I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my car projects and I’m interested to hear from others on the subject of why we do this. I’ve been working on cars for 40+ years now and I’ve completed a number of projects in that time. At the moment, I’m knee-deep in the unexpected complete restoration of my 73 Baikal coupe. What started as a simple B35 swap has turned into a project that is currently on the rotisserie getting media blasted.
The scope of that project has me considering “why?”. Why do we spend so much time, money, and energy restoring these old cars? Objectively, no matter what we do to them, they are inferior (as transportation) to almost any new car on the market. I’m sure most on this forum would agree that our coupes are prettier than new cars but we often go to great lengths to “restomod” them with newer engines, suspensions, wheels, tires, etc. in a futile effort to make them drive half as well as the neighbor’s Hyundai Sonata. So why?
Yesterday, I was listening to Hidden Brain and learned of a concept by Researcher Daniel Mochon called “The IKEA Effect” that seemed to have relevance to our projects. The idea is that we tend to overvalue the things that we have created ourselves. Obviously, we (those on this forum) would take little pride in screwing together some flat-pack furniture but we all have our egos wrapped up somewhere in our coupes.
“People who spent time and effort building something felt proud of what they had built, fell in love with it and were willing to pay lots of money to keep the things they'd built. From the perspective of a rational economist, this doesn't make much sense.”
That resonated.
The researcher’s hypothesis was “that people tend to use products to signal valued identities to both themselves and to others. And we know that an identity that people really care about is showing that they're competent. This is sort of one of the basics of human motivation. And so we hypothesized that people use self-made products as a way to signal competence to both themselves and to others.”
To test the theory that people's feeling of competence was behind the Ikea effect, the researchers had some participants think about other qualities they might value in themselves besides competence - things like honesty or intelligence or humor. Basically, the idea was if they made it less important for people to demonstrate competence, would they still overvalue their own creations? They found that the Ikea effect disappeared when they did that manipulation. Once competence wasn't that important to people, the participants no longer seemed to get much value out of creating their own products. Again, suggesting that the reason why we tend to like our own creations is because we use them as a way to signal competence, both to ourselves and to others.
Maybe that explains why there are so many build threads?
And that had relevance to me. I’ve been proud of some of the things I’ve accomplished so far in my nascent project and I’ve considered starting my own build thread but it felt a bit narcissistic. My neighbors are all impressed at my skills but I’m painfully aware that they pale in comparison to many others out there – you on the forum know who you are. Spend a few hours with Don or Chris or Mike or Rey, etc. and you quickly realize how much you don’t know.
Side note: You can make the Ikea effect stronger by getting people to question their competence. The participants who had their sense of competence threatened tended to be more willing to build their own product.
Does the world really need another build thread? Why assume that the world cares a tinker’s cuss about my little endeavor? But would I even own the car if there was no one to show it off to? Because I have an ego, I’ll probably eventually start a thread, telling myself that others may benefit from what I’ve learned or how I’ve tackled some specific problem. But I wonder if you all haven’t already “been there, done that”.
One person who’s thread I find highly entertaining is Paul Dexter’s CSE project. He is clearly doing things others haven’t already done and I admire him for it. But this leads to another conundrum of car restoration – the purists versus the customizers. BMW owners (as opposed to the NCRS Corvette or FCA Ferrari crowds) tend to be awfully tolerant of performance-oriented modifications but I’ve discussed the electrification of classic cars with a number of people and there seem to be more detractors than fans. I worry about the pace of battery development and the possibility of having an albatross of an EV in 10 years but my wife has no particular affinity for the smell of unburned hydrocarbons and those 5 speed transmissions are getting harder and harder to find so why not make a unique, fast, remote emissions E9 EV? As Gary Beck (m5bb) once commented: “The haters gona hate. Is there some rule book we’re supposed to follow?”
I thought about that rule book comment when I was talking to Rey Rivera at his shop, where he has a tendency to stuff big modern M-motors into older BMWs. He said, “modifications are okay so long as they appear in a way that BMW might’ve done.” Not an exact quote but the sentiment seems like a good rule of thumb to me. It precludes the “drove through Pep Boys with a magnet” mods yet leaves room for the occasional Alpina injection or Getrag 265.
Does it leave room to ditch that silky smooth BMW 6 and replace it with a bunch of laptop batteries? If Paul’s website is any indication, it seems a good bet that he’ll finish off all that Tesla hardware in a way that would make BMW proud. Maybe I should go electric too?
There is clearly a place for 100% stock preservations and restorations. They honor the heritage and serve as touchstones for future enthusiasts, but I think there were enough coupes built that many of us can do what pleases us without guilt. What do you think?
I still haven’t decided what wheels (steering or rolling) or interior color or wood veneer and finish, or 100 other choices I’ll use on my car but it will be mine. Until then, I will stand on the shoulders of the giants who have posted before me. I will try to provide useful tidbits while remaining humble. I will respect all other owner’s decisions. And someday, I hope my coupe reflects my good taste and competence. In the meantime, I enjoy seeing yours at the various get-togethers in SoCal. Let me know what you think I should do -- and why you do it.
