“Don’t bother bringing anything,” my friend Fred Williams (the off-road legend) told me when he heard I was moving to LA. “You’re going to find better options out here; there is no point in bringing your rusty cars out west,” said. It was advice that I immediately ignored, because I loved my 1985 Jeep J10, I thought my 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle was the bee’s knees, and come on — my manual Jeep ZJ is basically rust free! Plus I bet I couldn’t afford replacements in California. Now, a few years later, Fred asked me over the phone: “That advice I gave you a few years ago… was it… good advice?” Yes, Fred. Yes it was.
I don’t think I fully understood California’s old car market when I moved here in early 2023.
Just a few month prior, some guy from here had stopped in my Troy, Michigan driveway and aggressively tried to get me to sell my brother’s 1966 Mustang, responding to my refusal with, essentially, “Just call your brother; everything in this world is for sale.”
This, plus just the general sentiments that many in the midwest have towards California had me thinking I wouldn’t have enough scratch to find a decent Jeep J10 or other classic out west. The prices would be inflated, I figured.
But I was wrong. In fact, I’ve written all about how I wrong I was in an article aptly titled “I Was Totally Wrong About California Craigslist.” See, while average salaries are higher in California, and while the upper end of the income distribution is absolutely through the roof, the reality is that owning a car in California is hard for most people.
Most don’t have the disposable income to buy a weekend-driver Jeep J10, and if they do, they don’t have the space for it. It’s for this reason that I not only regret having brought my J10 to the west coast, I actually regret having bought it in the first place from anywhere else. I should have bought all my project cars from here.
The cars in California are just better. So, so much better, and they are not more expensive.
That’s what I didn’t understand when Fred gave me that advice. Craigslist here is filled with rust-free gems for dirt-cheap. It’s only the minty-fresh, shiny cars that command an absurd premium. A sun-faded XJ that needs a headliner and maybe a little dent on the hood repaired is $3000. In Michigan, $3000 gets you that, plus rusty rocker panels that would cost four-figures to repair, and even then the rest of the car will have already started its journey towards becoming a pile of brown particles
All of this is coming to mind because I’m currently in the process of choosing which truck to keep. There’s the Jeep J10, shown above (that’s how it looked 10 years ago, and it hasn’t improved), and then there’s my Chevy K1500, which I had no plans to keep when I bought it.
I love the J10; I think it’s more interesting and soulful than the K1500. But folks, just look at this:
Aside from the exhaust, only the chassis has even a tiny bit of surface rust. otherwise this truck is MINT. I don’t have to worry about sanding or priming or cutting bits out or sections of it possibly starting to perforate — a major concern on my Jeep J10 exacerbated by a design flaw.
No, the K1500 should last for the rest of my life if I just do routine maintenance and avoid collisions. It’s rock solid, and it was relatively cheap at $4,900. In Detroit, this truck would have cost more.
My having ignored Fred’s advice means I’m in the unenviable position of possibly having to sell a slightly rusty machine in California, and this is extremely difficult. Folks around here don’t do rust. I’m not joking when I say: Vehicles that in Michigan would literally be described as “rust free” would be considered “rusty” here. That’s because, in Michigan — where older vehicles are expected to have huge rust holes in their floors, frames, and rockers — surface rust doesn’t really count as rust. In California, surface rust is a big deal; it spells the beginning of the end, and people run from it.
So finding a home for my J10, if I am able to get myself to part ways with it, isn’t really going to happen here in California unless I give it away. Especially since it won’t pass SMOG.
The thing is, even though the J10 has a few rust holes, once those are patched, this thing’s body will be in great shape overall. It doesn’t need much, which is why part of me wants to just sell the Chevy for a decent sum after detailing it and dialing it in, and then giving the J10 the love (and perhaps fuel injection) it deserves. Because I worry nobody else around here will.
Anyway, this was a random little article, but this is on my mind right now: I should have listened to Fred.
Rust may be normalized in Michigan, but it shouldn’t be, and it should (rightly) be treated as the cancer it is.
