Why should people keep their hybrid discussions on the hybrid forum?

See if this analogy makes any sense: There are lots of people in the US who have tremendous appreciation for CLASSIC CARS. They go to great lengths to restore them, to sustain them. They pay premium prices to replace a worn part with an authentic matching part. Because they value the cars' authenticity, they care whether a car's engine number matches the original. They'd only repaint their car, if necessary, with its original color. And so on.

There are also many people who customize cars. They put a DeSoto grille on a Ford, or paint flames on a Model A, or put spinner wheels on a '40s Studebaker. They chop and channel their cars and roll and pleat an interior that never came that way from the factory. They put 21st-century five speed trannies in cars that came with hydromatics, and do bodywork to replace single headlights with quads.

To the customizing set, these wildly modified cars look great. To classic car buffs, they're cartoons, and each one means one fewer authentic car to be appreciated for the way it looked and ran when it was original, one less opportunity to preserve that originality.

Customizers share their enthusiasm in special-interest custom car venues, not in classic car magazines, on classic car forums or at classic car shows. Both groups love cars, but in very different ways, with very different value systems.

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