Like any other vice, car collecting starts innocently enough. You long for a particular car, or perhaps you just stumble across something and decide it’s yours. Interest turns to infatuation, and soon you’re fully invested in this vehicle, which somehow embodies everything you always wanted to say …
Tim... I know EXACTLY how you feel. While I'm not in quite as bad a situation as you, I still currently have 5 registered and insured cars, plus one untagged project car and I just sent ProDarwin a PM about his Miata. In reality, I have room for 2 cars inside.
Fortunately, classic and antique registered cars in PA have one-time registration fees. You pay $75 once and you're done unless something happens to your registration card and you need to order (pay for) a new one (I laminate them to protect them inside notoriously leaky LBC's). And classic car insurance is cheap enough that the yearly cost on three of them isn't a real concern. But the upkeep most definitely is. Somewhat in cost, but mostly in time.
While I do like my little house and it's cheap utilities and taxes, it's big downside is a lack of property on which to build a shop and additional storage. If I do end up with the Miata, then something else will have to live outside.
(edit: Oh yeah... and I think we have ourselves a canoe above...)
Tim, perhaps you are reaching the point where promoting the hobby is beginning to take precedent over being a multi-car collector. I was a competitive athlete for many years but now have moved on as an instructor, coach and club founder. I no longer have the youth or time or interest to compete at a level that would satisfy me. I can appreciate that you are evaluating your involvement in the car hobby and that you are letting us tag along to watch where you go with it.
Tim, it's a little hard to keep up with what you still own and what has moved along. Make a list for us and maybe your readers can help you decide what to keep.
I hear what you are sayin' about being in over your head - but will not share this column at home 
I may well be in the minority, but agree 100% on the Tiger and Shelby being "keepers".
Good luck, and keep us posted.
OUCH!! Why do you have to get so personal??
I ended up with a similar, but smaller version, of your problem a dozen or so years back. At the time I had a total of 8 car, all Italian. 3 X1/9s, 2 Alfa Spiders, 2 Alfa Sprint Veloces, 1 105 series GTV, 1 Alfetta GT and one Fiat 600. They were stashed a friend's houses in addition to mine since I didn't have enough room. At one point, only the 600 ran and I was driving it to work.
I slowly started parting ways with them. Of course I have added many cars since then, but reduced the overall number. I am now down to only one car, but not so much by choice. It's mostly due to liquidation with no refills. I've also started buying more expensive cars and that has limited the number.
My next car purchase is going to be a VERY nice 240Z or a later model Boxster. I can't decide as I want both.
If you can't keep up with required maintenance, you have too many cars.
Letting them sit and rot is not collecting, it's hoarding.
19 is a lot, but I have to say you make it look functional.
I have 4 project cars and 3 project motorcycles. Precious little gets done. My 260Z has been nearly static for 7 years. My EF hatch is barely functional and the two 280SEs just sit in the driveway. I tried to unload the two Mercedes on Tom at the Mitty this year but for some odd reason he darn near ran away. How strange 
Tim, that's too funny. I feel your pain. I have 5 collector cars (3 Italian sports car and 2 German microcars), a truck, a sport bike, and my family's 3 daily drivers to look after. Don't even mention yard maintenance equipment or spare engines! I'm really proud that I'm at the point that everything is roadworthy and decent looking, but it still isn't enough. There are plenty of other cars that I want to experience before I check out of this lifetime! However, my daughter is starting college in August, so the toys are going to have to take a back seat for several years. That will be painful, but should be worth it in the end. Meanwhile, I'm going back out to the garage. I have some new shift linkage bushings to install.
On so many levels this has been a wake up.
I am working to get my 9 year old's kart ready for his first event next weekend. The next little step in the process is building the trailer that can be pulled by the Honda Element that "Mom" will be driving to the events. That "Mom" needs to trailer the kart reflects when the kids get to drive during an event, which is always after lunch. The time my run group is on track moves from event to event, so when "Mom" is ready to go after the kids have run they can bolt.
