My guess is that your friend is simply a rich fool who doesn't have any respect for what he is able to buy nor the money he has to buy things with. He should be buying new Jaguars, Porsches, and Bimmers, not antiques.That is why he got a lot of teasing. Here is this 500,000 $ Cobra and it has to depend upon a lowly SUV to get it started. Of course it is understandable, seeing that he does not take it out of the garage all that much.
We had a neighbor in the Okanagan that had a '70 Hemi Cuda droptop from day one (extremely rare as there was less than 20 built). It spent most of its life in a bay in his garage up on blocks, but he was in there a few times a month checking this that and the other thing. He ran it a couple times a month just to keep the oil circulating and seals from deteriorating. And he only bought it for about $5000.