I live in Pennsylvania. Cars always rusted to hell because of salt. Now, PennDOT uses more corrosive form of salt that is in liquid form, suspended in a vegetable oil. So it adheres to cars and is more difficult to wash off. 5-10 year old pickup trucks driving around with large holes in the bed sides around the wheel wells is not uncommon around here.
Disgusting.
there is no nobility in suffering rust to maintain ownership of some car guy boy scout badge that isn’t real. rust is cancer and should be treated as such.
My brother took his upstate New York Nissan Frontier to a dealer in SoCal to have some recall work done, and once they got it up on the lift someone came running out of the garage to ask him what was wrong with it and how it had gotten so rusty. I think the guy had literally never seen that much rust on a car before.
Outside of a few beach areas that are within a few blocks of the ocean and get salt spray, cars in California don’t rust.
Caltrans does use salt so you can add snowy mountain areas too.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/salt-caltrans-clear-roads-environmental-concerns/
You don’t bring sand to the beach.
That’s gold.
I have brought a pile of what will soon be sand to the beach; like a fool!
One of these trucks you’re actively using, the other one is sitting.
Your little one will only stay little for so long.
So keep the one that demands the least amount of time, so you can reinvest that time with your family making memories. Remember, that K1500 is still an ancient vehicle to your son. The same way my 5 year old daughter lovingly refers to my ’86 300SDL as “the old car”.
I had older, cooler cars like my ’81 RX7. But she LOVES the Benz, cause she gets to ride along in it and enjoy it WITH me.
So yeah, ditch the J10.
The irony of you giving DT advice on a post about how he already ignored sound advice is not lost on me here.
DT, I know you like to learn things the hard way but as a new Dad myself who has sold all his project cars I will tell you I regret NONE of it. I’m 18 months in but I can tell you that the amount of free time isn’t going to be increasing for you anytime soon. Soon your son will be crawling, then you’ll blink and he’s walking, then you’ll blink and he’s running, blink again and he’s talking. I’m already missing some of the things my daughter used to do but stopped.
Cherish the time while you have it. If your son is into cars then get a project car together and teach him to wrench but nothing in life is certain and holding onto things is a fools errand. Pick your favorite, sell the rest.
100% The project vehicles will come back once the kid(s) get older and eager to help.
My plan is when my daughter is about 12, we’ll have the conversation of whether or not she wants to build up her own car. I still wanna EV swap an old boat of a station wagon, but she can pick.
That gives us 4 years to get it sorted before she gets her license.
Pretty sure this was the scenario with a girl in my HS class,. When she turned 16 dad had a 68 Chevelle SS ready and waiting for her, and not a WIP either, like fully finished, car show quality. This was in 1993, she easily had the oldest but baddest car in the lot.
I don’t have that kind of budget, but we can make her a mighty fine Going to Town rig.
Exactly! And sooner than you think, you can get some free time back. Kids don’t steal your hobbies forever, but life is a lot easier if you can accept that the baby/toddler chapters are going to be very … consuming.
My girls are 5 and 8 and they LOVE spending time in the garage with their dad. And if they don’t feel like it, they can play on their own (which is GLORIOUS). Hobby time is back, baby.
100% agree. Just enjoy chasing the little rugrats around while they’re rugrats. Soon enough they’ll be gown enough that you won’t need to constantly monitor them.
DT, I seriously hope you take this advice. There will always be more project cars but you only have a short amount of time with your son before he’ll be grown. You don’t want to look back and have regrets here because it only happens once.
“Remember, that K1500 is still an ancient vehicle to your son. The same way my 5 year old daughter lovingly refers to my ’86 300SDL as “the old car”.”
To some youngs a 2007 Corvette is “old”.
https://www.theautopian.com/im-a-young-person-who-bought-an-old-corvette-and-its-still-great-after-a-year-of-ownership/
I mean, it is. It’s nearly 20 years old. 25 years is classic status for most insurance. 30 or more is ancient.
Nah. The rules are simple:
Only cars from MY childhood are “old”.
Only only cars from MY parents teen and young adulthood years are “classics”
Only cars MY great-grandparents generation would have driven are “ancient”.
a car from 2007 is practically NEW!
