You miss the point. A car that you own is yours to do with as you please. A car owned by someone else shouldn’t be touched unless permission in granted. It’s called RESPECT.

I can’t go by what you hope he might have meant; I can only go by what he wrote.

Car people, especially, should understand. Respect is the #1 qualification for being a car guy. Even those without cars, can be car guys, as long as they respect the fact they are rolling art. Only owners can touch. Anything else is unarguably the definition of disrespect.

How about you touch your car, put a Coke on the roof of your car, ride around in your car with shoes on, and drive your car through rain, dust bugs (whatever “dust bugs” are) and mud?

So much this. If the car’s not yours, you don’t get to decide who touches it. This is a really simple concept, and I was under the impression that grown adults would understand it. Evidently I was wrong.

How about go fuck yourself?

Cars and Coffee? Sure.

Cool man. You are okay with people touching your car. I’m not and it’s mine, so keep your hands to yourself.

Encouraging people to touch your cars = awesome.

I’m 100% with you on cars being dirty and terrible. Cars are meant to be used and enjoyed. Sometimes I don’t wash my cars for a year or more. But I would never, ever want someone to touch my car, or anything else I own, without my permission.

Actual conversation with a friend/cow-orker when I brought my project car to work one day:

Let me put it this way: If this “you have to let me grope your car” thing becomes a thing, none of my cars will be coming to Radwood. The deal here is that I don’t grope / fondle / scratch your car, and you don’t grope / fondle / scratch mine.

Isn’t it standing Jalopnik advice to “Not mess with other people’s cars?” What happened to that? Or is touching someone else’s car not the same thing?

I agree that people shouldn’t hide their cars away from the world, but you don’t get to decide what other people do with their property. If someone doesn’t want you to touch their belongings, don’t touch them. It’s not about damage, just respecting boundaries.

I feel weird that this is a conversation that needs to…

Naw, touching other people’s stuff without their permission is not cool.

I am sorry, but your position is all kinds of wrong. If you touched my classic car at a show without permission, which has original paint, I would knock you out.

It is not a car/object thing, it’s a private property thing. You are not allowed to touch it (let alone sit in it) unless I give you explicit permission.

VIN Number

“LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!”

Currently waiting for David Tracy’s take on why the Warthog is good, but only after you cobble it together from other, rusted out Warthogs and drive it to Moab and back