Twitch

Agreed, somebody somewhere will be able to use the stuff.

The cars in the junkyard have very few useable parts. None is probably coherent in chassis/body to be safely rebuilt. Indeed these look like parts cars after there usefullness has ended. It is even debatable how useable the individual parts are. Remember the goofy Coddington build of the 56 Chevy with parts from a junkyard? After de-rusting, cleaning, filling, smoothing, sanding and priming none of the parts would fit properly to the adjacent ones! They had to pull some more parts from the junkyard an tweak some more. So if a professional shop spending volumes on labor hours would have problems with junk imagine the backyard enthusiast. At any rate the penchant for municipalities not wanting you to see anything is ubiquitous now. In Long Beach and some surrounding cities all auto repair facilities have to be enclosed. No body wants to see them working on your junky car, right?! This could technically be solved by putting solid strips woven through the chain link fence in most towns. An easy cheap fix.

People, my point is that a whole extended discussion full of "what ifs" is based on flawed numbers. Rather no numbers. To cherry pick certain especially rare cars is beyond the point. To say the Bugatti Royale should not be modded goes without saying, but how many 1933 or 1935 Packards exist today? How many 47 Cadillacs? Nobody knows. That's the whole point. Building a house of cards on "a lot" or "dozens" is senseless. I'm not even taking about the cars just the math. No one knows the X factor, X= a quantity. It's making me lose faith in logic here that no one realizes that we can't make any estimates of projections unless we know X! And as for any rare cars, well you know there are a lot of cars I'm never going to see. A lot of people are never going to see them because they dwell in distant locations and most folks are never going there. These rare cars might not exist since I can see them in photographic form only. To Zen about it, do they exst at all if the majority cannot see them? Unless these especially rare cars are in museums even local folks aren't going to see them. These cars come out very rarely at places like Pebble Beach which the vast majority of auto enthusiast will never be able to attend. So we're back to the Sierra Club thinking that even though no one will ever see them, besides the Club's upper echelon, it's nice to know they're out there. Only a few will see the rare Packard or Delahaye. Now if they were in museums they'd be accessable to everyone. Perhaps we should grab them as public domain excercise so the masses can gaze upon them. Again I am not using any specific model of car where we know a very small number exist. It is rare that we know. By the most part all we know is that there is some finite number of each auto that was ever built existing. Do we all consider the 13 existing factory Hemicudas that are worth a zillion dollars each as rare and valuable as a 34 Packard? Time and again we hear the sad lament of no younger blood joining national clubs. No they're no all into Jap tuner cars and late model Mustangs. But when they see dogmatic rhetoric shaming those that dare to modify cars it is a turn off. It's a reason why they stay away from clubs in general- being told how they should keep their cars. And if people want to own cars as close to 100 pointers as possible that are 100% stock, stock, stock, that's great. But they are a minority selling a point of view that the majority of hobby cars owners don't agree with. Fanatically repeating the business about passing down history and adhering to club rules makes them about as popluar as the religious nut people that come to you house trying to convert you. Sure some love being the martyr, I can tell, but they soon become a tragic joke. Only in the last part of the last century has the human race had the inclination, leisure time or wealth to triffle with antique things and place some abnormal value on them. Now suddenly we have a snooty sub-culture that tends to look down on those who don't share their wishes to restore old buildings, collect 78RPM reocrds or perserve some old relic. Funny how the world got along for 1000s of years without the need to save and reviere old stuff. The veneration to a near religious status of any "thing" is just blasphemy even to the religion-changers that troll your neighborhood. The idols and graven images worship is just weird folks. If it's not cars it another fringe group that reveres antique phonographs or telephones or coo-coo clocks to the extreme where they block out all other collectors and points of view. Geez we even have more than one viable religion on the planet but these people will tolerate only one automotive hobby philosophy. If we should only be concerned about "full classics" we're whizzing up a rope. When did full classics become so inexpensive that they are purchased by rodders in an ongoing basis. Just because one guy, Superod, did it or may do it is not indicative of any trend or movement other than out of the whiners' tail ends. First it's that rodders are regularly spending 36K for cars to use a few parts from now it's cars in the class of Dusenberg, Delage, Voisin and Bugatti valued in the half million dollar range?! 32 Packard Victorias in this price range have little probability of being rodded. This is pure lunacy if anyone believes they do. So if all we're concerned with are "full classics" then the hell with hobby/special interest/vintage/collector cars. They're godless boobs right? Let them fend for themselves for they don't believe like we believe. When does it go from enthusiast to elistist? From collector to bigot? I am so tired of hearing the same harangue about people who have made different automotive hobby choices being viewed as though they are savages.