When I moved to CA from PA I sold all of my other cars (Buick Roadmaster wagon, E30 325i, Flyin’ Miata Turbo, 1981 Mazda RX-7) and only kept my Challenger, because the Challenger never saw road salt until my drive from PA to CA. I wasn’t sure I’d have space for more than one car where I was moving to. It turned out that I got a place with a garage and one parking spot in front of it. I only regret selling that RX-7 (which had less than 40,000 miles on it) because I learned when I got here that actually there weren’t many left in CA as the carbureted models could be tough to pass smog, and so CA kind of exported theirs to buyers from other states. Apparently I could have sold a car I bought in PA for 4k and doubled it. This was in 2013.
SAVE THE J10! Think of it as a fun “project” for you and your son in the future. Think of all the things he can learn from it, like rust repair, and why moving cars from the rust belt to California is a bad idea. Pray that he learns from your mistakes (which he probably will not).
It’s gonna be weird when he reads my old blogs…
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when that inevitably happens…
Haha…reading. When he has the articles uploaded via Neuralink, and imprinted.
Please teach him NOT to use the washing machine to dye overalls with oil.
“WTF, Dad? Delmar?”
As the owner of both a GMT400 (1995 K2500) and an SJ Jeep (1977 Cherokee), I’d keep the GMT400 if I was pushed to only hold on to one. They are just better, in every conceivable way. At least in terms of practicality. I suppose it depends on to what you want it for. I have my K2500 as a pickup, for pickup purposes. I assign no practical usage to the Jeep, I just think its cool.
That’s an awesome set of trucks.
I like em. You and I have actually owned quite a few of the same rigs. Current 4×4 fleet is those two, and an ’01 Tracker. Jeep is mid (slow) restoration.
Mature person advice: keep the Chevy. You’re a homeowner now and will likely need to do truck things from time to time.
Autopian advice: use the Chevy to tow the J10 back to Michigan. Sell them both. Fly home. 🙂
I will never buy a car that’s spent time in the Rust Belt ever again. Even if the body and chassis have been spared from rust, you’re going to spend the rest of your life fighting with frozen fasteners and quietly corroding electrical connectors. Fuck all that noise.
Same. In my case, moving from New England to the Pacific Northwest completely changed my definition of “rust.” You can buy 20 year old used cars here all day long that still have their paper QA decals stuck to the underside.
I still shake my head in amazement that Montana has soooo many old rustfree cars. It gets too cold for salt to work so they use sand and other things in the snow. The result is sun baked paint but very little rust. Back in Ohio these old cars just do not exist anymore, but out here they are still daily driven.
**Cries in ontario**
Even buying a vehicle from fellow lifelong Canadians it still amazes me the people who don’t oilspray them. Saves your ownership and gets you a better return on sale down the road. Would love to live somewhere I could pick up 10+ year old vehicles that aren’t rotted out from neglect.
Unload the J-10, and enjoy using the K1500 every time you drive it. To your son, the J-10 will be “that broken truck Dad never got around to fixing” if you hang onto it. Yes, you love the J-10. But it’s worse in pretty much every possible way than the K1500, which can be used and loved as long as gasoline is available.
Signed, the son of someone who has project cars that he moved 600 km back in 1993 and they are STILL sitting untouched.
What were your dad’s projects?
I don’t recall the exact years, but there was a 60-something Nova that had been sitting since I was at least six years old (I’m 41 now). And a Chevelle convertible that has sat as a barely coherent (we’re talking sub-Project Cactus level) hulk. And a Dodge Coronet that was his mom’s, and he started restoring it in 1992/1993, but lost momentum after we moved and never really got going again.
In the interim he has finished many, many projects for other people, including a supposedly simple engine swap that turned into a two month electrical/electronics odyssey (engine from a 1999 GM truck into a 1991 Suburban), and he’s now finally getting to a few projects of his own that get him excited like a 5.7 L HEMI swap into a 1968 Plymouth Satellite. But those cars I mentioned in the beginning have just sat, and sat, and sat. He sold the Nova a few years ago as the start of a clean-up effort, but the others remain untouched!
