It should go without saying, but we at The Autopian love cars far, far more than is generally considered normal. However, when the button to publish Comment of the Day is pressed, this fantastic world of speed and sloth, fossil fuels and electricity, and tarmac and mud takes a rest, and we all go out into the real world. The part of real life that isn’t the miracle of being able to do what we love for a living. And life usually means compromise. Often times, life as an enthusiast is about trying to balance the joy of cars — finishing a job, nailing a heel-toe downshift, firing up the headlights with just the right song on the stereo — with the financial pains of cars and the other things you want to do in life.
In many parts of the world, insurance costs hundreds of dollars a month, fuel is expensive, and not all repairs are cheap. If you live in a major city, simply finding secure long-term parking can be both expensive and far from your dwelling, and then there’s the joy of registration fees and such.
Don’t get me wrong, cars are a brilliant hobby, but most people don’t define themselves by a singular hobby. There’s music to make, food to enjoy, sports to partake in, and even landscaping to do. Admittedly, I’m fairly light on cars compared to some of my co-workers, but even though cars run a thread through much of what I do, on many evenings out, it’s tangential. Cocktails, good nachos, concert tickets, the odd house party, these things all cost real money and take real time.
So, how do you balance cars with everything else you do? Maybe you have a housemate to give your fixed expenses some slack. Maybe you’ve put off buying that dream car because it would just be too much of a stretch. Maybe you’ve just given in and let cars be your everything. Whatever the case is, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
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Honestly, I just have a reasonable wife.
She’s smart enough to encourage me to take a smoking deal on a Jeep – and also smart enough to push back because “three non-road worthy vehicles is enough”.
I was doing pretty good ’til this place showed up.
I don’t really? The two dailies go under the carport with the camper, the old Chevy goes in the garage, when any of them need something that I don’t have the time and/or competency to do myself, they go to the shop, otherwise I order the parts and do it after work one day.
The only complicated thing is that the garage is really too small for purposes, but I’m mid renovation on the house and also have a storage/workshop building that’s deteriorating faster than I thought and may be beyond economic repair, so I’ve got to juggle those with the larger garage I wanted to build this year, will maybe do things in stages. Finish renovations and build the new workshop by this Spring and maybe just pour the pad for the new garage, and put up that building next year.
I have two “hobby” vehicles, and have had both for a very long time. I set aside a big lump of money from the inheritance from my parents, but it ended up in the house budget. Still waiting for the opportunity to repay myself. My spouse says I can have a lump from the inheritance, but not sure when that will happen. Those funds to go to restoring the ’64 F100 crewcab that has been in the family since ’65.
Funds for my ’67 VW squareback are slow in coming. Money released at the start of the covid-thing went to buy parts for it, and I kept buying more parts, and I started the tear-down in an effort to restore it as practice for the truck. It is still torn down waiting for me to fix the hole where the battery is supposed to sit, body work, and paint, etc. All I need is time.
If we are only talking about money, I basically fried all my spare dough on my resto project.
At first it was manageable with an engineering job, then it became stupid when I was trying to become a car mechanic and now it’s ok again as a freelance.
Thankfully I’m all paid up with the body shop so I can be poor again.
Pfffftt… Balance?
looks back at corvette wall
Very easily. My only car is a 1967 Chevy. But I waited and bought one that somebody else spent a lot of money repainting and putting a new interior in. I got it for a good price. It had 40k miles then. 2 years later it has 50k. I get to drive it every day. It’s more like I bought a 5 year old used car and not a 60 year old project. It just needs normal basic servicing. It’s fun not work.
I don’t have room for a collection so I keep my hot rod in the garage and use a Raptor as a dd. No time to build awesome or work on awesome but fortunately have funds to still drive awesome at least. Two kids take all my time so my commute is my car time.
Not gonna lie. I spend most of my free time playing video games.
I am currently saving to build my car collection. I currently drive a 2005 Honda Civic themed after Star Trek: Lower Decks (License Plate: RITOS). I hope to get something cool and something useful this year. Probably going to get a minivan for something useful and a Porsche Cayman for something cool.
LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS!
Mariner, I don’t think we should…
SHUT UP BOIMS!
Cars are the best. Would own hundreds of them if could afford to do that.