Superods- what people are alluding to is that if you make ANY modification to ANY car they won't be judge-able in a national auto organization sponsored event. Doesn't matter if your little mods actually helps the car run better or not the zombies that obey only the confined parameters of the "law of the club" will never see I that way. Yeah 15 minutes ago on another forum I was telling a Plymouth owner why I was in favor if leaving his original 6v alone if there were no major problems. No huge benefit to go 12v. That said I'd have no problem of switching a distributor, let's say, that wasn't Packard if it held benefits for running. See cause running is all I care about even though with my medical problems I can only get about 500 miles a years. I don't care to ever enter my cars in national club events. I enjoy the easy going atmosphere of local organizations. The very problem I wish to avoid is people wound too tight telling you what you ought to do with your car to make it closer to a 100 pointer. Bah! That's what you get with big time club people. All this lofty soul searching imagining that owners of cars years ago had some spirit of history or place in the world is rubbish. There were hot rodders in the 1930s! To be serious and picture in your mind that somebody in the future is going to tearfully thank us for preserving old cars is a bit grandiose in the scale of 1000 year reichs. It becomes tantamount to the Sierra Club's warped thinking that even though no one will ever see the spotted woodcock it's nice to know they're out there living safe. Of course the only people who will ever see it is the elitist Sierra Club higher ups. And of course the people that will never see them are the very ones subsidizing the cost of the the boondoggle. Pretending to imagine how history will see preserving cars in 200 years is nothing but vain and egotistical. Until the latter part of the 20th century societies didn't spiritualize antique"things." So who is to say that by the end of the 21st anyone will still be on the "save old stuff" bandwagon. Sooner or later the remainder of vintage cars, and everything else of historical sugnificance from bygone eras, will end up in whatever museums exist in the future and there certainly won't be room for all of those that exist today. Waxing philosophically about some mind's eye future that probably will never exist is nearly delusional. How weird is it to worry about anything hundreds or 1000 years from now? No one any of us know will even exist in 100 years! Lastly, what bother me most is the fact that people will defend indefendable positions relation to figures that no one has! Does anyone have any idea of how many "vintage" cars there are in the US? Of course not. Yeah that includes 49 Hudsons, 32 Mormons and 76 Oldsmobiles. Think it could be 20-30 million? Yeah if vintage is everything over 25 years old. Hey it may not be a 32 Packard but the guy down the street that has a 65 Wildcat keeps it for some reason. It's part of the "car hobby." I count 50 cars like this in 4 square blocks of my neighborhood. And while the Buick could never be as rare as pre-war true classics, ANYTHING given enough passage of time will become rare. Harping on this continually will not affect the process. What I had and have a problem with is folks being taken in by unsubstantiated number. "A large amount, " "a lot,"- vague definitions are subjective. What one person thinks is a lot is not by another person's calculations. Even when someone says 50 cars or 200 cars or whatever number have been rodded it is simply a misnomer because if he doesn't supply the ratio number, 50 or 200 are meaningless. And of course we rush to judge that somehow all the original cars will be modified in the next few years without stopping to calculate. Think there's 20-30 million hobby/special interest/vintage/collector/classic cars around? Too many? 10 million. OK let's say that dastardly old Superods converts 1000 a year. My God! Stop him! In relative terms it will take him 1000 years to "ruin" 1 million cars. He should live so long. This why I say is is completely presunptious to think you can imagine what antique cars' place in history will be in 1000 years. No one knows just as no one knows how many hobby/special interest/vintage/collector/classic exist in the 1st place so how can we be alarmed at an unknown figure in ratio to another unknown figure? And as we see right before our eyes are cars becoming offically vintage as they reach 25 years of age. While there won't be any more 32 Marmon V-16s there has been an continual parade of cars ever since and they all aren't worthy of collecting.....now. But since we are looking into the future we have to know that every peice of junk cracker box crapwagon will someday be more rare. So. What is anybody/everybody going to do about that? Let's start hoarding those 1990s Taurus now! So let's each enjoy our old cars as each sees fit without making those of different thinking the enemy. It won't do any good. We're not knights on white horses weighed down with some obscure future responsibility to do anything but enjoy or cars. Anyone that thinks we are should pass that dope around. Each person should do that in their own way without attempting to tell others what they should do. No the survival of certain cars for 100s of years is not your particular responsibility unless you are a museum curator. No one here is going to do anything anyway beyond talk about it. You know it. I know it. Unless you form a cooperative that funds the purchase of all the hobby/special interest/vintage/collector/classic cars you have nothing to say about the fate of other people's cars. Pizz and moan all you want , it won't change a thing. Let's play with our cars instead of attempting to calculate things without actual numbers.

