Ask a car enthusiast what their ideal number of cars is, and the answer will probably be n+1. In this case, n means the number of cars they currently own, and +1 means, well, plus one. It’s not so much about hoarding, it’s about enjoying a larger breadth of automotive experiences, and sometimes having backups for the cars you already own. Oh, and what makes getting another car better? Not paying a dime for it.
The free car is often a fantasy, but real free cars are rarely perfect. After all, if you get known for an eclectic mix of older cars, chances are the cars you attract will be less-than-perfect. The question is: How far is too far? How bad does a free car have to be for you to say no?
When it comes to additional cars, I have limitations. My indoor storage and wrenching area is full of Porsches, and since it’s snow season in Toronto, any car I acquire must run and drive. Beyond that, I usually don’t want anything that’s rotted out. I mean, I don’t have 240-volt service in my garage, and although I technically can stick metal together with a 120-volt flux core welder, it’s going to be ugly. Fine for floor pans, but all the slag and spatter will require grinding if used on an A-surface. Oh yeah, and the factory emissions equipment needs to work fine because catalytic converters are bloody expensive and all the hardware just fuses together after several salt belt winters.
Then again, we are talking about a free car here, so I’m generally fairly open. If it doesn’t pique my interest, I can always register it, drive it for a week to see what it’s about, and sell it. Worst case, it’s so bad, it needs to be scrapped. Best case, someone gets a decent car for bottom-of-the-market pricing.
Plus, rules are sometimes made to be broken. If someone gave me a field-find DeTomaso Pantera, air-cooled Porsche, Honda S600, TVR Griffith, or something that just really gets my desire pumping with an engine that isn’t locked up, I don’t know if I’d be able to say no. Occasionally, the heart simply overrules the head, and we do things not because they’re easy, but because we thought they’d be easy. Similarly, if someone offers me a free parts car for a car I already own, and said parts car has rare stuff I want on it, I’m booking a U-Haul faster than you can order Domino’s.
So, how bad does a free car have to be for you to say no?
Top graphic image: David Tracy
I’ve never turned down a $150 project car, but rust is the one thing I’ll always stay away from. I can junkyard a crappy car back together, but I can’t un-rust suspension mounts. I used to enjoy an annual “Buy $150 dollar car and play with it all summer and dump it for $1500” tradition until the car market went crazy.
It would have to be a truck and the frame would have to be rust-free.
For me it is only about if it’s a car I want or not, I have no problem restoring anything and can make and source parts without much issue, Welding, Resprays, Engine and gearbox rebuilds, Electrics are no problem, The only times I use outside help is for machine work and tyres/tracking. I have done numerous restorations in my 40 years of working on cars both as a hobby and as a business and have a well equiped workshop still. It’s been my hobby for the last 20 years now since I closed my workshop. </brag>. 😉
I have a perfectly competent car. And last summer, I bought a scooter, and it added $400 annually to my insurance bill.
It’s fun to ride. Easy to park. And a joy. But in the PNW, there is realistically only 6 months a year I want to ride it. Sure. We get a nice day now and then. But now, the streets are covered in wet, slippery, leaves. So, every time I ride this time of year, I am vigilant about that and still feel like I’m rolling the dice.
Every car you add to your fleet is going to cost you additional amounts of money beyond fixing it. Insuring it. Or parking it.
Sometimes, simplicity might be the answer.
Well, I’m still keeping an eye out for a dead Datsun to stuff a LEAF powertrain into, preferably a pickup. Of course, I have to keep in mind how much work I’ll have to put into the body and brakes of a “cheap” glider, but after 50+ years, they’re pretty much all either already customized to crap, or they’re half sunk in the ground in the middle of a blackberry bramble.
I can wrench and have space but, free = NOPE in my book.
If it doesn’t work, that’d be a nope. I don’t have space, tools, money or time to fix a car, and only need one on weekends when I have to go to the hills. I could do some very limited wrenching with my brother for a weekend or two, but that’s all.
Come to think of it, it must be able to handle a 110 km/h freeway, the twisties, the dirt roads and be frugal.
Else, I’d rather take a couple hours bus. For free.
