How do people hold onto a car for so long?
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| Sitting side by side in a graveled drive. Not the best path to longevity. |
Notice: The photos that are displayed here are not intended as a judgement, criticism, or to ridicule the car or the owner. They are just for illustration purposes. The photos were taken from current for sale postings on CL and on the AACA forum. Some of these cars look, and are, a bit rough. But I saved the pictures because they are all cars that I wouldn't mind owning.
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Today I went to a local cruise in, and spoke with four guys that had held onto their cars for over thirty years!
The owner of a '65 Cadillac Coupe de Ville had owned it for 37 years, he was the second owner.
The guy that had parked his '54 Corvette next to him, had owned the Vette for over 35 years.
I saw a green '65 Riviera drive in, just as I was thinking of leaving, so I walked over to take a look at it. The owner had owned the car for over 37 years. There was a guy talking to him about the Riviera. He told me about the '62 Corvette that he had bought just out of high school! He topped that story by showing me a picture of the first car that he'd bought, a '56 Chevy Bel Air two door hardtop! He'd owned these cars for over fifty years!
I'm sure that buying these cars was tough at the time, these guys were at an age when money is often still pretty tight, especially the guy that was in high school. But the prices were as low as they were ever going to get. The other guys told me that they were young single guys with pretty good jobs, working lot's of overtime. Hey, I remember being in that same position! Buying the car is one thing. The difficult thing is to hold onto a car as the transition from young guy to responsible, married, and family guy is taking place.
Just as in real estate, when buying the right car, timing is everything!
I was sitting in a wrecked '98 Riviera at Pick and Pull recently, trying to scavenge some needed parts for my '97, when a thought occurred to me. If I'd just held onto my '71 Riviera, today I'd have a beautiful car that would be completely sorted out. I'd paid cash for the car, maybe 3,000.00? So it was paid off. That '71 was beautiful, it had a new paint job in a dark black/brown color that the seller had told me was a special Mercedes color. It had a set of chrome road wheels, and a pearlescent white, bucket seat interior in excellent condition. The body and trim were straight and almost perfect, with just a small rusted area behind the right wheel opening. The motor and transmission ran really well.
Whatever issues it had, could and would have been dealt with and repaired in the over thirty year span that I could have owned it. So why did I sell it?
Good question!
Sell the good one, and buy a piece of junk! Typical car guy logic.
I can only guess that I must have made a couple of bucks on the transaction, that I wanted something different than what I already had, and finally, that I thought that finding a similar car in similar condition, in the future was going to be easy.
I was wrong on all counts. making 500 bucks on a sale really wasn't that big a deal, even back then. I had bought a '66 and thought that I could find a first gen in okay shape for a good price. Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong.
The '66 that I bought was pretty rough, even the motor was in bad shape. Then I got sidetracked by another '67, which I bought and sold pretty quickly. Somehow, I forgot about the First Gen entirely.
I let my nice car go, and ended up with a rough '66 in it's place. Progress?
Not a very good strategy. Though I did follow up by spending quite a bit of money on the '66, but at least I drove the thing for several years!
Could I have held onto this '66 and come out ahead? Maybe, eventually. It had a good motor and running gear. It was straight and complete, but it would need some serious rust repair around the window channels. Still, over the span of twenty five years or so!!!!!, it could have been gradually fixed up.
The vehicle that I had held onto the longest so far, was the '77 Harley Davidson XLCR, which I'd bought new. Over the years that I had it, I modified it several times until it was quite different from it's original set up. I owned the bike for around twenty something years.
My Buddy Rick, who after his time with a Sportster, started buying a new Road King every few years, said how he thought that it was cool that I had held onto the bike for so long. It didn't exactly feel cool to me, riding alongside him with his bigger and more comfortable late model Big Twin. It just felt like I was in the penalty box.
Later, I'd hold onto my '94 Seville for almost ten years. It had developed quite a few problems that I knew that I was never going to fix. I never seriously considered keeping it. This was the most expensive car that I've ever bought even up until Today. I sold it to an annoying kid for 1,600 bucks.
I've held onto my '96 Mustang for more than thirteen years, keeping it in dependable shape during that period.
Maybe these guys had bought something that they really liked, and they thought that they should just keep it. Even as they bought newer family type vehicles. That old car could just sit. That's a pretty common scenario, the old car is sidelined for a time, often decades.
But it has to be protected from the elements or it will deteriorate.
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| You never know what's hiding in an old garage like this. |
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| These two look to have been carefully stored. |
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| Look at that, and it's offered for sale at a pretty reasonable price. |
A big part of the equation is available space. Do you have somewhere to park/store the old car? Of course, the ideal would be inside storage in a garage or warehouse. Lot's of old cars are lucky enough to live in one half of a two car garage. Though they often end up covered with layers of stuff that accumulates over the years. That was what happened with my XJS.
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| A tight fit is better than no fit. |
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| These two were hiding in plain sight. They are worse for wear. |
Some just sit where they were last parked, in the driveway. They usually start out being covered up by a tarp until the owner loses interest and the cars are exposed to the elements. Front side yards are often a final resting place. This exposes the undersides of the car to more moisture as opposed to being parked on concrete.
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| This Mach One sits alongside the driveway. It was offered for sale a couple of years ago, and is still unsold. |
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| This Olds has been stored in an open yard. Lots of surface rust. Is it too far gone? |
This '60 Olds four door hardtop is a cool looking Jet Age design. It has been sitting out in the open yard for quite a while. It's been offered for sale on CL for several years. The price has dropped 1,000 dollars from the 2,500 that was originally being asked back then. The seller claims that it runs and drives. Too bad it didn't get better storage. Leaving it exposed to the elements results in extensive surface rust.
Should you keep the car or sell it? You could just have a Great Garage Massacre as I did with my three Jaguars! Finding a similar car, years later is the problem. The prices will definitely be higher, but an older guy might have more bucks to spend, and would likely buy a car in better shape.
If you have a sentimental attachment to a car, you will probably make efforts to hold onto it. That doesn't mean that the car will receive proper storage, just that it won't be sold. I'm sure most car guys have run into an owner who is letting his car deteriorate from improper storage. But he still doesn't want to sell it!
One of my problems is that I don't get emotionally attached to a car, it's only recently that I developed a bond with my '96 Mustang. It has nothing to do with family history, it's more about the miles that we've put down, together.
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| This is a better situation. |
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| This Ford appears to be a nice survivor. |
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