As someone who had to go through all his dads stuff that he was “planning on getting to one day” I fully support this sentiment.
And as a parent myself get used to not having time for any projects. Now that my youngest is 6 I’m finally getting the ability to work for more than an hour at a time.
Dump the J10. Yes it is cool but with your great new life and all the responsibilities that come with that it is just going to be put in the one day pile. And that one day pile will, if you are lucky, be decades in the future.
The J10 is definitely more “you” than the Silverado. You just have to decide if selling the Silverado and using the proceeds to fix up the J10 is better than writing off the J10 and keeping the truck that doesn’t need substantial rust repairs. Emissions compliance for the J10 is a whole ‘nother can of worms that that you might be better off avoiding. Though if you have space to store the J10 you can always hang on to it a while longer since you won’t get much from selling it.
Yeah, that’s my solution for you. Satisfy your inner hoarder by keeping one or two excess vehicles that need work instead of having a fleet of them like you did back here in Michigan.
With a new baby and a house, anything more than routine maintenance on already operational vehicles is a daydream.
Exactly. The only reason I made significant progress on my w126 was I spent a winter off work while undergoing chemo, and my spouse pushed me to spend time in the garage to keep my mind occupied.
Now that it’s largely sorted, I can handle the small bits and pieces in between life happening, and I put real miles on it.
Just think: if you sell the Chevy, will you have time to work on the J10? Or it will be enough to pay for someone fix it?
Marriage and kids, these change the priorities, including the ones in your heart.
But Delmar is his second child. His first child is The Autopian, and first child will always be hungry for content. And the wrong life choices make great content!
The Autopian is indeed my child. But I’m hoping for a solution in which all of my children can eat.
Smart man. 🙂
Take it from me. Food is the least of your financial concerns.
“I should have listened to Fred.”
And don’t forget about all the rest of us who said the same thing!
Edit: I just saw that NC Miata NA made this same point in a much better way. Still, it can’t be said too often…
Against my better judgment I’ll make an effort:
Do you enjoy repairing rust? I don’t mean just that you’re okay with it; I mean does it bring rapturous joy to your heart both in the contemplation and in the execution of the task? If so, great, by all means stay the course.
If not, listen to Fred. Really, truly listen to Fred. I don’t even know Fred but listen to Fred.
Didn’t we all say leave your Holy Grail’s in Troy?
SoCa has your new definition for Holy Grail
Here’s my best stupid idea of the day. Ship all the cars back to Michigan, perhaps to a buddy, and have that person sell them as “rust-free”.
Rust, free!
Thanks Lionel Hutz.
Free rust!
(with purchase)
Whoever could have seen this coming?
Man, sending the whole grid of gifs.
I deserve it.
I am shocked this article did not mention the California smog inspection even once.
You don’t have to smog ’em if you leave them in the Galpin employee lot 😉
That’s a good point!
Failing smog check is how otherwise clean and desirable cars can be had dirt cheap. Just depends on what you want to do with the car after that.
Stories on rescuing cars from smog failures would be a great series! Actually, solving a problem that should be solved to keep a car on the road is a great angle.
Step1: Don’t bring cars into California that can’t pass smog
Step 2: ship all cars that can’t pass smog to Michigan
David kind of did the opposite.
Yup. Maybe at the end of each story in the series, the cars that can’t be saved all get banished to another state. If you wanted to really up the stakes, cars that can’t be made legal get the crusher.
Each car is given a limited budget and timeframe for the repair.
Please don’t get stuck in the sunk cost fallacy. The J10 wasn’t worth the price of shipping it from Michigan to LA, and you will never recoup the cost. The negative impact of that bad decision will only be amplified by trying to reverse it.
This
Reality is, should have kept the Mustang and scrapped the rest.
I didn’t ship it; my friends needed a car to road trip across the country, and they drove it.
I doubt the cost of gas for 2500-ish miles in a J-10 was inconsequential.
The point stands. The time, energy, and money don’t make financial sense, and doubling down on it won’t yield any better results.