But we as a family have figured out how to make it a weekend event. The 1987 Pace Arrow,with a fresh 454, pulls my just purchased 2005 Aluma trailer that this coming event will carry my 1995 Miata.
As a serial BMW owner: 1975 2002, building to DP, 1982 E21 running in H Stock, 1987 E30 NASA GTS2 and a 1994 M Tech 325is. All are OBD I or older, I have drawn the line and I will not cross it.
As I see it I am taking care of the exercise thing (stuff does not load it's self for the events), drinking less ( the motorhome does the drinking for me, remember at less than 6 miles to gallon gas is a cooling agent) and in California the DMV renewal fee's for older cars is at least $90 a year plus insurance plus...
And I have sold one thing recently. My long serving Carson 18' wood deck car hauler, even I do not need three trailers. Any more.
Tim Suddard wrote: And my Shelby? Fuhgeddaboudit. That’s the one, the forever—for now.
Well, I thought I was going to help. Guess not
In my case it appears that the cure was a depreciated Super Car, since buying the 996 Turbo my collection has reduced by 8, which leaves just 17 left
In my case it appears that the cure was a depreciated Super Car, since buying the 996 Turbo my collection has reduced by 8, which leaves just 17 left
Clearly you're not alone in this... there are SO many of us (though the relative scale of our vice may vary). I wish I could be happy with one or two cars, but passion, opportunity, aspiration, and enthusiasm combine and conspire to make me want more. I have limited myself A LOT, mainly to a few "keepers", but I'm at the age where I stand to inherit the bulk of my father's "vice" too, which would add a solid 6 or 7 to my 5 or 6, and that doesn't include the 5 we put in a barn in 1988. I'm not sure there's a point in saying that some hard decisions will need to be made, and that there will be a lot of rationalizing involved to accommodate the inevitable senses of sentimentality, guilt, obligation, and denial that lead to keeping cars that I would be better off letting go of, but I hope being conscious of it will help bring a bit of reason to what I'm sure will be an unavoidably emotional affair.
But the biggest issue for me (and my father) is that our monetary and time budgets limit us to our cars being in perpetual project mode, and the weight that adds to the wear on one's psyche adds to the conundrum and stress of it all all the more. But what would life be without hopes and dreams, plans and schemes, toil and trouble? I'd rather have at it than not. Good luck to all of us.
This piece is really just the tip of the iceburg, Tim. Having downsized from the 240,000 sq ft space I had when we met to 11,000sq ft in the Taylors Mill for 6 years, I now "borrow" a couple of thousand feet in a chicken coop because my residence does not even have a garage. I'm down to two R5 Renaults (one a race car) that don't run, my rusty NSU Spyder race car, two running Miatas, an F250, and a fork lift. Oh yeah, I still have my Auto Red Bug (owned for 64 years). My disease is becoming manageable, sorta but the ultimate end is getting closer. 19 cars, mere childs play. You have room for several more, just ask Jay Leno....
Every point you've made is so dead on.
I've used nearly evey one of those justifications for buying another car
sometimes not even getting the new purchase home before stopping to buy another.
Thanks, Tim for a great article and some super mags.
$850 for registrations is one thing, what about insurance?
Went to the dictonary
noun: habit; plural noun: habits
1.
a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.
noun: vice
immoral or wicked behavior
You've got a habit until you sell the Shelby.
When you sell the Shelby, you've either kicked the habit, or you've crossed the line to vice when you use the proceeds to buy more cars.
That is what a 2 car garage and an understanding wife are good for: A car must leave before another car can park there!
In reply to ktisdale :
Smart way to live. Me... not so smart.
In reply to Nred :
I would sell the Shelby to get a Cobra and that's about the only way it owuld leave.
Tim,
There's a loophole here in my interpretation of the definition; keep the Shelby and park a Cobra next to it. You won't have kicked the habit, but haven't crossed into vice?
OK, that's a tretch. Just trying to help,...
Sorry, typo. "Stretch."
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