I took that for hyperbole.
$50,000 to have what is likely the nicest Plymouth Valiant in the world doesnât seem that out of line to me.
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Several of the cars on Fantomworks had wasaaaay more money spent on them than they were worth after restoration. All comes down to an emotional attachment.
My grandpa was a Jeff Foxworthy joke. If you mowed the grass at his house you did indeed find a car. Actually, you found several cars. He had somewhere around 20 of them hidden in the weeds when he died. Grandma had them all hauled off the day after the funeral. I think she felt guilty about how happy she felt.
Grandpa was a child of the Depression, and he also wasnât very good with rationality. Heâd buy the cheapest hunk of crap he could find because anything more expensive was âtoo dear.â Heâd drive it until it broke, which usually wasnât very long.
Then heâd hook it up to the tractor and tow it down to his mechanicâs shop. The mechanic would diagnose it, and if the repair cost more than 50 bucks or so, Grandpa would get mad and tow it back home. Now he had a choice: He could sell it for scrap value, which he wouldnât do because he paid a lot more than that for the car and selling it for scrap would be a ripoff. He could get it fixed, which he wouldnât do because the mechanic was just ripping him off. Or he could just leave it and go get another car. Thatâs pretty much always what he did.
Grandpa never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If he had, thereâs a passage where Pirsig talks about about stripping a screw that he needs to get off in order to drill down to the problem thatâs making his motorcycle not work. He explains that people think of screws as low-value because theyâre small and arenât very expensive. But if the screw is preventing you from making the motorcycle work, then that screw is worth the selling price of the whole motorcycle, because the motorcycle is worthless until you get the screw out.
Maybe if Grandpa had read that, heâd have realized it makes more sense to give the mechanic $75 to fix the $500 car than it does to keep buying more and more $500 cars while turning your wifeâs front lawn into a scrap yard. 
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@shadowfax. My parents lived through the depression and it certainly had an effect on their purchasing habits. World War II also had an effect. New cars werenât available. I remember seeing an advertisement in a late 1945 Time magazine my parents had saved. The advertisement was from Chevrolet urging motorists to âContinue to conserve your present carâ. Production lines were beginning to run, but the supply couldnât keep up with the demand. My dad had the engine overhauled on his 1939 Chevrolet and the car repainted in the summer of 1946 so that he could drive the car several more years. I remember the motor burned out on our refrigerator that was ten years old in 1949. It didnât have a sealed unit, so the repairman was able to take the motor off, have it rewound, and put the refrigerator back in service.
Today, having an automobile engine overhauled doesnât happen very often. The refrigerator motor and compressor are s sealed unit and the entire refrigerator is usually replaced when the unit goes out. We used to have a furnace fan motor rewound. That isnât done anymore.
On the other hand, things do last longer today than in years past. My dadâs 1939 Chevrolet had 70,000 miles on the odometer before the engine was overhauled which was an amazing number of miles back then. Todayâs cars often go over 300,000 miles before major engine work is needed. My parentsâ refrigerator needed the motor repaired after 10 years. Our refrigerator is 24 years old, works perfectly, and has never had a repair.
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Well, sometimes its just not worth fixing an old car. When it is cheaper to buy a used but functioning car Iâd also not fix a broken car.
It doesnât seem that way. I drive past that ramshackle house at least twice each day, and I have never seen the hoods lifted, nor have I ever seen any people in the vicinity of those moldering wrecks. A few years ago, he added a severely rusted Dodge van (probably also from the '70s) to his âcollectionâ, and this vehicle also just sits, and sinks further into the mud as each month passes.
It all depends whatâs wrong with your current car
The expression âThe devil you is better than the devil you donâtâ comes to mind
If your older car that isnât worth much needs some bushings, shocks, some mounts, tires and brakes all around, the cost of that work might handily exceed the value of the car
However, if that car has been well maintained, it might be better to do that work, versus junking it and taking a chance on another used car, which might not have been as well maintained as yours
Wouldnât do to get rid of your own car, just to buy a ticking time bomb, so to speak
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A updateâof sortsâŠ
A few miles from my house there is another disreputable-looking home, complete with a collection of '80s and '90s Lincolns sinking into the mud on its side lawn. A few weeks ago, the homeowner chose to add an ancient Datsun 510 station wagon to his âcollectionâ.
This Datsun apparently slid into a tree or a pole many years ago, due to the incredible damage to its right rear fender. The right rear glass is missing, and undoubtedly could not be replaced as a result of the severe damage to the fender.
If he has ignored all of his old Lincolns for so many years, why would he choose to add an even olderâand likely unrepairableâDatsun to his âcollectionâ?
A lot of people buy project cars intending to fix it. And then theyâre either too busy, or find that they donât know how, and the project sits around. When they do it with multiple cars, itâs properly called hoarding, and it should be looked at no differently than the guy with mountains of junk from the thrift store in his house. Itâs a symptom of a mental illness that needs treatment.
