I haven't been lurking too long but feel a sense of kindred spirits as I read through the site.
Since having kids, I've slowed down on the cars but still try to work on them as much as possible.
Luckily for me, as a stunt driver here in Los Angeles, driving (and thus maintaining and improving) my vehicles has some bearing on my career.
And even more luckily, we just moved to a place in el Segundo that has a 2700 sq ft shop that will prevent any further excuses of "I just don't have any room."
The family ride is a very vanilla, very steadfast, very base 08 Tahoe. It does have a weird noise akin to a deep squeak from the rear occasionally when going over bumps or ditches.
The usual steed for mrs and I is an 05 Prius. Purchased with about 110k for the handsome price of $4k from the inlaws, they drove it down from Washington, had it detailed and then demanded $500 less than the agreed price of $4500. I am blessed with generous extend family.
My car of choice is a 98 m3/4/5. Unfortunately, my wife hates it and it continues to give me issues. Which only encourages the "why don't you just sell that thing?" conversation. "Because I like it" just doesn't make sense to everyone.
I had it pretty sorted out (stock save some cool wheels and a great sounding muffler) until the autozone alternator I had just put in started to overcharge and took out my battery, stereo, and something that controls the cruise control and mileage-related elements of the on board computer (still trying to fix).
I had never smelled a fried, overlooked battery before, but man does it reek. I thought it was my cats taking a dump after just running a can of seafoam through it. I don't think the cats liked the seafoam and won't do that again.
The upside was replacing the cats with some healthy low mileage units from a buddy's car that really cleaned up the emissions so it did have a silver lining.
My tow/work rig is an 05 f350 ex cab long bed 4x4 diesel that is my life's great purchase. I bought my house just as the market started to go down ("it's a perfect time! The prices have dipped and I got a deal!") Cut to 2 years later and I owe twice as much as its worth...
But with this truck, I bought it 6 or so years ago when gas prices rocketed to almost $5/gallon and everyone was dumping their big rigs. I paid $10k and could sell it today for $15k.
The last two are the most interesting.
My project car is a 59 Morris minor I am putting a "modern" drivetrain in (the 2.3 turbo ford and pinto front suspension was 9 years more modern when I started...) and customizing to make it fit my definition of cool. A chopped, flared minor looks pretty angry.
And my track/drift toy/tool is a 90 180sx - basically a 240sx with original sr20det from Japan.
I left it as I bought it for many years and drifted the crap out of it. I still go sideways but more and more find myself at autocrosses (ftd at the two small autocrosses ive gone to) and hpde's. So i have recently started to try and build it into a faster, better track car. Brake bias and getting nistune up and running are my next hurdles.
I'll be headed to Atlanta for four months for a show about the 4th of January so there won't be an updates for a bit but I might be able to start some build threads with pics.