I’ve mentioned once or twice before that I feel very humbled that I’ve been able to rub elbows with many of the people that I’d consider to be influential in my sphere of automotive interests. Being an automotive journalist – as it says so formally on my résumé – has allowed me some really cool opportunities that I believe I never otherwise would have been able to experience.

Last week, I wrote up a short news item on a two-part documentary that was filmed during the early part of the 1969 NASCAR season. Titled “The Chargers,” the documentary followed racers like Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, James Hilton and Bobby Isaac while also interviewing crew chiefs and car builder-legends Cotton Owens and Mario Rossi.

Not surprisingly, the article was an instant hit and garnered some of the most traffic I’d seen for a single news article in a good while. But what was a pleasant surprise was how many forums and other automotive news sites picked up the same video. The article had become viral, taking on a life of its own.

It was because of this that a friend forwarded the link to Bill Rossi, son of Bobby Allison-car builder Mario Rossi.

Expecting little more than some grainy race footage taken of his father, Bill was surprised as the documentary turned its focus on Rossi throughout the film. It had been nearly 28 years since Bill had heard his father’s voice; Rossi having reportedly died in a small plane crash in January of 1983, 14 years after the filming of this documentary.

Sitting there, watching the short interview on his flickering computer screen, Bill was immediately taken back to his childhood, before Rossi’s death, to his earliest days in the garage watching his father turning wrenches.

“I’m a father myself, now.” Bill told me on the phone. “I’ve got one going to college and another in high school. It’s kind of surreal to hear my dad’s voice again. It’s been so long.”

After watching the documentary, he hunted down my office phone number to see if I knew how to buy a hard copy. We talked for half an hour, swapping stories about previous cars we’ve owned, projects we’re currently working on, and stuff we’d like to get our hands on someday. You know, the usual car guy stuff.

He mentioned he still talked to Cotton Owens and shared some stories about Owens and his father working together, and how Owens still had a bunch of old Dodge Daytona stuff lying around, like it were a pair of cast exhaust manifolds or a Holley four-barrel he had hiding on a shelf.

After saying good-bye to Bill and thanking him for the call, I was struck by something: car people are all the same.

When I was 25 years old, I met Dick Landy. He was in his mid-60’s, far shorter than I imagined and standing alone, staring at the then-new 5.7L HEMI on display at the Mopar booth at the 2nd ever Mopars at The Strip event in Las Vegas. Frankly, I wouldn’t have recognized him were it not for his iconic unlit cigar.

“So, what do you think?” I mumbled, trying to engage the racing legend.

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow cocked above his thick tinted glasses. “I think it’s horse$#&%. It ain’t a HEMI,” he growled.

Maybe it was my surprised expression that made him recant, “I mean, it’s a good start. And its fun to see them using aluminum dual-plug heads on a production motor. That used to be race stuff. But I guess that’s how it always goes.”

We chatted about engines, shared what we thought Mopar could do in the future (somebody must have been listening, because the all-aluminum 426 Gen III was my idea), and just shot the bull for ten minutes or so. Looking back, my conversation with Dick Landy was little different than talking with any number of my friends.

I frequent quite a few local car shows. The large national venues are great, but its the local cruises that I’m more at home with. Be it in front of a burger stand, a donut shop, a coffee house or even a big box mart, it’s all the same. The people are the same. And while I haven’t had a running car to drive to one in what feels like ages, I still just like to walk the parking lot and meet new people, talk about their cars, and just hang around “car people.”

Car people aren’t quite like other groups of folks. Off-roaders have something to prove. Motorcycle people wear too much leather around publicly, which weirds me out. Boaters are too fractured. Heaven forbid you mention that you own a power boat or even – gasp – a JetSki around a bunch of sail boat people.

Sure, there’s the occasional obnoxious in-your-face Ford Mustang guy blasting 80’s “hair metal,” a few balding Bow Tie loyalists who remember history just a little bit skewed, or the mullet-haired shade-tree-mechanic Mopar fanatic who named his son Monaco and once married a Waffle House waitress because she had a Pentastar tattoo. But other than the few extremes, it’s impressive how similar we all are.

And a think that’s the point. We’re all into this because we love these cars. We love the nostalgia tied to them. We love what they represent, both personally and in a larger sense. We love the performance they came with and the performance they’re capable of. We love their shape, their colors, and their spirit. This mutual affection is unifying and no matter your personal taste, persuasion, or height of fame, we can all agree that we want to see these cars around for our children to grow to love them as we do.

Light ’em up,

Kevin