Reality sucks a lot of the time. But it’s where “they” want me to live. I am fortunate to have many friends who own the cars I lust over. And they let me drive them when I want to. So that’s a nice thing.
Currently drive a almost 16 yr old Scion. A bit boring, but satisfactory.
Been looking hard for a decent old Road Runner, Charger, or Super Bee for some fun, yet that right one is tough to find, let alone afford.
Consider yourself invited to drive ours if you’re ever in the SF Bay Area.
Thanks, and bless you friend.
I’ve kinda got myself stuck in an annoying spot. I’m living the California rat race currently, where making $120k as a household feels like really scraping by even with “cheap” rent($1900 a month ????), but everything else adds up- utilities run $400-600 a month for our tiny little house and debt left over from previously truly scraping by. I do all my own car work to save money for actual improvements- but I don’t really like doing it. Mostly because I don’t have a good setup, I’m in the driveway and it always feels like I’m a few tools short of making a job easy. It’s my dream to either have a well-sorted garage of my own, or to have enough disposable income to pay for the cars I want AND someone else to work on them. I’ve also considered selling my actual sports car and leasing something that is both practical and fun, like an Ioniq 5N, and therefore not paying insurance on an extra car that doesn’t consistently run and also not having any repair costs.
Amazed at your living costs. Seriously. Rent where I live for a small 2 bedroom house starts close to 2K per month. And utilities are very close to yours as well. But I do understand the frustration of the ever rising cost of living. For example my house payment is 1,200 per month, but my home insurance is almost 4K per. Because they keep moving the Hurricane zone further from the coast. After every frickin Hurricane. BTW we are 30 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. In Alabama, a state that is considered one of the five cheapest to live in. Which seems to be a bad joke.
I feel blessed to have a garage, but having the cash to support another ride for fun use is a tough one. Best of luck to you.
Yeah, for our area we are getting a very good deal, small 2 bedroom(CA style where the 2nd bedroom would barely work for a roommate- like 10×10. And neither the master or spare bedroom have closets making the space much less useable). The main issue around here is that unless you are extremely lucky there isn’t much cheaper. Vs in the Midwest we happily lived in a one bedroom apartment with about the same square footage that was $1k a month. We have friends with places like that but they are vanishingly rare around here.
Thanks, I feel for you and wish you the best.
Cars have definitely taken a backseat in recent years. We own a 2007 Corolla, 2005 MDX and a 2014 Camry Hybrid – nothing exciting. I still do all routine maintenance and some bigger jobs as long as I know I can do without one for a week or so. Doing exhaust or suspension work on jackstands sucks (I live in the Pittsburgh area so we have rust) and usually farm that work out. I prefer doing my own brakes and have done timing belts, etc… When single I had a ’94 SHO 5 speed, ’96 SOHC V8 Thunderbird and an ’89 4.0L XJ Cherokee.
I’m working to resurrect a 1962 Corvair 700 for a friend. It’s solid and clean, just has not run in a while. I replaced pushrod tube and oil cooler seals, cold set all valve lash, rebuilt the twin carbs and installed a Pertronix. Need to set ignition timing (the distributor holddown clamp was broken) and hopefully it will fire up with new gas.
I would not trade the family and my now 18 y/o daughter for more/different cars.
Pretty sure that’s illegal these days
Legit. When my daughter quite unexpectedly—one might almost say miraculously—came along, it heralded the end of my budding Westfalia collection. It made me way too security-conscious to continue to want to follow the Dead or wander around the country in one. Hell, I broke down and bought an SUV to transport infant her: turned out I was more normie than I thought!
—when my granddaughter is on my lap I really don’t mind a bit 🙂
I was a full time car dork from from about the time I got my first until my late 20s. All my friends were car dorks, every bit of spare time was spent at meets, drives, wrench days, or on car forums. My brother and I moved in together so that we could afford a place with a garage and still have money to spend on cars. We had a ton of fun and I have no regrets. Then I got into mountain biking and became a full time bike dork until my late 30s. Same habits as before, but with more bikes and about 25lbs less gut. Again, tons of fun and no regrets. These days I have wife I actually like to spend time with and a dog and a mortgage so the bikes and cars tend to take a backseat to travel and house projects. And the 25lbs came back to roost. Still fun, still no regrets.
