On your most loved car..

How do you not sweat the small stuff? Meaning it's super easily to fall into the trap of babying a car like crazy. You know; finding that perfect parking spot, scared to go down town, wiping off that bird E36 M3 instantly. Sometimes I feel like I'm not enjoying my car, but rather keeping it pristine so someone else can enjoy it..

Buy a beater...put your baby under glass...

Buy cars that are used and in good, but not perfect condition. If it already has a couple buggy scratches and door dings even better. You get a lower price and you dont have to worry about getting that first scratch on it. I love my car and I try to keep her clean, but i don't obsess about it. I still have brake dust from a track day last month on her. Life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

I enjoy clean cars with perfect paint and bodywork. I do everything I can to keep them that way, and for the most part enjoy the process. If I bought a car with dents and scratches I would fix them. I don't do it for the next guy, in my mind I'm never going to sell a car. I do it for my enjoyment and satisfaction. I sweat the small stuff, because the details matter. YMMV.

i pound the crap out of my most loved car, and it loves me back long time for getting driven like it wants to be driven.

I'm not saying I won't drive the piss out of something. Throwing it sideways at 60 on a gravel road is one of life's great pleasures. I just clean her up after. Cars are meant to be driven. I also enjoy keeping them nice.

I beat on all my cars. As long as its not a super big ding or really large scratch I just let it be.

Easy, drive a P.O.S. and buy a nice motorcycle.

Coldsnap wrote: How do you not sweat the small stuff? Meaning it's super easily to fall into the trap of babying a car like crazy. You know; finding that perfect parking spot, scared to go down town, wiping off that bird E36 M3 instantly. Sometimes I feel like I'm not enjoying my car, but rather keeping it pristine so someone else can enjoy it..

By remembering that it's just a car. No more alive or precious than my wrenches or underpants.

I love my wife. I do not love my car, my wrenches or my underpants.

You will grow out of it!

Don't turn your car into a "Golden Cow" statue! If you fret more about keeping it 100% perfect that you don't enjoy driving it then why bother? Cars are meant to be driven.

One of the best things I ever saw was a Ferrari Testerosa that was absolutely BEAT with rock chips on the front. That guy really DROVE IT.

[URL=http://s54.photobucket.com/user/dusterbd13/media/1964%20elcamino/20150711_072056_zpsurwmmapa.jpg.html][/URL]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Buy a beater with a salvage title. You'll be squeezing into every parking spot that never existed.

In reply to tomtomgt356:

I remember saying that line in your ssignature, but don't remember where. Any idea?

Datsun1500 wrote: Why keep it nice for the next guy? Drive it. Most people don't realize that a clean 5 year old car and a not as clean 5 year old car sell for pretty close to the same price, as they're both just 5 year old cars. If you bought a 2010 Audi R8 for $150k and drove it for 35000 miles you could sell it today for $110,000 and you had 5 years of fun with your car. If you kept it in the garage and only put 6000 miles on it, guess what it's worth? $110,000. Who got their money's worth? It works on most cars. When you look at KBB prices, how far is the swing on a $15k car? $1500 between used and perfect at most?

This.

Having said that, I park every car I drive as far away from others as I can.

You can darn near surf down the sides of the e30 (and it's gotten much worse since the daughter has been driving it. Sigh.), but I didn't want anymore dings in it than it already had.

The Focus has no dings after three years. It will get one some day. But, when I do, I'll still park it as far away as possible (notice the Freudian slip there...).

I try to make them look as nice as I can, and keep them that way for as long as I can, but they're gonna get dinged, chipped, faded, etc. I do that for me, but I always enjoy when I get a complement on my cars - it's nice that my work feeds somebody's eyeball for a minute or two.

Enjoy the car as much as you can, but as someone mentioned, no need to make it a golden calf.

We're all in this for the fun of it!

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Sorry, I dont remember where I saw it, but I really like it. Hope you don't mind me borrowing it.

Not a bit, tom. I was just trying to remember the context, as I know the first time i said it was here.

I am an anomaly in that I will restore a car from a pile of rust and an oil stain back to pristine better than showroom condition. Then I won't so much as wash it for the rest of my tenure with the car.

If it is a new car, I find that I enjoy it more if I don't really care. The car is bought and amortized for a ten year period after which it goes to the recyclers no matter what shape it is in. It's like having a farm working dog versus a pet. This "don't give a berkeley" mentality takes some effort at first, but once you realize the time and money that it saves it's easy to maintain.

I think one of my co-workers is on the verge of physical violence because the FRS has never been washed in three years and he is OCD clean freak who likes the car.

buy it. Drive it into the ground. rinse and repeat. It's a tool that will have wear. I do my best to avoid as much as I can, but it's going to happen. Knowing that makes it easier and then getting 10+ years of use out of it and I feel I got my monies worth.

didn't we just have this https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/have-you-ever-sold-a-car-because-it-was-too-valuable-to-drive/103410/page1/ I think a lot of the same thoughts apply.

I will say that I am a lot less particular with the bike than I have been with any of my cars. It has scratches and scuffs all over it, but it doesn't bother me as much as a car.

Coldsnap wrote: How do you not sweat the small stuff? Meaning it's super easily to fall into the trap of babying a car like crazy.

It's easy to avoid that trap. Just have a life that includes the usual stuff like a full-time job, spouse and kids, yadda yadda. After a while, even your most favoritest car starts to become a tool you happen to enjoy using, rather than some holy shrine to the automotive gods.

Yes, my E46 daily has been missing the driver's side kidney grille insert for a year. I'm not paying retail for a new part and nobody seems to want to sell me a used one.

I guess with the 'D I don't really sweat anything too much since with the exception of a few parts I know I can easily get replacements. With a 30-year-old car crap is going to go wrong anyway so worrying about it is kind of pointless. And when you get right down to it? It's a car. It's meant to be driven and enjoyed, not sit in a garage where it's dusted twice a week.

I love buying cars that have crappy paint because I can thrash them and rally them and not worry about chips or anything. Somebody asks "is that paint chip new?" I just shrug.

However, I'm a mechanical fiend when it comes to my cars. Any little noise or smell out of the ordinary and I'm like "Shhh shhh shhh do you hear that?" THAT can become the infinite labor for me, getting your car to run perfectly and drive perfectly. There is always something that can be replaced to make it better.

I used to detail for side work and kept my old z71 spotless, outside, inside, underhand and under car. I go wheeling and it would get a top to bottom wash the next day off I had. When I sold it to car max the guy said it had too many miles for them to sell they'd probably auction it off or whatever, but he said it was the cleanest OBS chevy he's ever seen and he was gonna try and buy it.

The camaro was the same way when I first got it, then it got hit twice in like a two week span and I didn't wash it for like 2 years.

Now I don't fret about them. I keep them pretty clean and they always have wax on them, and I clean up whatever area I'm working on to make it better than when I started, but I don't care if it goes a few weeks between washes. I just maintain it and make sure when I do need to clean it up for a date or a car meet it only takes a little bit.