Despite the insistence from some diehard traditionalists that there’s no reason to upgrade a vintage car to disc brakes, sticking with four-wheel drums can be a drag—literally and figuratively.

The simple truth is that, in an era of distracted drivers plowing along in lumbering SUVs —all of them with sophisticated safety features and huge disc brakes —sharing the road in an old car with four-wheel drums is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. The nostalgia goes right out the window when you have to panic-brake around modern vehicles with much greater stopping capability.

That’s exactly what drove Tim Quiggle to finally upgrade the front drum brakes on his 1949 Ford coupe to discs. "I’ve been driving the car for more than 30 years and the drums just didn’t feel safe to me any longer," he says. "It’s not an overly heavy car, but the stopping distances were really long and the brakes tended to fade when they got hot in traffic. It was a safety issue for me that affected how much I was enjoying the car."

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