So the bad hot rod man is not so bad now it seems, huh? Superod- this forum used to be perused by people involved in hands-on Packard engineering which was dedicated to keeping cars on the road involving non-era and non-Packard parts substituted as needed for function. You know things like dual master cylinders and even GM HEI distributors or tranny swaps for disabled Packard automatics. Of course none of these fixes were visibally evident yet contributed to keeping cars on the road, which is what I thought all this was about.

I added a pair of lap belts in front seat of the Packard but use them little. No extra lighting fixtures. My Z-28 has full belts but again, no additional lights.

Indeed!

The way dealers buy and sell in interstate deals nowadays liquidating inventories here and moving vehicles there it is a wonder more don't slip through the cracks probably.

In all seriousness with no malice, simply because 15 or 50 people on a website forum each have an anecdote concerning someone, somewhere modifying stock cars in some way, that does not automatically prove that a huge percentage of cars are actually being modded. Emotional hand wringing is not statistical data. Present real numbers gleaned by impartial, professionals in the field and we'll have something to discuss. I'm serious when I say I'd like to see a real study done like Hagerty does with auto topics. Until that is done there is nothing other than seat-of-the-pants feelings that this is probably happening. Illogical people who rave that one out of 1,000 remaining XYZ cars is too many to modify are simply reactionarily driven by hormones. And Dave who invited you here? I see you're using the same bankrupt logic that if you've been saying it for 5 years it must be true. Kinda sounds like Hitler and the Big Lie to me. I say this as I'm well into my 2 dozen "Best Original" trophies. My car is probably more original than many of you alls. If we want to believe that legions of people are purchasing high-priced original cars in order to build $100,000 rods than we must believe that people are hemoraging money. The stupid TV "builds" are not indicicative of the real world and we all know it yet there is this underlying belief that somehow average "hotrod guys" are doing this on a business-as-usual basis. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any major budget builds are few and far between. There exist a finite number of shops capable of turning out top notch custom work and they are crammed full of projects so how many as really taking place in a years? The average hot rod guy has a 74 Nova and wants to make it go faster. When was the last time you saw a truly radical custom car with chopped body and chassis? They are rare. They are not the norm. Our 74 Nova guy gets headers, an intake manifold, carb and ignition. He buys bolt on stuff for his suspension to get HP to the ground. If he's real healthy in the $$ department he puts some nice paint on it. He's not chopping up rare cars. This is the majority of evil hot rodders. Even when Coddington was alive how many did he do like 6 max in a year? See we have no actual figures other than guesstimates by people like us who are not experts in creating and managing statistical information surveys. No one can say how many V-8s into rare car projects happen in a year. Besides that, define a rare car. There is no agreement on that either. So does your Packard count as rare and the V-8 into the 48 Plymouth not count by virtue of manufactured units alone? What percentage of rare cars relative to the entire number of existing vehicles is there? If they are being transformed at what rate per year is this happening? What percentage of the original rare cars does this represent? When we have a production run of 250,000 cars we can't consider them as a whole rare in any way yet some of you doggedly rant that EVERY one of them should be restored to stock condition. Is that reasonable? Christ, even with registries, clubs and whiz bang national auto organizations NOBODY can tell me how many Packards are still around. That was the 1st thing I was curious of when I got my car yet no one has an answer! I will agree with all of you that X number of cars are being converted to V-8s each year. But what number does X represent? In ratio to the whole what is it? What is the whole number we started with? What year should we begin with? What percentage are being transmuted? Nobody knows. That's all I'm saying. I'm not insulting anyone's point of view or ideals. For the most part I agree. But everyone conjering up their own unsubstantiated number is not fact-based logic. Emotional ramblings are not statistics. 50 or 500 can seem like a lot depending on the total number it is calculated in ratio against. There can be no finite figure for an answer because we don't have all the statistics we need to solve the math. We end up in a completely unsubstantiated position because we don't have the data. No one can say 50 or 10% out of 500 remaining Dilbertmobiles were made into rods last year because NO ONE knows how many remain! We are attempting to substitute emotion for mathimatical quotient! You know that's wrong.

