More often than not, someone compliments my car when I get gas. Half the time people want to know all about it. Once, a lady ran up and “just wanted to shake [my] hand”. Another guy was reduced to a sort of stupor, just gawking, sighing and saying “wow…”. The situation’s similar on the freeway. I get stares, thumbs-up and cute girls flirting with me at freeway speeds.
Yesterday I covered the background and complications from my first year of commuting in my 1964 Ford Falcon, today I’ll get into two things: what it really takes in terms of time, logistics and money to commute in a 47 year old $5000 car (or any reasonably non-crappy old car) and why it’s totally worth it.
While I’m talking about a car built in an era when anything but a flat top constituted “long hair”, the logic herein applies to anything over roughly 10 years old: you’re at a place where almost anything can fail. Depending on your vehicle of choice it could be suspension, engine, transmission or electrical, but the point is you’re beyond the designed service life of the vehicle. Stuff breaks.
I must be clear: this car is a luxury in the truest sense of the word. It’s both costly and unnecessary. No, the roughly $6,000 I have into it isn’t that much, but the the overhead required to successfully own such a car is significant. The goal here is to paint the most realistic picture I can for what it means to go from spectator to participant.
First off, my job allows for the occasional “running late because my car broke”. I’m on salary with a flexible work schedule and a flexible boss. If yours is the environment where those kinds of complications could result in termination, you might want to think twice about driving something that can will fail to carry to you work someday. Similarly, I’m convinced I’ve got the Best Wife Ever. She loves the car and had no problem picking me up when it broke, or bringing me dinner when the tow dolly lost a tire.
Speaking of the dolly, the $120 deposit and $20 rental were nothing compared to the cost of having a tow vehicle in the fleet, at the ready. The Wrangler’s not the best hauler around, but not having it would’ve added layers of cost and complication to Operation Get the Falcon Home. Not insurmountable, but tricky when you’re trying not to miss any more work and the clock’s ticking before the city tows your busted car. Tow vehicle or not, if you don’t have a backup solution for when your oldie needs some R&R, you’re SOL. If a second or third car isn’t feasible, perhaps a motorcycle, bicycle or bus pass is.
Taking another step up the cost ladder, there’s no way I could recommend such a car to an apartment dweller. Until recently, we paid luxury loft prices to rent a house in a slightly shady neighborhood in LA because it had a two car garage and 6 (ish) car driveway. Said garage housed my tools, which are probably 80% our non-car assets. Establishing a huge collection of tools isn’t completely necessary to support any single car, but the “basic gearhead” package of the necessary hand tools, jack, jackstands, etc is usually between $500 and $1000 by the time you’re done. If you’re trying to do things comfortably or quickly (e.g. with air tools) be prepared to double or triple that.
While it’s possible to get that main tool set via inheritance or as a birthday/holiday/wedding gift, it’s important to be prepared to shell out for some $50 tool you need to get some job done by the end of the weekend. If that’s a budget-buster (or don’t have anyone from whom to borrow the tool or the money), then this is not the game for you. Of course, building up a tool collection is a worthwhile investment for the aspiring hoon. Despite a major ramp-up in wrenching activity in the last two years, my tool purchases have been relatively limited, because I’d already accumulated almost everything I needed. The point is, if you’re gonna being doing this for a while, you might as well be mentally prepared to spend the money to get the right tools to get the job done right.
Luckily, there are a few cost reductions to offset the overhead of backup transportation, workspace and tools. First off, most cars more than 15 years old are done depreciating. If you keep up with maintenance, you’ll likely sell it for roughly the purchase price. While maintenance is potentially cheaper, a new car is losing between $1,000 and $2,000 in value per year. In addition to depreciation, insurance and registration on my Falcon are literally a fraction of my ’06 WRX, to the tune of $1-2k yearly savings. It differs state-to-state, but in California pre-1975 vehicles are exempt from smog regulations, so that’s $60/year in smog checks gone, as well.
The overall experience driving my 47 year old commuter car is a great one. Older cars were designed expecting the windows to be left down, at least partially. Cruising at freeway speeds with the driver’s window down and vent window cracked gives lots of airflow without too much noise. There’s none of the horrible ohmygoditscomingapart buffeting that newer cars inflict upon you with a window down. Cruising with the windows down leaves me so much more connected to the world around, for better or worse. On my way home I smell (in this order) a landfill, a great Italian restaurant, a BBQ joint, In-N-Out, a second landfill, the scorched earth of the San Fernando Valley and the pleasant cooling air in the Crescenta Valley. As the sun sets and I get closer to the mild microclimate of hilly northeast Los Angeles, I know I’m almost home by the smell of the trees.
The moral of the story? Cheap cars can actually carry a lot of extra cost. If not extra, just different. Costs and complications can come up at random, which can be disastrous if your finances or time are already stretched thin. On the flipside, if you’ve got a backup solution and a healthy savings buffer, it’s not a bad way to roll.
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