I always get a kick out of seeing people who put "Collector's" license plates on beat-to-crap piece of junk cars. I doubt anyone is interested in collecting your 1982 Toyota Tercel (except maybe my Dad), but somehow it's a little jab at the pretentiousness of our society. The statement is kind of like a Nelson style "HA-HA" at that absurd momentum that makes equally junky stuff like this worth millions of dollars. At the heart of collecting is possessing something other's can't have, which somehow adds value to the object and the owner. Ever see some of the crap that passes for modern "art"? It's almost as if the art world uses their ability to spend thousands of millions of dollars on pictures as some kind of elite currency regardless of the actual quality of the work. My point however, is not a negative one--it's that you don't have to buy into the hype. And added to that, there are countless amazing artists out there who will truly move you, you just have to find them. I'd much rather have a poster of the box art of Castlevania than the creepy, butch Mona Lisa hanging on my wall.
Back to the old junky cars. I hear it really steams some people's beans when they see collector's plates on say, a 1983 Yugo. Call it kitcsh or whatever, but who's to say the mechanically inept Yugo isn't a piece of art? Perhaps it is like the coelaecanth, a fossil from another time improbably surviving into the modern age. Or perhaps it was a direct taunt to the Iron Curtain. As long as we live in a society where weird lines and scribbles pass as art* I'm perfectly fine letting the rusting hulks of cheap imported cars proudly don the collector's plate. Heck, my own Accord will be eligible in a couple of years.
*Wiggly lines drawn by animals are acceptible as cool art.