Balance? What balance? This is my life. After the bills are paid and a little saved, the money goes to car stuff. The two trips I have planned for this year both involve car shows, one of those also involves flying 13 hours to buy a car. After working all day in a shop I come home and talk cars with my husband, who also works with cars all day. The weekends are usually racing, wrenching, or showing. Almost all of my friends are car people. My kid wants to be a car designer when she grows up and instead of this sounding like “I want to be an astronaut,” in our house, it sounds about as achievable and normal as growing up to become a dentist. The only balance we have in this house is trying to balance the needs of six cars, down from seven last week but soon to be back up.
But why?
Because this is what brings me happiness
And if they frustate you too much, just sell them or part them out. Unlike kids. Well, you could sell or part out kids, but then people think you are some kind of monster
And that is the perfect answer: enjoy life!
Counter-point. But why not? Cars sound like a family business in the Petersen home. I can’t car and husband, or car and dad, cuz my family doesn’t share my passion. But I sure as hell would if they did.
Why not??
It was about this time last year that I decided to jump in with both feet. After some life changes I found myself needing a vehicle to tow my ski boat to the lake from my house on the weekends and for some longer trips. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and trading in my sport sedan for a new midsize truck, I decided I should instead buy an 85 Chevy C10 for this. The truck needed several items right away but ran well enough to get through last summer but I wanted more power for towing than the tired 305 could give me. If something is worth doing it is worth overdoing so I am in the middle of swapping a 6.2ls engine into it working out of my tiny garage.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m not managing well, at all. This is subject to change once I get the damn thing running though.
These days, my car/life balance is pretty good. I am fortunate to have a career in technical training working for a well-known automaker. So I’ve spent over 25 years teaching people how to diagnose and repair cars! From 2009-2022, my buddies and I raced 3-4 weekends a year in a few “affordable” endurance racing series (shout out to Lucky Dog Racing League!). In those days, a lot of my spare time and money went toward the racing effort. Frankly, I was a bit of a control freak: I didn’t trust most of my teammates to work on the car so I did nearly all of the work myself. I’ve taken a break from racing for a bit, although I do help my son (who’s an engineering student) with his endurance racing effort when he has the time & money to do it. I still fix my kids’ cars, the family minivan and the occasional project car. Someday I’ll give my Boxster S some attention.
I am car mechanic by trade, but happy and lucky to be out of car dependency now. So we have an old Volvo type B, and my car hobby is mostly reading and a bit dreaming of a Miata or maybe an old Hi-Lux. Besides that: Restoring old bikes (yes, bicycles, not motorbikes) is usually less time and money consuming.
That’s my brother’s take – he can afford a hand-made, Italian, vintage treasure and he can keep a handful of bikes in his apartment.
I have a very understanding spouse, with whom I made a deal that I get to have extra cars if I also maintain her car, so she doesn’t have to take it to a shop. I also owe her a Morris Minor or a Nissan 300ZX some day (she has interesting taste in cars).
The “big” cars she’s cool with. The RC and model cars, not so much… that stuff always takes a back burner to everything else. Which is fine.
Work from home has been a game changer in terms of having impractical vehicles. I’m $30k into making my 2016 Tacoma into a very capable back country camping / hunting rig, but at 12MPG, I’m glad it’s not a commuter. I also bought an Airstream Basecamp 20x, which lets us camp comfortably 50 nights a year from March to November. I bought my wife a Rav4 hybrid for daily duty – it is the perfect vehicle to just exist and work.
The longer I WFH, the less I drive, yet the more cars I own.
I built my life largely around the cars and this hobby. I am married but don’t have any children as of yet with only one planned for several years from now so we aren’t financially stuck. I mostly spend time with my cats and wife, go fishing sometimes, occasional target shooting, play video games, and largely do car stuff. My wife is very accepting of it and as we search for a home has almost exclusively looked at ones with no or little HOA involvement, an attached garage, and an existing or ample room for a detached garage. We also both make pretty decent money and luckily my main focus being Miatas means they are fairly affordable to own and modify. In the future I do hope to acquire a FD however which should be within my means. It also helps that I am able to do pretty much anything I need done to the cars myself excluding serious machining work.
