I think you hit something, the fact that you have always done it. I am big on this and I don't care so much if the guy built it or bought it (I didn't always feel that way :nono
but is it in his blood? My friend Steve who is in the wheel chair, I am sorry folks, HE is a "Hot rodder", this stuff is in his blood! He can't do it, but it is in his blood, running through his veins. Me personally, since before I could drive I was hotrodding bikes, and cars and making them better has been my life long work. Heck, I was riding my bike 10 miles from my home to the drag strip and climbing over the fence! Cars have been my life long job not always "Hot rods" but every single day I have ever earned a dollar it was making cars better. I have never driven a late model "car" just a "car" in my life for my daily transportation. The closest I have ever gotten was my SHO and even that is a factory hot rod. I have driven every single day old cars, hotrods, a car that I was putting slicks on and uncapping headers and running it at the drags on the weekend, I was driving every day to work. I was driving my chopped top truck with no windows (other than the windshield) in the rain to work!
Because someone builds a car doesn't even mean it's in his blood! I have seen many cars built by guys who really didn't care much about it, it was something they were trying to prove or some crap like that. One guy pops into my head right now, he is a pro painter and he has built from the frame up a 40's pickup that is VERY rough, there was no passion what so ever in it. He didn't learn anything about these trucks, what is the difference year to year, he didn't put ANY passion into it.
He recently decided to sell the truck because it isn't big enough for his family and bought a very nice mid sixties Rambler American. It needed paint and had a little rust in the quarter. He pulled off SOME of the mouldings, welded in a panel where the rust was and painted the thing, in a few days! In just a few days he had it painted, right over the dents! It is COVERED in small door dings and he painted right over them! This is a guy with ZERO passion, he could build fifty cars and he wouldn't be a "hot rodder" to me.
Then you have the surgeon who fixed my son's leg when he broke his femur last year. He LIT UP when he saw my Street Rodder magazine I was reading in my sons room at the hospital. He LIT UP and started telling me about his truck that be built in med school, polishing the stainless steel in the dental dept! LOLOL, That was the only car he had ever built, that was it, and he was MUCH more of a "Hot rodder" than MANY people who have built many cars, he had true passion thru his veins and you could see that he followed the medical field because of some outward push like from parents. Which made it so clear to me how when he showed me the xrays and explained the procedure he was going to do on my son how it sounded so "mechanical" to me. He talked to me in my language! This guy would have been a HELL of a fabricator if that was the direction he would have went. He was a Hot Rodder thru and thru.
It is a heck of a lot more about what is inside a person than what he has built.
Brian