I'm finally driving my 1971 Road Runner nearly every day I'm in town, but I'm ashamed it's been 18 years since an old car was my daily. I drive vintage junk for 12 to 20 weeks a year for my video gig, but using a muscle car for chores is a different program. It's made me realize how peoples' reactions to old cars have changed while making me nostalgic for the days when driving 1960s and 1970s cars was what everyone did out of normalcy—like when there was a Tuneup Masters down the street and it was still owned by Andy Granatelli. Imagine a business today trying to survive by changing spark plugs, points, and condensers. Now I carry all that stuff in my glovebox along with a spare ballast resistor. In a flashback to my 20s, I'm hauling a toolbox everywhere I go, too, and I also tote a fire extinguisher; muscle cars have gotten too hard to replace to let 'em burn.

Cruising the Road Runner helps me feel superior to the lemmings driving blob cars in various shades of silver, though I may finally admit it's me who's in the torture chamber. One reason: lack of air conditioning. I've been ruined by that particular amenity and now have to carry spare T-shirts to blunt the embarrassment of a soaked back in our 100-plus-degree weather. I think of the 1950s when everyone wore a suit or a dress and few cars offered chilled air. Did people just go into public drenched in sweat all the time? That's me now. Fair exchange for driving something without a touchscreen and being blissfully incapable of conducting a mobile-phone call from the driver seat.

When you stare out the windshield of a car that was familiar to you 30 years back, you expect to see things that aren't there any more. Service stations. Neon signs. Big hair. Auto-parts stores that know what they were doing, seedy neighborhoods before "regentrification" was a thing, and cops who profiled you as a punk hot rodder instead of seeing a Barrett-Jackson car driven by a guy with a midlife crisis.

Speaking of auctions, TV has made people obsessed with old-car values. I'm shocked how often peoples' first question about the car is, "what's it worth?" Not "what year is it?" or even the tiresome, "is it a Hemi?" Just right to the bucks. I was raised to consider it rude to ask people what they paid for something or how much money they have in a project. I just tell people it's not for sale, so it's not worth anything. On the other hand, guys don't ask if the car is for sale as often as they used to. I guess the auctions have convinced them that they could never afford a muscle car.

I live in Southern California, which explains this next one: twice I've been told by strangers that I'm irresponsible for driving such a gas guzzler. I reply that the manufacturing of their hybrid alone did more damage to the environment than my car will in 10 years on the road. Whether they hate my carbon footprint or not, more people than ever are just surprised that a 46-year-old car could be in regular use. My answer is, "people did it when they were new, so why not now?" Maybe because air conditioning. That global warming thing is killing me.