As a kid, there was nothing more exciting than when friends and I were “on the hunt,” usually for some kind of pirate’s treasure or secret hideaway. We never found any, but for a bunch of 12-year-old kids, that didn’t matter.
These days, decades older, I get just as excited while following up a hot lead for some sort of automotive treasure, even if I never actually find it. My friend Peter Egan, longtime editor-at-large at Road & Track magazine, has a favorite saying: “It’s all about the journey, not the destination.”
I think I know how he feels. A good hunt gives me an adrenaline rush I can’t get anywhere else.
I needed to find out exactly what happens inside the brain of a barn-finder when he’s on the prowl. So I spoke with a psychologist who understands both sides of the equation. Geoff Hacker is an industrial psychologist who teaches psychology, interpersonal communications, managerial decision making, and other courses at the university level. But this PhD is also a car-hunter’s car hunter.
Hacker, 51, searches for and restores fiberglass specials, homemade sports cars from the 1950s and 1960s often referred to as kit cars. He has dozens of one-of-a-kind fiberglass sports cars stored in and around Tampa, Florida. As a professor, Hacker takes a more academic approach to car hunting than most of us. “My hunt is mostly research for new information,” he says. “If I find and buy a car in the process, that’s even better.”
Hacker may call the phone number of an interesting car from a 30- or 40-year-old classified ad. Sometimes he discovers the car never sold. And at the very least, he’s had a great many fascinating discussions, and often finds himself the student instead of the mentor.
“For car guys, it seems ownership is not as important as the adventure,” he says, putting on his psychologist’s hat. “In some regard, we are trying to reclaim our youth, trying to acquire toys of our childhood. For those of us of a certain age, life is just not as exciting as when we were kids.”
Hacker makes a distinction between “hunting” and “hoarding,” in which individuals acquire many vehicles and keep them for long periods of time, often in a state of continuous disintegration.
“Hunters sell or trade vehicles; hoarders seldom do,” he said, quickly adding that he occasionally sells his cars. “The art of the hunt is primarily related to an evolution of human beings,” he says. “Think about it; we are using the word hunt to discuss searching for cars. It wasn’t too long ago—a couple of hundred years—that we actually needed to hunt and kill the food we ate.
“It’s an endorphin release,” he adds, “whether killing a wild boar or finding an old Packard, it gives us a similar feeling of mental gratification. You can see the gleam in Wayne Carini’s eye when he makes a new discovery on Chasing Classic Cars.”
Hacker maintains, though, that car hunters today definitely have the advantage over cavemen when they were tracking boar. “Let’s face it; we have Hemmings Motor News, online sources, auctions, classified ads, and Google Earth, in addition to simply driving down country roads when looking for old cars.”
Then again, finding great cars is still not a simple endeavor, according to Hacker.
“It never fails—the harder I work, the luckier I get!”
Geoff Hacker
Founder of the Forgotten Fiberglass website and automotive archeologist extraordinaire www.ForgottenFiberglass.com
