Winter 2024-25

David: 2024 was undeniably our high water mark. During this year, our presence on social media expanded, allowing us to meet other car photographers and spotters from around the United States and around the world. Sam's Impala debuted at car shows, allowing for its award-winning recognition for "most promising" car by "Cruisin' Bruce" Palmer. This also allowed him to form connections with other antique car enthusiasts, and reconnect with an old Impala enthusiast on the promise that the next time that he (Sam) would see him, the '65 Impala would be driving, something that Sam had been hoping to do for over a year. 

I began biking more, exploring more, and found a plethora of classic cars, allowing for ONEC to gain a suitable following on Instagram. The sheer amount of cars, the diverse ranges of years, body styles, and nationalities if you will of cars could never be as great as it was during 2024. 

2024 closed with a milestone in my opinion. I bought my dream car, a 1978 Saab 99 EMS. I had been longing to own and drive a classic Saab for nearly five years at that point, so when the opportunity arose for me, I finally jumped at it. Somedays, I still can't believe this happened.

With this great high came with it a minor conflict. Both Sam and I may have found too many cars combined. What's wrong with that, you might be asking? Well, when balancing six classes and a part time job, personal time to write and keep up with the cars photographed became sparse, and I fell behind. As I'm writing this, I still haven't finished entries from April and May, as well as the most recent entries from last fall. This is also because I felt pressure to find as much cars as I could to keep our image up on social media. As much as I enjoy finding classic cars and writing about them, it became a chore when I had to find as many as I could to keep up, and I felt burnt out by the end of the year. 

So where do we go from here? That's a great question, and I have an answer! I would love to rekindle the approach from the early days of ONEC. By this, I mean less entries, and effectively less cars. Don't be let down though, because I'm going to continue finding classics, but I want to make it more of an occasion, so to speak. This will be reflected on our social media pages too. Instead of finding cars for the sake of content, I'd like to find cars for the sake of their story and history in the automotive industry. I'd like to find cars that are uncommon, and not simply an old daily driver. As fun as those are to find, writing about those consumes time and energy, and I'd like to channel those resources towards stories and other projects, like the Saab. 

In short, 2025 will see a change in approach from the status quo ONEC has seen over the last two years or so. The goal is to generate better stories, and highlight cars we find. We hope you will continue to enjoy our work, as we will continue to write and photograph more classic cars, just not as much as we used to! Happy New Year, and we'll see you in 2025.