Chances are, if you’re reading this website right now, you’re well aware that most of the staffers here daily drive cars of questionable reliability. I mean, Jason once fixed his Yugo with a rock. A rock! As you’ve maybe read today, I once drove a car that used scooter fuel line on its gas tank and didn’t have any doors or windows. Yet, for the most part, I always have at least one car that I would trust to take across the country. Now, David Tracy will too.
Earlier today, David wrote about how his Los Angeles commute sucks all of the joy out of driving a classic car. In a place like Detroit, or where I live in Crystal Lake, Illinois, you can just hop in your hooptie and get anywhere you want without much effort.
On the other hand, on both surface streets and on the highway, Los Angeles is a parking lot so much of the time. As I’ve experienced myself, people weave all over the place, slam on their brakes, and rocket off when there’s even a tiny gap in traffic. Given the weather in California right now, David probably hasn’t experienced what motorcyclists sometimes do. The last time I was in LA traffic, a guy on a sportbike blasted by stopped traffic going ridiculous speeds. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro lane-splitting, but maybe not at highway speed when everyone else is basically parked
For reader and COTD winner Widgetsltd, David’s purchase of the BMW i3 means one really good thing, he now has the “One Good Car:”
David is about to discover the joys of having One Good Car. If you have a reliable, low-fuss car as your daily driver, anything else you buy can be as weird, flaky and temperamental as you like, and you’ll still get around with minimal stress…in your One Good Car. Need to make a run for parts to fix your project car? Just take the One Good car! Don’t want to freak out your passengers by driving the old, weird car in heavy traffic? Drive the One Good Car! In David’s case, the One Good Car is better than most: a stylish German unit that says “I am a person who appreciates technology and a Scandinavian-style interior. Look upon your ordinary Hyundai and despair!”
Our lovely reader is so right here. Do you want to know how I get by with owning so many notoriously unreliable cars? I always have at least one that works at all times and is in good enough condition that I could trust it to take me anywhere. Having a car like this is liberating, even if it’s an appliance. There’s no worrying about if you’ll make it someplace, because you have at least one car that can go anywhere! For me, that car is any one of my five Smarts or the Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI above. My Volkswagen Touareg VR6 has been unexpectedly reliable, too.
Speaking of reliable BMWs, I gave my wife the E39 wagon that I bought from the Bishop. She’s in love with the car and already got the most lawyer-y license plate for it:
Anyway, if you’re tired of not being able to leave your town with confidence, pick up something reliable to go along with your project cars. Your blood pressure will thank me later.
It was simply kismet. I didn’t need a used pick-up but the price was too good to not take a look. It was simply a very good truck. So I bought it. And thus I had my reliable vehicle. This 2004 Chevy 1500 is used but maintained very well. I add two quarts of ATF every 10K miles and we’re good to go! You should do so well!
After years of wanting to be a car guy and finally going for it. Which quickly escalated from always wrench on Saturday so if it doesn’t go right you have Sunday to finish and get to work on Monday. All the way to having have four broken cars in the driveway and taking a Uber to work. My personal low point as a wrencher. It was years of of not trusting my vehicles to get me there and back. Having a family member gift me a AAA membership every Christmas for the tow service. Finally got a reliable and easy to drive car again a few months ago. I didn’t realize how stressful driving junk daily was. Until I was able to drive stress free again.
I’m making over $13k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life.
That is what I do… https://c2d.in/joblive76
But do you have one reliable car?
Been a multi-car proponent since I first did it in 2006 with a new Accord and an old XJ for wheeling.
Doing mods and won’t finish before work Monday? No big deal.
Break something out wheeling? Take care of it next weekend after you’re rested.
Have to take the girlfriend somewhere fancy where a rattle canned Jeep is embarrassing? Honda is stealth.
These days its TLX and an XJ in the garage, but I’m getting modern car spoiled. Houston, like LA has some crazy drivers and the marginal XJ brakes are starting to make me not want to drive it.
I once worked for a guy who would go on and on and on about Sam Walton being rich but driving an old pickup truck.
Finally one day I had enough and told him what I thought:
Sam Walton could drive an old pickup as a daily BECAUSE he was rich. He could afford to keep it perfectly maintained. If he did have a problem – say he burned a cigarette hole in one of the seats – he could drive one of a dozen other cars or make a subordinate drive him around… or just stay home from work while the seat was being replaced with an OEM one at the dealership.
A poor guy needs a decent car because he positively, absolutely has to get to work or get fired.
I am a fan of the one good car concept.
This also allows more ambitious projects. The worst thing (for me) about driving a project car is needing to have it all re-assembled and running to get to work the next day.
With a separate good car if you discover another issue on the project, just leave it on jack stands, order some parts and get back to it when it works for you.