If everybody knows an example that still doesn't make it statistically prove-able that this is now the norm. I agree there must be some cases. I have never talked to anyone at a show with a project in mind that is dumb enough or rich enough to throw 35K at a car just for the creaky 75 year old body when he can buy a NEW one for under 10K. The super rich azzholes that haunt places like Barret Jackson are NOT typical auto enthusiasts. While some of them might have funding to invest 35K into a car and then hope to sell everything except the body, they would be the 1st to tell you it was not a good investment. They are a minority. Have to store the vehicle, strip off parts, advertise, haggle prices. Those people won't do that. It would be poor business indeed to have invested in what is essentially a bunch of parts with no guaranty of selling them all. The people that drop 100 grand at auctions may be azzholes but they are not necessarily bad businessmen. True rodders actually like to work on and refurbish old parts- junkyard bodies included. You got three choices if you're lookin for a body 1. Junkyard-cheap 2. Glass- very cheap realtive to new 3. Steel repro- cheaper than you think, and new. Or there's #4- Invest 35 large in a restored car. Go through the further expense of pulling body parts off and having them stripped to metal then massaged, filled as needed, repainted and clearcoated. Then begin the hassle of storage, paying for ads, shipping parts after haggling prices and still having an accumulation of stuff nobody wants. How does that "pay" for a project in any expedient way? Selling parts is not easy in any sense either. Our rodder has his project car AND what is basically a body-less car that should, if all goes as planned, become a used parts for sale pile in his garage taking up space. Any and all way are cheaper in investment than 35K for an era body. It's a non-sequitar to believe that the 35K body is not going to require body shop attention same as glass, repro or junkyard. In fact it will need more probably to take it down to metal and back to paint again- more than a junkyard body where you're only bringing it up instead of down and up again. The rods that continually arrive at cruise ins and shows were converted decades ago and by their owners' admissions have seen multiple incarnations/rebuilds. They've had their chassis strengthened or modernized with up-to-date-replicas. No rodder has the least fantasy that a 75 year old chassis designed for 85-150 HP will lend itself to the application of 4-500 HP to the ground. By the time one contemplates cutting it up and welding in modern sub-sections without guaranteed results it is easy to see that 8 grand for a NEW, modern rolling chassis is the only way to go. Sure this doesn't exclude the instances when capable people with torches don't do it to create something more unique. If I'm not a rodder and can find repro steel 32 Ford bodies in 2 minutes for 8K why would I pay "high teens" for glass or more for sombody else's metal body? I think you wouldn't like the result, Superods, if you bought the 35K car and put 10K more into it. It would always be a compromise. And as for building another in any case, yes, you'd have the zillionth 30s rod. But every 30s stocker looks the same as the next too! If I see the same, except for paint color, 30s-something Ford or another black Model A at every auto event what's the difference from seeing similar, modified cars(rods)of the same era? It becomes redundant. For that matter how many Tri 5 Chevies do I have to see till I've seen enough? Face it. Looking at the same cars stock or modded is boring. There is nothing out there outside of museums that is so rare that you haven't seen others. When you do go to a cruise in you will see many same year cars. If my friend's stock 51 Ford sits alongside of a 51 that has a modern 302 V-8 but is stock bodied, who is going to know the difference since they both keep the hoods closed? The 302 is even muffled down so it is not a rumbler. Viewers look at the outside of the cars and appreciate them both. Yet only a purist would wince if he knew. The average person would find a hard time rationalizing why it is not OK to update the engine considering the cost of rebuilding flatheads and the limited people who do them anynore. It's certainly not got anything to do with evaluation since modified cars command as much and more than originals. I'm asked to believe this is the normal logic employed instead of the occassional and I can't believe it. Empirical data is not trustworthy in any sense. If Hagerty or an industry organizstion of that stature produced a comprehensive study leaning in that direction it would hold some water beyond hearsay. Sorry but no one is about to convince me that the majority of people are now buying cars just for the bodies. It's an isolated minority at best. TV shows sillyness excluded.

