The satisfaction and personal gratification of doing the work yourself is a huge part of it. Indeed.
I see it as an investment. Both in handling/performance and reliability/safety. Production standards have improved, sure. But you never know what you are paying for until you tear it apart. That's true for a 40 year old car, and one fresh out of the factory doors.
When you build it yourself, you know every bolt is torqued correctly, every seam welded proper, every inch of metal is coated, every measurement is square... That's what makes a car last. That is what makes a car safe.
You can buy a new CTS-V for $70k and still just have a production car, albeit a very nice production car, but production nonetheless.
Or, you could buy a used CTS-V for $20k, and put $15k into it with some elbow grease, and have a dialed in, tuned, faster, safer, more structurally sound vehicle for half the cost... And it's still a Cadillac.
I love the CTS-V, so I used it as an example. But the comparison works as a concept.
People who can't replace the ink stick in a click pen, or change a light bulb without calling the landlord, or operate a fork without going blind... They don't, and won't, understand why we do what we do. That's fine. They can buy the new stuff, somebody has to. We need people to buy and wreck new production vehicles so we can get low mile engines for our swaps.
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