The calming effect of disposable cars.

I grew up in Michigan with the bulk of my youth overlapping with the 80's. This was not an especially bright time in automotive history but I became a car guy anyway.
One of the truths of automotive ownership in that time and place was rust. Cars will rust. They will start rusting their first winter and that rust won't stop until the car is rendered unsafe and worthless. 'Real' car guys all put their cars away for the winter and drove beaters. I knew guys who switched from Corvettes to Chevettes annually. It's just how things were done.
The cool part of this was that beaters didn't matter. Guys who washed their summer cars twice a week and parked in the farthest parking spots all of a sudden bombed through puddles and pushesd shopping carts out of the way with their doors. The change in car changed the person, and it was a gift afforded only to those who swapped cars for the seasons.
I don't live where salt eats cars anymore, but I still don't feel like a proper car guy if I don't have a car that I consider a beater. Leaving the good car in the garage during a tropical storm feels like the right thing to do. Being able to park between the overloaded scrap metal truck and the minivan with a pile of spilled Cheerios outside the door is liberating.
The downside? Beaters last forever in the south. All you need to do is keep up with maintenance and they last for years and years and years. They don't rust away. It's almost frustrating.

Yup! Grew up in New Hampshire. Rust, Rust, Rust and batteries! Batteries would only last a few years.

Now I have a very nice 'beater'. Our newest car!

I remember when I had cars I wanted to wash and hide away from "bad things". There was stress involved in parking and what the weather might hold for the day. Birds and dogs and children. It was all wasteful hand-wringing looking back.

Since I no longer have any of those nice cars or the beaters - in the end I wasn't really saving one with the other. Someone else got something in better shape than it should have been and I paid to keep two cars where one would have done just fine.

Now, I'm almost indifferent to the abuses I inflict and replace them when they are done. Or when the set of character scars starts to make my wife uncomfortable in mixed company. It still irritates me when the negligence of others damages my stuff but not enough to lie awake at night or to acquire a fall guy for it.

I haven't fallen in love with a car in a long time I guess.

The ram and charger both got fluid filmed like crazy before the salt flew but it still makes me ill seeing them be white instead of blue.

For years i did the winter beater thing, until i realized i was spending more time fixing brake and fuel lines and frozen tensioners and stuff on rusty junk. When your beater goes down and you need to pull your 1971 something out of the garage knowing full well it has no heat and barely has wipers because you don't drive it in the cold and rain, counting on header heat to keep you warm through the floor, it kinda sucks. In my case it was a 71 caprice with straight summer tires, no heat, to get to school when my crown vic had an electrical problem. This is the first year in 20 years of driving that i do not have a winter beater, and while it's nice to drive a new truck every day i find myself trolling CL for a cheap RWD hoonmobile that i could toss snow tires on and keep some salt off the truck. In the end, i need the truck for work and towing cars around so it's going to get exposed to winter either way i guess.

Imagine growing up in a rust free environment like that with nothing but beater cars, including a few spares and then suddenly buying your first brand new car. Yeah that's a weird feeling, like getting your first nice suit or fancy watch, etc. you're paranoid and it's hard to relax enough to enjoy it.

This is why my zephyr is garaged in the winter. It survived 30+ years of ohio but id rather not exspose it too more of this crap. My round trip for work is 4 miles, just about any beater will do for salt season.

Huckleberry wrote: I remember when I had cars I wanted to wash and hide away from "bad things". There was stress involved in parking and what the weather might hold for the day. Birds and dogs and children. It was all wasteful hand-wringing looking back. Since I no longer have any of those nice cars or the beaters - in the end I wasn't really saving one with the other. Someone else got something in better shape than it should have been and I paid to keep two cars where one would have done just fine. Now, I'm almost indifferent to the abuses I inflict and replace them when they are done. Or when the set of character scars starts to make my wife uncomfortable in mixed company. It still irritates me when the negligence of others damages my stuff but not enough to lie awake at night or to acquire a fall guy for it. I haven't fallen in love with a car in a long time I guess.

Pretty much this. I decided to combine the cost of keeping a beater and a good car and what works out is to buy new, amortize the cost over ten years to zero, and then scrap it. Kinda like that "life well lived is when you skid into the grave on your last quart of oil." poster

By not falling in love with the DD you save at least $1000 in car care expenses towards the next new one. I do care a lot about the style and handling of what I DD and both those elements are relatively immune to the 10 year lifespan.

I save my car enthusiasm for project cars; where the potential is on the upswing rather than the down-slide.

I'm still in disbelief that used cars cost the same (or more) in the rust belt as they do in the South. I still think there is a blue collar business model to be had by opening a <$5k used car lot somewhere in the North, featuring only rust-free cars ferried up from Atlanta.

Oh god, the adventure of driving a E36 M3 box in the winter. Since the advent of cell phones, i dont even care if I get home. In at least one case I carriEd the title to it, because I was ready at any moment to hop out and walk away. It was a very zen moment, because when you just don't care, driving becomes a lot more fun.

I attribute the calming effect to reaching a point in life where one drives E36 M3boxes because he can, not because he has to.

When it makes no damn difference they seem to run indefinitely. When riding to work and praying the temp needle doesn't swing up much further, watching the gas light, and hoping to score some tips or find a $5 bill in the parking lot to have enough gas to get home -- that wasn't as calming.

Um, sounds like the guy driving the chevette is having way more fun than the guy in the corvette.

