rather than of cheque-book. Any idiot can buy a concours show-winner piece of rolling costume jewellery. How many even know the difference between oversteer and understeer?

Anyway, my world has been defined by good cars, not pretty ones. Along with the driving comes my doing the maintenance and "tightening up", in my youth by financial necessity and later on because I enjoy it. The platforms of my youth are now "classics", so specialised parts sources are required, but mine are dusty, oily, a few dings and dents here and there, and continue to live as prepared sportscars year in and year out. They are survivors, not restorations with no history or collector items with no soul.

Now comes the day we all know comes, not the day we deal with our mortality (for me, that was a long time ago) but the one when we deal with our longevity (unexpected, in my case). It's the day one admits infirmity precludes doing some things one is very used to doing. One can give up or one can adapt.

In my case, the plan is to adapt, and that picture looks to be selling the now-classics and replacing them with a driving platform that I can continue to practice with, maintain a skill-level, continue to find mental calm and a few giggles whilst so doing. The constant fettling of old is no longer practical if the wrenching now devolves on someone else, and the choice very much depends on it being a car that can get its maintenance in the same manner as my daily, by the same guy, and importantly with a parts inventory that is either from the OEM or in the general parts-store availability my guy uses for the rest of his business.

I might be facing the loss of much of my own shop time because of my age and mileage, but I need not lose the primary purpose, the drive, because of it.