For one summer, I owned only a project car. I remember getting an exhaust header overnighted so I could have the part in hand on Saturday so I could go to work on Monday. After all that, I have vowed to always have One Good Car.
I drive the same TDI Sportwagen. Just wait
Last time she wrote about her fleet of cars one Sportwagen had 225,000 miles and the other had 350,000. So how long should she “…just wait” ?
The reason I say that is because of exactly what Dan Pritts is saying, the BS repair list gets amazing. If you go to a dealership for a thermostat change, it’s about $1,200. Insane, right? Why not just change it yourself? Because nothing in the car is designed for you to work on it yourself. I actually had to fabricate a tool in order to get my thermostat out, by cutting up a bit and welding it on to a piece of scrap steel, then bending it to fit (for some reason I can’t post a pic of it). Not to mention you have to put the car in the ‘service position’, which basically means removing the entire front end. Who knew changing a thermostat was an entire weekend’s worth of work? I did the timing belt myself as well, which requires moving the engine mounts, because I didn’t want to pay someone 2k to do it.
But that’s just one of a zillion reasons. The spare wheel well in the boot is currently filled with a few quarts of water, because it’s raining right now. The seals on the back hatch and the pano roof suck, and the drain lines end up leaking into the well. Every time I took a corner on my way to work this morning, I could hear the water sloshing around. Not to mention having to fix the entire pano roof twice (because that’s a dealership job of 2k).
Oh, and the emissions stuff. This is the good bit. Once the dpf cracks (which it will, somewhere between 70-130k miles, then you either get to fix it yourself by dropping the subframe and paying over a grand for the part, or take it to the dealership for a $4,000 bill. That’s not including the egr cooler, the egr filter, all of which will fail, all of which are stupidly expensive to repair. You can delete all of this, to the tune of around 2k, but that illegal and also may not pass your state inspection if your state test emissions. It’s crazy, because everything they did to make the car what they said it was before dieselgate just chokes out the engine and kills it’s life expectancy.
It’s a shame. I love driving the car. I love having a wagon, love having a 6 speed, love the look and the driving feel, pretty much everything. The CJAA is a great engine, and it’s super strong with a lot of torque, and it could theoretically last forever. But everything they did to fix it just made it worse. And now, I have a car I love to drive and hate to own. Would you want to own a car that every 80k miles would cost you a likely 6 or 7 grand? That’s why I said to ‘just wait’, because with these things it’s just a matter of time.
came here to say this. I drove one for several years, sold it back happily after dieselgate. So many bullshit repairs.
Too bad, because it was really enjoyable to drive. I miss it but I’d be bankrupt by not if I’d kept it.
That’s one of the things I love about my truck. For 17 years not it has just worked, no matter what. It has freed up my spare time and money for other fun stupid things, as I always had a way to get to work and pick up my kids.
Same, I have an appliancemobile (its even a mopar) that hasn’t let me down since I was able to buy a new car. I had a fun Jeep and can’t wait to have another one with less terminal cancer (rip frame). But the daily reliable is the priority. My students depend on me to get there too.
Autopian: Start with a collection of janky project cars hoping to make at least one of them drivable.
Other people: Start with a reliable car and maybe get a project car.
I worked with a guy who lived in the country and had seven truly dirt-bag beaters (actually one of them was a Ford tractor.) He had ONE serviceable battery and switched it to whichever vehicle was operable at the time.
Did he also swap fuel and air from beater to beater?
I don’t find that BMW license plate as a subtle dig to the police is helpful in this day and age. Seriously? I lived in Illinois and I can safely state that the police in the town I lived in were not as the license plate described. I moved to Tennessee almost three years ago and can state that the “B’s” around here that the plate refers to are for the most part not “B’s.” They spend a lot of time cleaning up car accidents and looking for lost kids and helping settle domestic situations. I’m sorry that some people may have experienced less salutary services from members of their local constabularies, but that plate is a gross misstatement of fact. If this kind of unwarranted disrespect towards cops continues, I bet I can cancel my Autopian membership pretty quickly.
What do you think it stands for? I read it as ACA Business Law?
Good point. The cops in Tennessee haven’t had any negative publicity lately.
So 1) ACAB Law is Anti-Corruption and Anti-Bribery law, so an ACAB Lawyer does what now? That’s right, they go after corruption and bribery.
2) Any “good” cop is still on the force because they have not called out the bad cops. By extension they become bad cops. If you know about injustice and do nothing about it, you are allowing injustice to continue.
This is proven by dozens of whistleblower cops that have been fired after trying to bring forth change
Maybe take a step back and check what an acronym can mean in a specific instance instead of jumping to conclusions
I racked my brain to think of what ACAB might mean until I saw oscarmv’s comment suggesting that it was something “woke”; then I thought of the anti-police slogan, and assumed that’s what it had to be. I guess this shows the danger of communicating in acronyms.
