Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

How do you get rid of cars that nobody seems to want? 

photo source: the city.nyc
These things just sort of sit around ignored.

Even when that includes you!

Cars cost money. They have their carrying costs.

Whether old or new. Initial cost, or payments, maintenance, insurance, yearly registration fees.

Spatial costs, the physical space they take up. In your garage, driveway or even at the curb. Then there are the non financial costs, those physic costs that I like to talk about, time thinking about them, fussing over them. Obviously they contribute to the clutter in our minds and lives.

I had hoped that if I could sell a couple of my cars then I could concentrate on some of my other cars. Or sell them all and set off in a new direction. 

I guess that I'm not sounding much like a real car guy, it seems like all I talk about is getting rid of cars. 

You could look at it as if I'm trying to pare away the deadwood, or like pruning a tree so it can produce a little more fruit. 

I kind of like that assessment better.

I suppose that this is not the topic that most of you want to read about. You want to read something upbeat, how I've conquered some of my problems and came out on top. 

Fixing up old cars seems like a fun, good idea. At least you find yourself doing it.

It's like all those home renovation shows on cable TV. The homeowner wants all these big changes made. Money never really seems to be an obstacle, finding a competent contractor isn't a problem, and getting the work done in a timely manner is never a problem. It all happens during a single episode. By the end of an hour show the owners are moving in!

Of course in real life it isn't that easy. Even if everything is covered, unknown problems will always crop up. 

Those car shows are much the same. The owner never seems to have a problem coming up with the funds.

That's probably why I never watch them. Nobody cares about how much anything costs. 

I don't know, maybe it's just me. It's just hard to commit money to something that I'm not going to get my use out of.  

I had a glimmer of hope today, I was contacted by someone on the forum asking if the XJ6 was still for sale. 

Well, yes and no. After it passed smog I knew that I had two years to get it squared away and I decided not to sell it. Until that is, hope was ignited in my heart, once again.

So I thought about. I checked the dates and it still is well within the ninety day period of the smog check. A buyer could take the paperwork straight to the DMV and transfer ownership and then he'd have the two years. I plotted all that out carefully. Then I slept on it.

I decided that this was how the fate of the car could play out, sold to an interested party. Then I could focus more attention on my other cars. 

I made it a point to contact the other two parties that had expressed an earlier interest in the car, and give them the first dibs. 

They thanked me for my thoughtfulness, but said no thanks. 

I called the latest party and left a message on their phone. Then I added a message to the for sale listing telling him to listen to my phone message and call me back. 

It's been several days now and no response! What's up with that? I will give the guy another call tomorrow and see if I can catch him. 

I was going to sell him the car for the advertised price, which was my low, disgusted-with-this-piece-of-junk price. With the smog test done I really think that it's worth more than 1,500 bucks that I'd been asking. 

But it looks like he wasn't really interested. 

There wasn't a flurry of activity produced by my listing of the XJS, no real surprise there. But at least it's out of the way, like the '51. Out of sight, out of mind? Kind of.