Owning only classic cars, another ancillary to Quennie's thread Options

[GaroldShaffer]

I myself always liked older cars but always seemed to have a modern car & the payments that went with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ar15.gif)

I still have modern truck & car (03 Dakota Quad & 01 Intrepid) but I love the 914. For my wife if she wanted an older car that would be fine with me but she feels much safer in the newer cars. I guess if it was just her and I then I wouldn't care if she drove an old classic all the time but with the little guy I just think we should have a newer cars. Now if she wanted a nice weekend car or something as 2nd car I'm all for that.

-Garold

[tat2dphreak]

I love working on cars, as long as I don't HAVE to work on them... if I had to jack with my daily driver all the time, I'd be pissed, it would get very old. I keep a new (or newish) car for that reason...

[KaptKaos]

I think it was Peter Egan in Road & Track several years ago that wrote about "The One Good Car Principle." The idea being that in your family, you have at least one "good" car. That car being something modern, that did not need the care and feeding that older cars need. The idea is that as long as you have one "good" car, then you could have a bunch of old cars and use them while they were working. If they were sidelined, you always had the one "good" car to get around in if needed.

I have pretty much adopted this theory and it has worked fairly well. The wife drives a minivan (we have 2 kids) and I split my time between my teener, a 91 Jetta GLi 2.0 and a 72 Fiat 850 Spider. The teener and the VW are daily drivers. The Fiat, well, it's a Fiat.

I would love to get my wife to drive a '61 Lincoln Continental with the suicide doors, but she will have none of that.

I'd like to get a BMW 2002, Fiat 128 Sedan, Alfa GTV, the aforementioned Lincoln or a '63 Ford Thunderbird and lose the Jetta, but the front drive is nice to have in the rain. Not to mention that with gas going up ($2.20 a gallon here in SoCal), four cylinder cars are nice to have.

As for costs, its a toss up. The new cars often include the maintenance in their warranties now and one big repair on and old car (assuming you do not do the work yourself) a year can equal the cost of monthly payments for that year. Personally, I think making car payments is a waste of money, but with low interest rates and these bundled warranties, it is tough to make that case.

The point is, I think in today's world, having the one "good" car is a good strategy if only for the peace of mind that it brings.

- Joe