The scope of that project has me considering “why?”. Why do we spend so much time, money, and energy restoring these old cars? Objectively, no matter what we do to them, they are inferior (as transportation) to almost any new car on the market. I’m sure most on this forum would agree that our coupes are prettier than new cars but we often go to great lengths to “restomod” them with newer engines, suspensions, wheels, tires, etc. in a futile effort to make them drive half as well as the neighbor’s Hyundai Sonata. So why?
Yesterday, I was listening to Hidden Brain and learned of a concept by Researcher Daniel Mochon called “The IKEA Effect” that seemed to have relevance to our projects. The idea is that we tend to overvalue the things that we have created ourselves. Obviously, we (those on this forum) would take little pride in screwing together some flat-pack furniture but we all have our egos wrapped up somewhere in our coupes.
“People who spent time and effort building something felt proud of what they had built, fell in love with it and were willing to pay lots of money to keep the things they'd built. From the perspective of a rational economist, this doesn't make much sense.”
That resonated.
The researcher’s hypothesis was “that people tend to use products to signal valued identities to both themselves and to others. And we know that an identity that people really care about is showing that they're competent. This is sort of one of the basics of human motivation. And so we hypothesized that people use self-made products as a way to signal competence to both themselves and to others.”
To test the theory that people's feeling of competence was behind the Ikea effect, the researchers had some participants think about other qualities they might value in themselves besides competence - things like honesty or intelligence or humor. Basically, the idea was if they made it less important for people to demonstrate competence, would they still overvalue their own creations? They found that the Ikea effect disappeared when they did that manipulation. Once competence wasn't that important to people, the participants no longer seemed to get much value out of creating their own products. Again, suggesting that the reason why we tend to like our own creations is because we use them as a way to signal competence, both to ourselves and to others.
Maybe that explains why there are so many build threads?
And that had relevance to me. I’ve been proud of some of the things I’ve accomplished so far in my nascent project and I’ve considered starting my own build thread but it felt a bit narcissistic. My neighbors are all impressed at my skills but I’m painfully aware that they pale in comparison to many others out there – you on the forum know who you are. Spend a few hours with Don or Chris or Mike or Rey, etc. and you quickly realize how much you don’t know.
Side note: You can make the Ikea effect stronger by getting people to question their competence. The participants who had their sense of competence threatened tended to be more willing to build their own product.
Does the world really need another build thread? Why assume that the world cares a tinker’s cuss about my little endeavor? But would I even own the car if there was no one to show it off to? Because I have an ego, I’ll probably eventually start a thread, telling myself that others may benefit from what I’ve learned or how I’ve tackled some specific problem. But I wonder if you all haven’t already “been there, done that”.
One person who’s thread I find highly entertaining is Paul Dexter’s CSE project. He is clearly doing things others haven’t already done and I admire him for it. But this leads to another conundrum of car restoration – the purists versus the customizers. BMW owners (as opposed to the NCRS Corvette or FCA Ferrari crowds) tend to be awfully tolerant of performance-oriented modifications but I’ve discussed the electrification of classic cars with a number of people and there seem to be more detractors than fans. I worry about the pace of battery development and the possibility of having an albatross of an EV in 10 years but my wife has no particular affinity for the smell of unburned hydrocarbons and those 5 speed transmissions are getting harder and harder to find so why not make a unique, fast, remote emissions E9 EV? As Gary Beck (m5bb) once commented: “The haters gona hate. Is there some rule book we’re supposed to follow?”
I thought about that rule book comment when I was talking to Rey Rivera at his shop, where he has a tendency to stuff big modern M-motors into older BMWs. He said, “modifications are okay so long as they appear in a way that BMW might’ve done.” Not an exact quote but the sentiment seems like a good rule of thumb to me. It precludes the “drove through Pep Boys with a magnet” mods yet leaves room for the occasional Alpina injection or Getrag 265.
Does it leave room to ditch that silky smooth BMW 6 and replace it with a bunch of laptop batteries? If Paul’s website is any indication, it seems a good bet that he’ll finish off all that Tesla hardware in a way that would make BMW proud. Maybe I should go electric too?
There is clearly a place for 100% stock preservations and restorations. They honor the heritage and serve as touchstones for future enthusiasts, but I think there were enough coupes built that many of us can do what pleases us without guilt. What do you think?
I still haven’t decided what wheels (steering or rolling) or interior color or wood veneer and finish, or 100 other choices I’ll use on my car but it will be mine. Until then, I will stand on the shoulders of the giants who have posted before me. I will try to provide useful tidbits while remaining humble. I will respect all other owner’s decisions. And someday, I hope my coupe reflects my good taste and competence. In the meantime, I enjoy seeing yours at the various get-togethers in SoCal. Let me know what you think I should do -- and why you do it.
I won’t discount the effect because I know plenty of people that are beaming after assembling an ikea bookshelf. I get that same sense of pride, just with more complex efforts.
