How do you care for your car? | Column

How do you view your cars? Are you a caretaker for a future owner, saving them for a son or daughter–or just whoever ponies up the cash?

Or is what’s yours yours? Do you use them as you please, even if that means leaving little other than memories, perhaps some trophies and charred, smoldering husks?

For many of us, cars represent a means to an end–and that end is typically going fast. Swap engines? Cut away any extra weight? Carve out fenders for bigger tires? It’s all on the table. 

And when that car meets its end–is rendered obsolete, reaches the final chapter of its development, or simply finds the wall at Turn 2–you start over with a new one. Rinse and repeat.

But lately, so many of our favorites have experienced skyrocketing values. Have you priced an early Miata lately? Or an MR2 Turbo or E30 BMW? 

And did someone really just pay nearly $40,000 for a Honda CRX? That’s at least 10 times what we paid for them back in the day. 

Of course you know about these prices, because you, like us, are always on the hunt. I recently did a little shopping for another wishbone Honda. We’ve been lucky to own a few over the years, and I had the hankering for another. Good track car, right? 

Guess what? I couldn’t even find any worth calling on, and I was casting a fairly wide net. Go back 10 or 20 years, and you had the luxury of holding out for an ’88 CRX Si–only year without door-mounted seat belts–or a Civic Si in the good color. Today, I would have even taken a sedan. I found car after car just pounded into oblivion. 

As we learned in economics class, it’s all about supply and demand. Years ago, after a certain Porsche Turbo fetched a ton of money, I asked a friend in the biz what he made of the sale. His reply was to the point: Two dudes wanted it. 

Also helping today’s prices is how easily cars can be turned into cash. Back in olden days, landing that right car took some time. First, you had to scan through columns of text just to find the ad. Then you had to pick up the telephone and make contact. Perhaps then some photos were dispatched via the mail. If the car sounded promising, you made plans to see it in person. Eventually, maybe, a deal was struck. And when the time came to sell the car, the same thing happened in reverse. 

Today, cars represent fairly liquid assets. When it’s time to sell, you sell. If it’s something cool, you have multiple avenues. And if it’s a little mundane, you get an instant offer from your local automotive box store. 

A year ago, we decided to sell our ’75 Pontiac wagon. It was simply sitting and taking up too much space both in the driveway and in my head. We cleaned it up and snapped some pictures right there in the driveway–not my most involved photo shoot but certainly good enough. 

[It's hard to say goodbye (to a car) | Column]

I stuck the car on eBay, and eight days later we had a winner. He drove down from Ohio or Indiana or somewhere up north, handed over a stack of crisp hundreds and loaded up the wagon. Haven’t heard from him since. I’d call the whole thing a win.

Are our cars heirlooms, commodities or somewhere in between? It’s fuel for countless internet debates. 

Some enthusiasts are preservationists, realizing that these are special cars that ought to be saved. Others feel that they can do as they please. Plus, they might argue, it’s a keeper, so who cares about the next owner?

Maybe there are degrees of this. At one end, you have cars parked in a bubble and never driven. Then, well, look at our $2000 Challenge coverage for cars that have been cast off yet given a second chance. 

I think my personal point on the scale depends on the car. When I built my Miata 20-plus years ago, I set out to create a neat street car. Today, I dig the fact that it still wears original paint and now carries a kind of ’90s retro cool. I’m still making mods, but I’m not eager to lose the car’s original character.  

The M3 and Porsche both wear original paint, too, so I guess I’m a bit of preservationist there. Still, I’ve been going out of my way lately to actually drive them a bit more so they don’t constantly sit. But after watching a similar 911 Carrera fetch an even hundred grand at Mecum’s Kissimmee sale, I just upped the coverage yet again.

The fact is that carmakers are no longer producing cars from the past. I checked. Time machine’s out of order, too. So what’s in your care, and how are you treating it?

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