The California climate is certainly good for preserving things. There is no shortage of old cars in the state and many of them are kept in great condition. The fact you can use them year round probably doesn’t discourage the effort to restore them. I suspect only being able to get them out for half of the year and having weather that rots them reduces the incentive for some would be restorers.
A day in Petaluma provided quite a selection of old “motors” to look at. Some were heavily modified vehicles that would have looked interesting whenever you would have seen them. Others were just nicely preserved versions of standard cars that would have gone unnoticed when they were relatively new. Now they all catch your eye and the owners seem to appreciate the cars being appreciated. Plenty of nods and waves were exchanged and raising the camera to my eye resulted in a positive response too.