It wasn’t worth shipping in large part because it has little value to anyone but you. If you have the spare cash to play with, it’s a toy, go for it. No different from someone spending a few thousand dollars on golf clubs or at a casino. But it isn’t about being frugal or practical.
No doubt they could have rented a cheap and more efficient car.
And totally, it’s not at all rational! None of this is; heck, this website exists partly BECAUSE cars aren’t rational.
I agree! The irrational part of liking cars is often entertaining. I also think there isn’t any reason to hide that light under the bushel basket of rational justifications. Simply stating that you want to jet the J10 going because it will be fun for you is all that is needed. The issue with the value of the J10 in California isn’t really needed.
I like the J10 more than the GM truck, but being from a rust belt state, I will never value a rusty car. I am well aware that a rusty car has a bottomless appetite for money and time while offering no hope of providing any lasting value.
You could try doing something different and giving the GM truck a whole lot of love so it never suffers the fate of the J10. It would be interesting and more immediately applicable to folks, even if it didn’t have the drama baked in up front. Get the GM in great shape and see how much you can get for it, and then go get something like this that is a great starting point. Car enthusiasm shouldn’t require martyrdom.
“then giving the J10 the love it deserves. Because I worry nobody else around here will.”
This is how I ended up with four cats and four dogs…
Bringing the ZJ from Michigan is how David wound up with two cats…
I could see myself have a dozen cats later in life. If I have the space.
Are you sure about that? My cat, for example, has made it quite clear that there is no such thing as enough space for a second cat.
One can never be sure when it comes to cats. They decide.
My cat barely allocates enough space for me.
Amateur. I have four dogs, four cats, AND FOUR KIDS. Plus a project truck!
And a wife!
“And a SAINT!”
FIFY!
The trick here is to get the second cat when they are still little and cute enough(like 6 weeks) that the older cat gets bored and tired of beating up on them.
If I read it right it seemed as the Jeep cats were the gateway to Elise (NHRN) so I can kinda see how this is an ok thought.
And I with a garage full of fully lugged bicycles.
Nice! I always wish I had kept my old Schwinn Peloton. I was able to hold on to the ’85 and ’86 Schwinn Super Sports I picked up over the years.
I’m not familiar with the Peloton but from what I read in the catalog it must have been a sweet ride.
https://bikehistory.org/catalogs/1985.html
Those Super Sports look quite nice too.
I lean toward touring and ATBs though. The longer chain stays are more compatible with racks loaded with panniers. Plus I find the slacker geometry is more comfy than sport bikes. Best of all? They’re CHEEEEEAAPPPP!
I ended up with Schwinns because they were so cheap! I do most of my riding around the city and have ridden sporty bikes, so they just feel right to me. I also have a small cargo e-bike for more practical needs like getting to meetings or going to the grocery store.
My collection includes more than Schwinns but perhaps its a matter of location. Raleighs, Peugeots, Shoguns, Panasonics, Univegas, Nishikis, all cheap here.
CA cars are great – to a point. Here’s a tangent – California titled cars, when attempting to transfer title and register in Colorado (assuming other states too), can be a real headache. I have a car that was a full-on California car – a 2011 Cayenne with well over 100k on the Odometer, but you wouldn’t know it from lack of wear and tear that comes with overwintering in a cold state. I bought it from a dealer in Missouri who was totally legit and great to work with, but the title that came with this car was from CA. The last “real” owner was from there, sold the car to Carvana, and I am guessing the MO dealer picked it up at auction. The transfer was less than smooth.
Paperwork and titles in CA are rife with places for errors to be made, and the CO DMV isn’t effing around. In fact, the guy at the DMV I’ve worked with now four times says he’s never seen a CA title transfer go smoothly. I’ve had to send back my title paperwork to the MO dealer to get it corrected by Carvana, then once again just returned to my own DMV here to fill out yet another piece of info that needed to be filled in to get my title. I’ve been to the DMV 4 times now to get this stupid title in my name! Anyway, thought I’d rant here…
Carvana is well-known for having title issues. That is the most likely source of the problem.
Oh for sure, they were the original reason it was messed up.
