Our car guy is trying to talk his wife into becoming a two-car family
In a lot of ways I’m a very frustrated car enthusiast. I’ve owned a bunch of old cars, but never because they were old cars—it’s just that an ex-highway department $500 1971 Chevy C/K 10 was all I could afford.
Same for my $500 ‘73 Dodge Power Wagon with a Ford 351W in it, and my $500 ‘79 Corolla. For a while I owned a pair of 1973 BMW Bavarias (they cost me $500), but I never got either of them running and I eventually sold them for scrap. I got $500 for them.
This winter, I started a new day job, because paying for health insurance out of pocket is no fun. Between the driving the job requires and two kids playing Little League, transportation is now a real hassle.
Meanwhile, my wife is reveling in two regular paychecks coming in and frittering it all away on things like paying off the credit cards and “saving for the boys’ education”, whatever that means. I’m of the thought that the single best investment we can possibly make in our future is an interesting second car.
Like any responsible future-investor, I have responsibly been making exhaustive lists of potential used cars and making my wife look at them. So far, the only thing that’s aroused even a glimmer of interest is a 1994 Volvo 850 wagon, probably because the asking price is approximately that of a set of old tires, and it’s maybe overpriced.
It does kind of scratch my interesting cars itch, as it comes with a five-speed and in refrigerator white it’s definitely a car only a car lover can love. I’d buy it, too, if Craigslist hadn’t decided that a car 120 miles away was in my 85-mile search radius.
The way I see it, however, there are lots of ways to get into a reliable used car that will get the job done, which in this case means being able to put the kids in it, so the Porsche Boxsters and V-8 swapped Mazda Miatas of the world are off the table.
My current list has 51 cars on it, starting with a 1940 Plymouth sedan, which sounds absurd but people used to drive these things everywhere, every day. At the other end is a 2014 Volkswagen GTI Drivers Edition, the final year for the Mk. VI GTI in the top trim level.
Maybe neither of those are going to happen, the Plymouth because my wife is not a crazy person and the GTI because, sadly, they’re asking more than I can afford. There are some real gems in there, though. There’s a gorgeous two-tone brown Lexus LS400 with 54,000 miles at $8,000 and a 2006 Saab 9-3 Aero wagon with 82,000 miles for $3,750, each special in their own way.
I found a 2004 Mercedes-Benz S430 4MATIC with 38,000 miles going for $11,000, a little steep for my purposes but then, it was probably over $80,000 new. Maybe my wife wants something thriftier than a V-8 Mercedes. How about a 2002 Honda Civic Si, with a one-owner Carfax, 53,000 miles and going for $8,491?
No?
Like I said, I have 51 of them.
Actually, that’s not true. While I was looking up the details for these cars, I may have found a few more.
The list is now 53. Okay, 55.
Okay, 60.
Honey? Can I show you a few cars?
David Traver Adolphus is a freelance automotive researcher who quit his full time job writing about old cars to pursue his lifelong dream of writing about old AND new cars. Follow him on Twitter as @proscriptus.