That's why I drive beaters year round. (Currently campaigning the challenge Saab as my daily - and as a bonus, swedish heated seats are the e36 m3).

mazdeuce wrote: The downside? Beaters last forever in the south. All you need to do is keep up with maintenance and they last for years and years and years. They don't rust away. It's almost frustrating.

Yup. Boredom is the only thing that will kill them.

Tyler H wrote: I'm still in disbelief that used cars cost the same (or more) in the rust belt as they do in the South. I still think there is a blue collar business model to be had by opening a <$5k used car lot somewhere in the North, featuring only rust-free cars ferried up from Atlanta.

You aren't the first to think of this. I've considered it as a retirement gig.

If I had room I would totally have a crap box to beat the ever loving e36m3 out of but currently I only really have room for 2 cars so my daily and the Miata are all ATM.

Huckleberry wrote: I remember when I had cars I wanted to wash and hide away from "bad things". There was stress involved in parking and what the weather might hold for the day. Birds and dogs and children. It was all wasteful hand-wringing looking back.

This. I had an S2000 in near perfect condition. Most stressful car I've ever owned.

I grew up in Los Angeles and didn't even know salt and rust were "real" problems until I went to Minnesota in middle school and saw what rust really was.

Thinking back now to all the cool classic cars I've driven/owned etc (I basically grew up in muscle car shop) I feel a little guilty about how few berkeleys I gave about the collectable nature of some of these cars.

Even now I still treat cars like appliances. Although I'm not exactly abusive I've accepted that owning and using any vehicle puts it at risk and I just don't worry about it. This has made me largely indifferent to parking lot damage etc, but I still don't have winter to worry about.

Tyler H wrote: I'm still in disbelief that used cars cost the same (or more) in the rust belt as they do in the South. I still think there is a blue collar business model to be had by opening a <$5k used car lot somewhere in the North, featuring only rust-free cars ferried up from Atlanta.

It makes total sense. Think about it. If cars are sold at basically the same rate per capita in the North and South, the need for used cars is about the same. But as they deteriorate faster in the North it affects the supply side of the supply and demand curve, so it pushes the price higher for deteriorated cars than in the south.

I don't have nice cars anymore, I have fully subscribed to the RAIV (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Vehicles) methodology of car reliability.

Now if only my insurance company would cut me some kind of group discount.

By some of that definition, all of my cars are "beaters" on some level. Even my classic cars. I am not at a point in my life where I want to own cars I'm all that concerned about. My minivan gets beat on mercilessly. I just hauled home a GT6 drivetrain and a Volvo 1800 nose over the weekend. Made me glad I didn't buy the more expensive van they had on the lot with the nicer interior. I might care more about the pint of antifreeze that poured out of the water pump when I came to the first stop...

Another somewhat liberating feeling: when you realize a car you have full insurance coverage on is only worth having liability-only on since it's not worth much more than the deductible. Just saved about $800/yr changing the insurance on the two newer DD cars.

I can't afford really nice cars anymore, though I can afford something more than a total E36 M3 box beater. I live in a salty area all my life until recently, and I did the winter beater a lot. Had a Viper in the garage, but DD a '96 Taurus with 230k miles on it at one point. No longer have the desire to drive a total beater, and I live in the south. So I have a "beater", but it's newer and nicer. I still beat the snot out of it. We just washed and vacuumed it this past weekend for the first time since July. The car would last far longer than I'd want to keep it, but that's not a bad thing.

I can't help but care about my vehicles, even beaters. I love bringing a car back from the brink. All my beaters became summer time project cars, while I worked on my summer cars in the winter. I don't have the I don't care gene.

If you live in the north you just need enough cars to spread the salt exposure around. I drive a 14 year old MINI and a 18 year old Miata. Both have rust, especially the Miata, but both still have a few more years of use left yet. If I were living in the south I'd have a dozen cars, none of them newer than 2000.
My 2001 Astro was purchased from a southern member of the forum and my mechanic still comments on how rust free it is, several years after I purchased it. The idea of ferrying southern used cars north does have some appeal.

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

That is also my problem, unfortunately. My Miata sat expectantly under some stuff in the garage during the +25 degree summer that I was hammering salt rust off the winter cars.

All cars deserve a loving touch.

I have to say I'm seriously impressed with my Volvo for the condition of it's body and underbody. I regularly drive it through salt redistribution devices (AKA the car wash) and that's it. Never polished, never used film underneath and it's still as minty fresh as anything in Michigan. I'm surprised at the number of rusty cars of the same vintage I see around here. Mazda 3's and anything with a Subaru badge on the back are the most common rusty cars of the 06-09 vintage I see around here. The Mazda is in some way the most surprising as it's the same platform as the Volvo.

My "nice" cars get parked in the winter too. It's interesting to drive something that you care just enough about to keep running and sort of clean as opposed to something you've put a lot of money, time and effort into building. During the other three seasons the nice cars come out to play and provide me with a chance to fix up the beater.

I think the trick is finding something interesting to drive as a beater so you care just enough about it that you want to keep it around. That way you're inclined to actually do the work it takes to keep it going.

As for the nice cars; I drive them in the rain, if the front bumper collects enough chips I'll have it repainted, and if there are a couple of shopping cart and door dings I'll have them popped out for a hundred bucks when they bother me. I'm not keeping them as museum pieces or as collector items. They're there because I like building and driving them. If I didn't I'd sell them. That doesn't mean that I don't want to keep them around as long as possible, it just means that I don't want to do a ton of rusty metal repair work on them.