I’ve only owned one vehicle at a time for myself, for a total of two total, and as an apartment dweller I don’t have the interest or opportunity to work under the hood myself.
But I’ve done lots of little interior projects on both vehicles (subwoofer installation, speaker replacements, head unit upgrade, dashcam installation). I even rewired the extra interior lights in my old conversion van, which had had the ability to be wired to also come on when the doors open (but weren’t when I got it, for some reason).
I also got fog lights and a 1.5″ lift installed on my Prius, but I had shops do those.
I like cars. I like talking about them. But aside from making my own more comfortable/fun for me to use, I don’t do a lot of “hobby-like” activities with them, at least not as a driver. But as an owner?
I like that using a daily driver for hobby things has no impact on my living space. If I get into, say, model trains, that’s going to take up some of the limited space in my apartment. It’s going to make moving more difficult.
If I add dashcams or speakers to my car…that barely affects anything. I was already going to have a car (I need one where I live), whether or not I modified it, so why not have fun with it?
I’ve learned through my own mistakes to be ruthlessly minimalist and constantly prioritize quality over quantity. While single I constantly bought and sold cars (the buying part came easily, not so much the selling), browsing craigslist, always imagining how this next German hooptie will totally change my life etc.
After getting married I had 7 cars, all running and all insured under my broadform policy. A win in some sense… but I quickly realized that MOST of my weekends and evenings were filled with some kind of car stuff. If not actively wrenching, it’s searching for a deal on tires or researching how to replace some esoteric part without totally removing the engine like the service manual says, on and on and on.
I realized most the cars were just sitting around and rotting 99% of the time, it’s physically impossible to drive them all regularly. Balance came once I made some tough decisions, sold everything, and downsized to just two cars. One being my first-ever new car, a Maverick hybrid to be the reliable commuter with a warranty. The second was a practical CUV, but a German one with twin turbos and 400hp to scratch the itch of having reasonable fun and 125K miles guarantees some kind of wrenching always needs to be done.
Turns out even this tiny fleet needs TLC, just doing the maintenance and small repairs on the Macan soaks up a few weekends per year, plus the time to wash them and detail the interiors. In hindsight I regret most of the time I spent under cars instead of more social activities or even putting that energy into real estate… I’d be retired by now instead of being happy when I made $3000 on that one car flip (never mind the ones where I lost even more despite dozens of hours invested). I went through around 50 cars by age 30, and I could have had just as much fun if I had 5 during that time. Can’t help feeling my life would have been better if wrenching was enjoyed in moderation.
This resonates with me a lot. I spent much of my 20s and 30s with several old BMWs for which I kept meticulous records so I know exactly how much I spent. I’d by lying if I said that I had no regrets. I probably could have lived in Europe for a year without working.
Although I’ve owned far fewer cars, I’m starting to feel this acutely. I have an MR2 Spyder which keeps having issues that prevent me from driving it, and plus it is so impractical even as a fun car. I love it but highly considering ditching it and the older hatchback we have and leasing a new sporty EV.
Also, without a cage or a more serious roll bar I can’t even track the Spyder, if I could afford to go to the track even. I should just set it up for AutoX and try one season.
How do you like the PORSCHE? Been eying a couple for sale round these parts.
Lived pretty much your story. But am lucky because my best friend has a fleet of almost 40 cars. I go over and drive his 3 Ferraris, or PORSCHE 930, or RR or the Bentley , or Benzs on a regular basis. or one of the 12 Toyota trucks he has now. Just to exercise them.
And even though he’s a huge car guy, being a self made millionaire keeps him way too busy to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Which is a shame. I still kick myself in the ass when he offered me a Ferrari 308 in 2012 for 10K…but my wife sort of put the kibosh on that idea. Now that car is worth 100K, give or take.
And also regret too many hours wrenching on crap.
I often spent most of the weekend in the garage 20-odd years ago, or at junkyards seeking to stretch my meager budget. But I mostly enjoyed the process. It was good head-time. And confidence-building: I got familiar with every single component of a Bosch CIS-K system to the point that I could rebuild the fuel-distributor—and even the Bosch manual had bold-print warnings about the horrors that would befall you if you dared to open one.