As for people who use that slogan … it’s surely no worse than the people who claim that all cops are heroes. Police get tons of special privileges, and for the most part they’re pretty tough people. I don’t think they need random citizens to defend their feelings against insult.
I don’t know what strange corners of the internet you hang out in it getting all worked up and indignant about non-existent/perceived insults… but ACAB is Anti-Corruption and Anti-Bribery law.
That sounds like a good thing to me. What’s your problem with it?
He thought that it was the more common phrase “ACAB” that for some reason had been attached to the word “law”
ACAB is easily googleable, but it means “All Cops Are :redacted:”
You can fill in the word for B, but its not the word that means “female dog”
I’m not entirely sure ACABLAW means what you think it means.
One thing I do appreciate about The Autopian is the almost complete lack of keyboard warrior political vitriol.
I believe that’s one of the main reasons David and Torch left the “former site”: To build a space where people can talk about cars and culture in a more friendly environment.
Just so we’re clear here, that is my wife’s license plate. She is a lawyer and one of her specialities is suing the government after corruption, incompetence, or malace leads to an injury to a client. Most of her clients are too poor to afford counsel. Think of her as a public defender but for civil cases.
And to further clarify, it’s just a license plate attached to my wife’s car, someone who does not work here. I never intend to offend, so I suppose I should have blocked out the license plate. I certainly will in the future.
Unfortunately, any use of the acronym “ACAB” gets people’s emotions cranked up, regardless of context or actual intent.
Go ahead and cancel!!! I’ll double mine to make up the loss. So long and thanks for all the fish! BTW: an apologetic a truly good write would be a nice gesture on your part.
Edit button
PLEASE!!!
The weather is somewhat seasonal/variable here, so that changes things.
My Ford Fiesta 5 speed just goes when I need it, as does my Kawasaki Versys 650.
My wife can operate neither of them, but in a gotta be there situation I’m the wheel man. Her Subaru Impreza is reliable, but I don’t trust it, it worries me.
David and Mercedes have hit upon a driving-environment issue. Any big city, LA, NY, Chicago, Boston, whatever, is going to be a pain in the ass. Too many vehicles and not enough asphalt.
The sticks aren’t always better. Bad weather in the middle of nowhere is scary, as are breakdowns. Plus you never know who is going to be out there.
Nice leafy suburbs are much easier to drive in. Enough room to breathe, but close to the services you might need- plows, police cars, tow trucks, ambulances, etc.
Yep. Plus in Chicago we’re a solid two-three hours from any road resembling “fun.”
Second date with Mrs Muppet and I turned up in my stripped out Silvia because my MR2 and E30 were both broken. We did less than quarter of a mile before going back for her car.
I had a streak of 11 brilliant but also awful cars in a row, which she hated. Then I got a 350Z. It worked just like a car. Started with a turn of the key (an actual key, not a screwdriver like my 535) and drove wherever you liked. No more getting grounded on speed humps. No more having to occasionally walk the 4 miles home from work, then cycle back with tools.
Instant happier life, and all it cost was triple my usual car budget.
Oh yeah!
Is that related to birdlaw?
Or maybe treelaw?
I love having a newer daily driver car. Keeps the miles off my old/fun car and also gives the older/fun car less opportunities to break or be broken/crashed into.
THIS. I’ve been going with three year leases on the primary so always on warranty. the other three cars are 07, 99, and 67 model years.
Dunno if the Illinois DMV employee who processed that plate is not up to date with the kids or extremely woke but congrats on the license plate.
We Flatlanders don’t have a DMV. Those functions happen at the Secretary of State’s office.
I had to google the meaning. I guess I am officially an ‘old’ now.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro lane-splitting, but maybe not at highway speed when everyone else is basically parked”
Yeah, that’s dickish. IIRC California’s law states that lane-splitters can go only a certain speed over surrounding traffic, something like (traffic + 15mph).
About the article: having one good car is necessary IMO. When I lived in a warm climate, if the car didn’t work the motorcycle would, so NBD. But I reached a point where wrenching on the DD became less fun and more stressful, especially when it might affect my ability to get to work. That’s no bueno.
My reliable vehicle is my BMW R1200C.
The car version of lane splitting in my area is when the cars pass the bus in the left turn only lane (2-lane road with single left turn lane in the middle), going 30+ MPH on a 30mph road while pedestrians are trying to cross at the crosswalk in front of the bus.
This road in question comes from the hospital, so it’s often medical workers who are still putting on their seatbelts while talking or texting on their phones. It’s a bad look.
+1 for that license plate right there.
Gonna attract some attention, for sure. Good thing she’s a law talking person.
Fun thing is it can mean many things. ACAB Law is typically anti-corruption, anti-bribery law. As another poster mentioned, it could be ACA Business Law.
Or it could mean Fuck 12 Law.
Acronyms are fun