Think about what you'll are saying. People are so rich they are buying 35K cars for the body only then putting, what, that much again into creating a rod with modern chassis, running gear etc. If people got that rich they aren't that stupid or they would never have made money in the 1st place. I'll concede that there may have been isolated cases of unknowing numbies offering more than an original is worth to build a modern tech rod but they are not average, everyday operations that rod guys do. Many rod builders are excellent craftsmen and know the value of their labor. And it's strange that I continually see photos on rod sites of assorted bodies only that are for sale. Some photos dipict several acres of 30s-60s bodies and partial cars. This means there are a lot out there. What does a restorer do with a 32 Cadillac coupe body? Find all the other parts that make a car and construct one? A rodder will use a decaying 32 Cad body he will not buy an entire, restored 32 Cad just for the body. A 32 Ford 3 window glass body is $6,500 new. Steel repro is $8,330. Again, nobody is buying restored 32 Fords at $30,000+ for a body they can buy NEW at $8,330! I can show you every website regarding available, existing replica parts and prices for a 39 Zephyr and 32 Fords. Of course everybody has a story that perpetrates that it happens all the time when it doesn't. Sorry, but urban myths like this are the kind of things that divide the auto hobby culture. And look at the white Packard with the Chevy engine. It is outwardly stock, a tribute to the design. If car hobbies go on long enough it is conceivable that one distant day there will be few Packard engines in running order and a V-8 will keep the cars running. And if we continue as devil's advocate even if a bad old hot rodder did buy a car just for the body I'll bet he'd sell the the entire rest of the car for a pittance. It should be worth it to those who can follow a sale such as this and recover the complete rest of the car. Let us hear from ya when you buy the bodyless car some rodder tossed out!

Realistically if you own a car in nice condition making it worth a substantial amount in the evaluation game, people looking for hot rod material are not going to invest large amounts of money into a vehicle that will yield them, in truth, only a few useable parts. 36 Packard coupes ala NADA values go from $32-50,000+ in condition from "average" to "high retail." Just who is going to drop 40 grand an walk away with a body and a few other odd parts. Rodders are not very trustworthy of 30s chassis components at all. Why should they be when they can buy a NEW rolling chassis with full modern suspension and disc brakes for like $8,200? Rodders don't trust 70 year old parts with 500HP engines. You know you wouldn't so why would they? It might be fun to image they are dumber than you are but they're not. It's very hard to believe that a 39 Zephyr worth $24-36,000 in "average " or High retail" condition would be bought after he told them its value. Deco Rides has a superb new glass Zephyr bodies in several configurations for under 10 grand. If I am to follow the logic a rodder could have a new, modern rolling chassis and body for less than an "average" original Zephyr costs, before modification. Throw in another 10 for a crate engine and interior and you spent 28 grand for essentially a NEW Zephyr at less than the cost of museum quality original. Sorry but as soon as any potential rodder heard what a decent 39 is valued at he'd rapidly change his focus to the kit. I'm tired of hearing that same broken logic that rodders will pay top dollar for restored originals over brand new replica technology.

Still think the guy got in too deep financially and is attempting to pad his losses.

The grandparents' generation talked about the "good old days" in common conversations through the 50s-70s. Surprising to realize they were talking about the 1930s and the Depression Era! It's all your perspective. If you want to remember the crappy times you will. The 60s brought unparalled automotive times. We had hosrpower and no dam smog controls. It was a decade when Detroit built vehicles that could be worked on and modified easily by regular folks. They purposely design their lines to be interchangable within each company. One could swap engines and transmissions with simple unbolt/bolt ease. Components were interchangable making almost any GM, Lincoln Mercury, Mopar starter, alternator, fuel pump etc to swap out in a pinch. This non-specialization led to low prices. It was a decade of free design and technological development. Pony cars, muscles cars and exotics were born then. The average fullsize car of the 60s drove and rode as good or better than only Cadillacs did in the 50s. Italian coachbuilders were hitting their zenith applying their work to fast and powerful prototypes and gran turismo cars that fought for championships in dramatic racing events. It was a time when American cars rivaled and beat the best Europe had to offer. In all aspects of motorsport technology and design layout changed dramatically with moves to rear-engine cars in all categories from drag racing to Indy. The 60s were a true rennesainse to automobilia. Aerospace in the 60 speaks for itself as well with innovations too numerous to list. We went to the moon in 8 years and have forgotten how. If we desire only to cherry pick the bad things from any era it's easy to do. Wasn't that world war businnes a biach back in the 40s?