This is amazing. My friend started rebuilding fuel distributers over 20 years ago! That’s how he became a millionaire. Started in his garage, now he’s got a dozen employees, and a big nice shop. And he is doing a bang up amount of business…I have seen how it’s done, and except for the calibration process, it’s actually a very simple process, as you already know. Good for you. Thanks.
Thanks back: few people grok the delicacy of them. I actually acquired most of the stuff to turn a Rabbit LS into a 4-door GTI plus proper adjustable struts by bartering those skills. That was a big deal to me back then, and I still look back fondly on it. I had the Bentley manual, the Bosch manual, a huge whiteboard, and that Rabbit. Oh—and access to almost jewelry-grade ‘sandpaper’ because of fixing piano finishes.
It is fairly simple once you get over the dire warnings 😉
Just saw your thoughtful reply, having a best friend with a fleet of cars needing exercise is truly the holy grail of a situation for a car guy! I saw NYC has a classic car co-op where a few dozen classic cars are kept in good driving condition by a couple mechanics, and each member can drive the cars a certain amount of days per year kinda like a timeshare. They also vote on new additions etc. Such a thing can’t be cheap, but seems like would be an incredible way to experience a variety of interesting rides just enough to get the experience but not so much that the wrenching takes over your life.
Regarding the Macan I’ve been pleasantly surprised over the 2 years I’ve had it so far, especially since I got it with 110K miles and drive about 10K a year. It’s even the 2015 entry year for the model, but the first 2 owners were meticulous about maintenance and the car had a transmission mechatronics replacement to the tune of $5k.
It wouldn’t really make sense to have it if I didn’t do most the work myself. I just got a quote for brakes and front control arms that’s $4.8K, which is a quarter of the car’s value…. and there are many such expenses coming up. When the turbos need replacing it’s engine-out. Swapping out the 4 air suspension springs is around $5K. On and on and on, but I decided to just drive and enjoy for now, and get rid of it once the second large expense hits. We’ll see what happens!
Thanks for your response. I want a PORSCHE but, have decided that at my age doing the needed maintenance, and cost is probably, not realistic.
I have a brother in Aspen, he has 3 now, maybe 4. Cayenne, 911, and 914/6.
He says the cost of keeping them on the road is really expensive. Oh well, that’s life.
I do wish you the best on owning/dealing with yours. I hope you enjoy them!
It’s hard not to envy your friends and family with fanct fleets, hopefully you get a chance to stretch the legs of the Porsches in Colorado mountains once in a while 🙂
That said, the first one I got was a salvage Boxster S with a crappy paint job, turns out it had two accidents before the one I knew about, was on original single-row IMS bearing… I decided to just cross my fingers and drive across the country with a buddy and hope for the best. Nothing broke along the way and we had a blast… had the thing for 5 years with no major repairs and sold it to an older guy who beat cancer and wanted to live a little. He bought it and to this day takes it on all kinds of trips with his friends and it’s still holding up. At the $7K he paid, he already got that much fun out of it even if the thing explodes tomorrow.
Thank you for the kind words and best of luck to you as well, maybe you’ll find a way to own something fun from the Porsche family someday!
Not well. Between work and family, there isn’t a ton of time for hobbies – I didn’t even bother buying a ski pass this year. For the car obsession, I take enjoyment in reading articles here and other sites, and doing my best to care for the 3-car fleet, at least getting them through the car wash as needed.
That being said, I utilized the day off yesterday to get a number of maintenance issues addressed on a couple of the cars. I don’t do a ton of DIY repairs, but feels good to get some of them done every once in a while.
Like most others, poorly. I have a fleet of old 2G DSMs and an Evo 10, but I also have an adult job, four kids, and too much debt. My cars sit far more than I would like, but my teenaged son has started to take in interest in one of my Talons, and so he puts pressure on me every so often to finish the many deferred maintenance issues/projects.
Even among the fleet, it’s hard to balance. Some of my cars necessarily get more attention than others. I’m more willing to do the work on the 2G I daily drive, or even on my Evo (which needs nothing beyond a state inspection right now) than, say, the black Talon with no registration and a disassembled interior that I haven’t touched in two years, or the race car project that has been immobile since my oldest was born.
It costs me very little to let them sit and wait for me, and so mostly, that’s what they do.