I know what you mean. I've won a couple of trophies with my Camaro but she usually places last among the winners in her class in favor of older vehicles. Many of those vehicles have major issues such as rust, but I've been told by multiple people that they get mad when a basically new car enters and wins over older ones because, no matter how many mods are on it, it's still new and just gives the impression (I guess)
that the owner hasn't spent that much time on it compared with the owner of an older car.
I don't like it either but it is what it is.
But at the same time there are people with old cars who just get them to get trophies. For example, there was a guy at the Bristow show last week with a beautiful '70 split bumper-- one of the rarer Camaros, there are probably less than 2000 still around in good shape. He bought it for $80,000 (30k of which was paint) and can't even change the oil. Knows nothing about the car, but from what I understand he takes it to every show he can and is rude to everyone at shows, not wanting them to get too close to it and asserting his superiority even though he did NOTHING to the car himself. People are just wacko sometimes I guess.