We have a hoarder in my family on my wifeâs side. Piles and piles of junk throughout the house that she buys for pennies at the thrift stores. Sheâs a great person, but she doesnât have much money and has had a lot of bad experiences in life. Her mounds of stuff are her main source of comfort, and so getting her to pare down - even with the argument that if she doesnât she will literally die in a fire one day because sheâll be trapped in there - is not something that we can convince her to do. And since she has few financial resources and lives way out in the country, she doesnât have access to the kind of counseling she should be getting.
Itâs probably a similar story with your Datsun guy. Heâs buying junk cars because thatâs what he can afford, and having a fleet of cars, even non-running, is a source of comfort. I knew a guy like that back when I lived in the Southwest. He lived on around 5 acres up in the mountains, and had an amazing assortment of hardware strewn throughout the property. He even had a bunch of old rusting farm tractors. Donât even know where he found them, because there arenât a whole lot of farms on top of the Rocky Mountains. As a kid I thought his yard was great, and used to hang out with him all the time looking at his stuff, while wondering why my parents would let me wander that junkyard. Looking back as an adult, I suspect my parents let me go over there because it gave him some human contact which he was otherwise sorely lacking.
I have an old friend from my undergraduate days, and he became worse and worse over the years in regard to hoarding. At my insistence, he finally saw a therapist, andâmiracle of miraclesâhe actually began to throw out decades of useless junk that was clogging his tiny apartment. Unfortunately, his throw-away phase was short-lived, and he keeps texting me photos of the âgreat stuffâ that he found in garbage cans and dumpsters.
The saddest part is that he isnât at all short of money, and there is no need for him to pick through garbage.
Those old tractors and cars that donât run can be a great place for children to play, as long as theyâve had their tetanus shots.
That reminds me of a story. One of my childhood friends and I used to play in his parentsâ VW Rabbit (in the mid 1970s). One day, it must have shifted out of gear or the parking brake failed, and the car rolled out of the driveway as we were playing in it. Thankfully, nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged. When it happened a second time, we were banned from playing in the car. It was strange that it happened a second time, because we were playing in the back of the hatchback when it happened. Maybe an old beater parked in a field would have been a safer place to play.
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Oh man. Similar thing happened to me. I was in dadâs car pretending it was one of James Bondâs cars. I moved the control that activated the smoke screen. Unfortunately in real life it was the control that released the e-brake. Thing rolled backward down the driveway and tapped a tree. No damage to the car or the tree, but there was definite damage to my ego. Especially when Dad couldnât stop laughing.
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his house his cars his decision and nunya biz
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Until the Municipal Code Enforcement people show up and force him to remove that blight on the neighborhoodâŠ
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Well , I think you are wrong . The junk cars are a health problem because they will attract rats and snakes not to mention a breeding ground for mosquitoes . And for neighbor children it could be called an attractive nuisance to be injured while trying to play on them.
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âŠuntil the his miniature junkyard violates zoning laws or brings down my property value. At that time, it becomes my business.
Earlier, I made reference to a run-down house in my neighborhood, with a âcollectionâ of '70s era Volvos sinking into the ground, along with a very badly-rusted Dodge van fromâI thinkâthe '70s.
Well, it appears that the problem is being remediated! The elderly man who lived there either died or was put into a nursing home, and a local family of well-to-do farmers bought the property and are beginning to rid it of its detritus. The house is in such poor condition that it is likely not repairable, so I wouldnât be surprised if it was bought as a âtear-downâ, to be replaced with a new, larger home.
In any event, the first step for the buyers is to get rid of the junk cars, and they are beginning that process.
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That actually happened to one of my neighbours
She is a retiree who had a decrepit and moss-covered rv in driveway . . . and after a few years of respectful and polite requests for her to either fix it or get rid of it, one of my other neighbours who has pull with the âpowers that beâ arranged for it to be towed away, against her wishes, I might add
Itâs kind of a weird situation, because the interior of her house meets the definition of a hoarder, yet the outside looks great, and the yard and plants look beautiful. She actually spends a lot of time keeping up appearances on the outside, yet she didnât want to get rid of that worthless rv . . .
Of course thereâs the emotional âMy first carâ and the psychological âHoarderâ reasons but thereâs also the logical reason, âWhat would it cost to replace this machine with a functionally equivalent new one?â.
For example, a Jag XK8 has a book value of about $6,000 but a functionally equivalent new Jag F costs about $60,000 and both will get you more speeding tickets than youâd ever want. So if youâre looking for a luxury sports car, even plowing an additional $20,000 into the XK8, while well above book, still leaves you at less than half the cost of a new F type.
And then thereâs also the the question of whether the new functional equivalent of machine youâre looking for is even still available? Iâm thinking of the mini pickups like the Chevy LUV or original Ford Ranger that you could easily park without the assistance of three tug boats.