Today, I want to talk to you about air-cooled Porsche 911s…but, not in the way you think.
For years, these cars were cheaper than their newer replacements, harder to live with, and widely considered as obsolete.
But, now, they’re treated as untouchable icons.
Museum pieces, $150k+ collectibles, and a sign of true 'timeless taste’
Source: European Collectibles
But, they didn’t become valuable because people suddenly realized they were great cars.
They became valuable because they survived a long period when nobody cared.
You see, cultural value never actually forms at the peak of popularity.
No…instead, it forms after something falls out of fashion, gets thrown to the side, yet quietly persists against it all.
What we call ‘timeless’ now is usually just natural selection, over long and forgotten periods of time.
But, this pattern doesn’t just relate to cars.
It’s how status, taste, and value get rewritten constantly, all over the world.
Mechanical watches only mattered after quartz batteries made them irrelevant.
Film cameras only became ‘aesthetic’ after digital cameras made them impractical.
Vinyl only became ‘cool’ after streaming made it unnecessary.
It’s almost like, as a society, we don’t reward things for being useful…
We reward them for outliving irrelevance and then we pretend that it was the plan all along.
Talk soon,
Grant
Thanks for reading.
P.S. If you came from my YouTube channel, think of these emails as the notebook to our videos. Smaller ideas, early thoughts, and side observations that don’t need a full documentary.
My goal with every email is simple: one idea worth thinking about.
If you have a pattern, idea, or question you want explored - reply to this email.