That is seriously a good tip and possible good reason to stay away from Carvana. Any car from them is likely to be a relatively new common car so why put up with extra hassles?
I bought a car in California and titled it in MA with no problems at all (except for having to drive it back in the three days of plausible legality MA allows for a private sale).
Of course, the title was in the seller’s name and Carvana didn’t get their sloppy record keeping anywhere near this transaction.
Yeah, I think the next car I buy, I’m going to ask the seller if Carvana had any hand in it. Those guys suck.
Carvana’s main function is the transfer of ownership.
It is amazing that they seem to have no system or plan to accomplish that.
When I bought my brand new ‘96 Impala in AZ, I drove it back in 2 days. I went to the DMV with the Chevrolet Certificate of Origin and a bill of sale from the Phoenix dealer. The car had delivery miles on it (800 mi) from Phoenix to NorCal, and the emissions label under the hood proclaimed it to be a 50 state car. I still had to take it to a local emissions testing station to be run on the Dyno to verify that it met CA rules.
There were no extra hoops in MA. We ‘follow’ CA standards for new cars (as do all bordering states except NH, but they get CA cars too so the dealers can swap cars with other dealers in the area) but I don’t think there are any dynos left in the testing system unless they have some to check newly-built kit cars.
The climate here limits the lifespan of vehicles. We don’t realistically need to worry about someone using a car from the 70’s as a year-round daily driver.
NY DMV has been great digesting weird California titles. Of course they were for pre 1975 cars , but I’m pretty sure I could register a imaginary 1970 car with a bill of sale on a cocktail napkin in NY
Oh, and you don’t have to ever have a NY plated car ever go into NY, so it doesn’t need to be inspected until it’s in NY.
“Don’t bother bringing anything,”
my friend Fred Williamsevery reader on every article written on the subject of moving cars from Michigan to California told me…
…
fair
Yep. I’ve sold a couple of cars after moving from the PNW to the Midwest and I’ve always pointed out the tiny areas of rust to the new owners. If I was trying to sell them in Portland I’d be better off taking them to the scrap yard. Out here they Do. Not. Care. What 20-30yr old car doesn’t have rust?
IMO you should ditch the rustbuckets. They are not “slightly rusty.” They are one foot in the grave. Your time is precious and rust never sleeps.
10: David Tracy asks advice.
20: David Tracy ignores advice.
30: David Tracy makes bad decision.
40: Goto 10
Imagine what’s it’s like in the Slack when he finds YET ANOTHER rando FB project and asks if he should buy it.
Tell us what you saw on slack (checks time stamp on your comment) 1 minute 42 seconds ago
A girl doesn’t kiss and tell.
Does that apply here?
It’s probably like watching Charlie Brown line up to kick the football.
Or like the scene with all the fake Holy Grails in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I follow advice all the time! Remember, I used to have 14 cars!
You didn’t follow advice, you had no choice.
You still dragged twelve thousand pounds of poor decision baggage across the country to your ‘fresh start.’
lol I definitely had a choice, but I figured it was time to reduce the count.
I’m glad I kept my brother’s Mustang (and the cross-country drive was epic), and Holy Grail ZJs aren’t easy to come by. The J10 and the Golden Eagle? In retrospect, maybe could have left those, admittedly.
Luckily the Golden Eagle sold for a good sum; it’s really the J10 that’s the current conundrum…
Love ya, but you are a frustrating individual.
I like to focus on how far I’ve come, not necessarily on how far I still need to go. There was a time when I had a dead Kia Rio stuck in a mudpit in my backyard!
Buy Elise some flowers today. She deserves them.
I’m actually going to do that right now. Report back in 30.
Actually, that would be Line 35 in the Code written by “Anoos.”
Drive the J10 back to michigan with rust free parts to fix the first XJ, sell it while there and drive the XJ back
That would be a way to illustrate a lesson learned!
You’re just a couple PRINT commands away from an Autopian post. 😉
David Tracy is really just a crude AI developed by Torch to run on a Sinclair ZX80.
That’s just BASIC logic!
It’s so Basic.