Boiling it all the way down, you are left with this: is the object of your affection cool to you regardless of what anybody else thinks, or because of it?
If a replica speedster is cool because of what other people think, the owner is in the wrong hobby. The attention is awkward, and a 10 minute explanation nearly always ensues from reasonable questions ("what year is that?", "what's it got for an engine?", "did you build that?", etc.). In my case, there are no simple answers to any of those questions.
Very, very few people "get" these cars. I'm not sure every guy who owns one gets it. The fact that cost/value of these cars (as opposed to other cars available for similar money) seems to come up so often speaks directly to this point. I personally could have purchased some mighty fine machinery for what I've got in my car-- machinery that would be a LOT more impressive to an onlooker, and machinery which would offer a lot more back in the event that I would ever sell. I'm not bragging- I'm actually kind of reluctant to talk about what I've got in it, but I've got no regrets. I've had fun every step of the way.
The thing is mostly inexplicable. You either get it or you don't. The "madness" we welcome everybody to is not the banter (witty or otherwise) on this site-- it's the sickness of shoveling large piles of money into the black-hole of something that's really only cool to the owner and a (very) few other people. Even you guys think I'm nuts sometimes. I really don't care.
I'm out here doing my thing precisely because it's cool to me. I don't expect the "hot-rod" guys to get it. I don't expect the "Porsche" guys to get it. I don't even expect my wife to get it. I'd be doing this in the absence of any on-line club or real-people get-together. That there are a few other guys with the same disease is icing on the cake.