Doesn't add up. Hot rod guys don't spent 20 Gs on stock running gear. Looks like it's a situation where somebody got involved way beyond a normal restoration and realized, or his wife realized, how much more it was going to take to finish htis car off. Looks like a case of investing more than the finished car will be worth. There is nothing saying someone will not make him an offer for the engineless car. There are Packard people out there who have motive power in their garages that could be mated up with this car if they got it for a decent price. How blasphemous would it be if someone bought the car a dropped a 56 Packard V-8 in it instead of straight 8?

The Packard and Z-28 go no more than 3-500 miles per year.

Not to worry. We'll all be bowing and eating rice cakes at the dealr relatively soon anyhow.

nearchoclatetown- bump

I still applaud the times when they took rusting body parts from a junkyard and got them on the street again even in a rod. Better than waiting for the apocolypse or if someone "might" build a 100% stocker someday.

I personally hope EVERYBODY buys electrics and mini-weirdo cars. Then I'll have plenty of gas for my cars.

That green Mark IV is FAR nicer than the 2 cars here. Both have heavy surface rust and much duller paint. Until last year you could donate vehicles to charity and write off high Blue Book values. I've done that and it works out better than trying to hassle with buyers. Like I say, this scenario gives actual vintage vehicle owners storing them a bad name because Joe Schmo Public just sees a blight of derelict cars.

I wonder why people park a vehicle and just let it sit....for years. I'm not tallking vintage or exotic with the probable hope of restoring it "someday," but daily driver cars. In my neighborhood there's an 80 something Nissan that was last licensed in 2000 along with a similar vintage F-100 pickup with a 2005 license. Both sit in the driveway on private property. I guess I am puzzled because if the vehicles were running when parked why didn't they just sell them? If they were mechanically broken why didn't they just junk them? Our city has a free service to tow away derelict vehicles if the owners desire. I suppose it's lazyness. This is the kind of scenario that hurts actual vintage vehicles on private property where the owner is legitimately awaiting time/money to restore them or have begun but the cars don't run. Then the neat freaks of the city confiscate them if they have that law in effect. Anybody else want to comment?

Insurance as well as everything else has taken a dump in customer service whether you have an agent or not. I am hearing from more guys all the time that so called full service companies simply route your claim or querry directly to the repair center. Here's folks that have religiously paid State Farm or Farmers or others more money feeling it was OK because they had an agent to assist them, ask questions of and make any claims process easier. They are now no better than the companies that do not have a network of single agent offices. Face it. Your agent, like everybody else in the world of business, does not want to talk to you anymore unless you are a new or prospective customer or want to increase your coverage. Their calls are screened better than the Pentegon's and people have told me how they've had to deal with the other parties insurance company directly and are shunted off by the agents to regional repair centers. I've had what I guess is a company like Geico. It has branches but many "agents" per location that deal with you over the phone. You call in for policy changes no differntly than you would for a "full service" company. And I beleive most of the Geico-type putfits have the same set up as "full service" companies do with collision repair centers to get your damage fixed. The only times I've had to deal with "full service" companies i've had to end up dealing with higher echelon personnel nyway because the agents were lazy dopes. ANd I've been in the situation where I've voiced my unhappiness with rates/service and an agent says he can do this or that to lower my rate. I quit then anyway because if they are working for me as agents they should have been doing that anyway!! Now suddenly when I threaten to quit they can save me money. Bull!!! They all make slick commercials about how much they care though projecting this compassionate image that is totally false. The property insurance companies colluded in California after the 1994 earthquake and internal memos showed how they were jumping for joy because they collectively settled for pennies on the dollar cheating consumers. You're better off getting cheaper agentless insurance cause they're gonna screw you no matter what. At least you won't have paid $2000 a year more for 20 years for nothing.

Let's put it this way- if you have a car with copper fuel or brake lines and they are functioning leave them alone. On the other hand there is no advantage in fabrication of new copper lines to replace steel.

Any metal can and will conduct heat. In fuel lines this can cause vapor lock and other problems even from stainless steel. There are places where rubber is better in the car. Fuel injection grade hosing is best rather than regular strength rubber lines for carbs. If they're already on the car live with them a while and see what they do. A cheap flaring tool will flare all metal tubing easily.