By Erin Fisher, Membership Manager

I realize that seeing a Cars + Coffee event at the Conservancy might be a bit of a head-scratcher. Our first participants were enthused, if a little confused. “This is great! The Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden used to do car shows out here years ago, it’s been a long time.”
So why did I want to bring back classic and exotic cars to the Conservancy parking lot- and how does this tie into our mission?
The truth is, our founder, Daniel Stowe, didn’t just like plants or conservation. He was a nuanced man of many interests, and he loved history, antiques and cars. He had quite a collection himself, and I strongly suspect the gloriously curvy internal road to the Pavilion and the very flat, strategically laid-out main parking lot reflects a thought process of having car shows on the property – and for many years, there were!
But think of initiatives like “Cash for Clunkers” and the side-eye that accompanies driving an old, gas-guzzler when you pull up to a stop light beside a sleek new EV. Surely, classic cars don’t mesh with conservation, right?
Well, they definitely can.
New cars of all kinds are an enormous sink of natural resources, from their manufacture to shipping and importing. They are made of hundreds of thousands of specialized components that are not easily broken down and recycled again. Even the most innovative, zero-emission vehicles are going to have tremendous ecological cost associated with them.
Of course, not all old cars are created equal and emissions matter. But take a second look at existing vehicles. They are here already; that manufacturing price has already been paid. For the vast majority of vehicles made in the last 70 years, replacing smaller, worn-out components to keep a car on the road for longer is going to have less real-time and environmental cost. And with responsible upkeep and retrofitting where possible, keeping an older car running can be a surprisingly green choice- and one that supports a more circular economy.

That doesn’t even begin to get into the other factors that go into owning a vehicle, particularly the emotional investment and historical factors. For me personally, growing up the daughter of a gearhead, and going to car shows from the time I could walk, car culture was just a way of life. My family showed thrift in many other aspects of our lives: buying most things used, growing gardens for both food and aesthetics and rescuing animals rather than purchasing them, but buying a used car and keeping it going was a big part of that way of life. It’s easy to throw something away when you decide it no longer suits you. It’s much more rewarding to take the time to care for and repair a vehicle with intention. 

One thing I found really interesting in looking around our first Cars + Coffee was how many different kinds of vehicles showed up, from classic American muscle to Japanese K-Cars, German luxury cars like Porsche and Mercedes, to early 2000’s tuned imports. And the people driving them had so many interesting stories! Some of them had owned their vehicle for multiple generations; many of them were younger than their cars. And every time I look at a car from a certain era, I think of all the history it has been around for – even in my own driveway! I look at our 2002 Tacoma and think: “That truck was somewhere in the Carolinas the day I graduated high school, when my husband joined the military, on the day we met.”

While it is well-worn now, with over 260,000 miles on the odometer, it was once shiny and new. I wonder who had it at those points in my own personal history. My husband and I have only had the truck for three years; it costs much less per year to maintain than even one monthly payment would be on a new one. Sure, it doesn’t have a great audio system or Bluetooth or navigation, but it is its own time capsule. That aspect is always my favorite thing about getting into a vehicle from an earlier age; that instant sensation of time travel. It makes it easy to imagine another time and another place.

Some photos from our first Cars + Coffee

This next Cars + Coffee on Sunday, October 19 is an extra special event for Halloween, so participants are encouraged to deck out their rides “Trunk-or-Treat” style and bring along some candy to hand out to the little ones. I hope you’ll join us, no matter if you have a cool ride to bring or just want to check out what everyone else has got. They’re interesting,  and every vehicle and their owner has their own story. Preserving those stories and histories also helps preserve our environment, in it’s own way.