Do you drive your cars or are you keeping the miles in check? And if the latter, why?
We’ve been just as guilty: Don’t drive the car too much, we’ve often thought, or the mileage will get too high.
[How I learned to stop worrying and love my BMW M3]
But a second, related thought: So what if the mileage …
I feel like there's a middle ground somewhere in there–I'm not too concerned with who gets my car next, but I'd also like to have something to bargain with, if that makes sense.
Or just have too many cars; that way you can't put too much mileage on any of them. I own 10 cars, 9 street legal. This way my five year old daily driver still only has 20,000 miles. They all have to be driven; unless they are inoperable in which case they need to be repaired.
I've averaged about a thousand miles a year on my 240Z, even though I'd like to drive it more often the roads where I live are just not good.
I drive my current Z as often as I can, weather permitting, don't like extremely wet roads when turbos kick in. Recently took it on road trip from southern Ohio to South Carolina just for the hell of it, great trip. Drove it in a manner befitting it's intent. As mentioned previously, these things are designed and built to be driven...not stared at, although doing that in the evening with a cold beverage in hand is not too shabby.
I swap back and forth among 2-4 cars in summer and drive My DD in winter, or my wife's car.
As for 'saving' a car, I'm with Louis XV who said "Après moi, le déluge" (which means once I am gone who gives a crap what happens, or words to that effect).
I do wish I could put more miles on some of the cars, but other things (life) get in the way of just getting out and driving them all the time.
I was driving my e30 325iX one day last winter and some guy in another car yelled and called me names for driving it in the snow. I yelled back that was what it was made for.
I drive my cars with the goal of having the highest mileage Ferraris. For my road cars they also have deades of doing track duty. With a high of 25 track days a year and a single day of 250 miles on track in a single day. They are also concours cars, with one likely being the only 200,000 mile concours Ferrari. The other two road cars are close to that and each need about 2,500 miles to cross that mark. I got a proper Ferrari track car a few years back and get to the track about once a month now. But that car only has about 11,000 kms on it. To quote a famous man, "Ferraris are meant to be driven".
I don't care how high the miles get on my car, I just care about keeping my car in good running condition. Because I drive a vintage Dino, it's not a daily driver as subecting it to that much wear and tear invites a higher probability of parts breaking or wearing out faster (and parts are getting harder and harder to find). I do drive it as much as I can, and that amounts to almost every weekend. When I drive it, it's usually on a nice long tour. I'm certain when I retire, I'll drive it more than just on the weekends.
I think your thought processes change as you mature from a 30-something person with kids wanting to keep all capital available for whatever happens, to a 70-something person with the kids grown and grandkids in high school and college. I'm in the latter group now, so I drive my cars as much as I can to enjoy them while I am able to do so. I really don't care so much about the value of the car, getting rid of them will be my kids' problem, not mine.
I love driving them. My only hesitation is I paid probably more than I should have to get the perfect cars and I feel once they hit 100,000 miles they are just another used car. I passed on buying the perfect specimen car a few months ago because I would have been starting out my journey with 107,000 miles. I ended up buying a lessor car in the same pristine condition because it only had 57,000 miles.
Here was my scenario, I would love to hear what you think....
1990 Porsche 928 GT manual with 107,000 miles absolutely gorgeous with massive service records.
Or
1989 Porsche 928 S4 manual with 57,000 miles absolutely gorgeous with massive service records including ceramic coated and dry iced.
I love driving them. My only hesitation is I paid probably more than I should have to get the perfect cars and I feel once they hit 100,000 miles they are just another used car. I passed on buying the perfect specimen car a few months ago because I would have been starting out my journey with 107,000 miles. I ended up buying a lessor car in the same pristine condition because it only had 57,000 miles.
Here was my scenario, I would love to hear what you think....
1990 Porsche 928 GT manual with 107,000 miles absolutely gorgeous with massive service records.
Or
1989 Porsche 928 S4 manual with 57,000 miles absolutely gorgeous with massive service records including ceramic coated and dry iced.
To be honest, both sound very appealing to me. Were both cars the same color?
Something related that kinda got me looking at this a little differently. Several years back, I was at a local PCA meet-up. I think we were discussing oil, and I mentioned how many miles my 911 had–at the time, probably 130k give or take 10k.
After the talk, someone with a similar car came over to me: That’s all the miles that you have? He had 200k+ and made it clear that he saw all this as a competition going the other way.
His car still looked clean, too. It was a special edition car, too–something that today could probably fetch a few extra bucks on BaT. But props to him for driving it. A lot.
In reply to David S. Wallens :
GT was black on black
S4 is a special order Baltic blue over Linen
Im totally coll w driving a classic car daily but I think I would start at a lower price point and not buy such a nice example
In reply to Rookie13 :
I can see that, too. Pretty much the same driving experience without all the risk of damaging a mint example.
The 12,000 mile 83 ur Quattro is the only car I have that doesn't get driven as much as I have time for. It had 6,200 miles on it when I found it in 2006. Low mileage totally original cars are both blessings and curses. All the collector cars I have no qualms putting as many miles on as I can.
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