I think we should all agree to write the equation as M=n+1. M is the ‘maximal ideal’ in abstract algebra and has to do with ring theory. I do not know anything about ring theory and I don’t think it actually means ideal in a normal way, but I do think that “M=n+1, where M is the maximal ideal and n is the number of vehicles currently owned” sounds perfect.
And posts like this is what happens when I’m late with my Adderall dose 🙂
Since it happened within the last month I think I can chime in. I had my Jag at the local specialist and mentioned that some day I’d like to own a car with a V12. My mechanic took me out to the lot, pointed at a Series 3 XJ12 and said “yours for free if you want it”. Apparently a customer abandoned it when it needed over $5000 in repairs just to get running. Given it wasn’t an interesting color and was in significantly worse shape than my lovely XJ6 I didn’t bite.
“Any sufficiently advanced wisdom is indistinguishable from good luck.”
I’ve turned down a few free or almost-free cars over the years, generally because they weren’t interesting enough to be worth the trouble for me to take (free cars don’t remain free if you want to repair and then smog, register, and insure them). A few years back, a friend’s father-in-law asked if I wanted his granddaughter’s hooptie with the hood that hasn’t been able to open in years. I don’t recall what it was to be honest… an old Saturn maybe? I gratefully declined. Then, after a neighbor passed away, his landlord asked (on behalf of the guy’s family) if I wanted his salvage title Scion xA. The xA and xD were among the only Scions I’ve driven that I didn’t really like all that much, plus (at the time) I already had a car with a salvage title, so again: I politely declined.
A few months ago, a neighbor moved and I let him leave his extra car here behind my house for a while since his new place didn’t have space. It’s a third-gen BMW 3 series convertible in good cosmetic shape, but with an automatic, non-working air conditioning, and it hasn’t been smogged in years and years. I got the impression (at the time) that he’d have been happy to let me have it for some token payment (or maybe none at all) but to be honest, I didn’t want it despite it being a decent shade of teal metallic. After all, if it were a hardtop, it’d be much more interesting to me, and if it’d had a manual too I’d probably own it now.
But I already have three cars and a motocycle, only one of which I actually use (and even that one not all that often) so unless something interesting crosses my path, I’m generally not in the mood.
Maybe if I live long enough, someone will offer me a free or almost free car that I actually kind of desire, or is at least interesting or useful enough to make it worth the effort. Say, a Scion iA/Toyota Yaris iA or a still running Honda Element with a half-million miles on it? 😉
I’m no wrencher, though I did once work at a full-service gas station for about a year and a tire store for eight months. I liked the work, but I was destined for a more math-related career.
No room in the garage, as a SoCal garage is the equivalent of a midwestern basement: storage. Room for three cars, fits but one. Need to rent a bin and clean it out one day.
So, “free car” sounds like a lot of money and labor. Probably no more than $2000 to( get it fixed up (again, wouldn’t be me) , then sell for $4000.
Any VAG product (Volkswagen Auto Group for laypeople) is one that if it is free it is definetly not worth to take any resposibility of…
Sadly, I have to agree with you 100% (having owned several myself) unless you have some ulterior motive of some sort. With that said, if it were running and free, I’d have a hard time turning down an A1-A3 VW or anything air cooled, even though I’ve had my fill of owning them.
Trying to keep my roomate’s sunroof-drain flooded ’99 Passat alive while while he drove it once every two months and it peed absolute gallons of oil onto my driveway made me swear off VW for good. Drove great for a few months until I finally gave up on it and convinced him to dump it for something much simpler (and of a brand I knew how to work on).
I’ve got a barn and an enabler for a spouse. If the thing is somewhat cool and not too far gone I will take it.
Helps to have an enabler. I sort of dread the whole what car do you have conversations I might have this time of year -it can be embarrassing. If they are “car people” like everyone here I will fess up otherwise I will focus on the 2003 $1k Lexus I scored and the old 2006 Navigator I need to get rid of.
Ehh, pass. I’ve got too many other things going on to take up valuable driveway space with a free car. Now a free 20ish year old parts Seadoo, maybe. Take what I need, slowly sell the rest and cut up the hull to go in the trash piece by piece.
“Free” is my kryptonite. Even so a free car would be tough to accept. At a minimum the car would need to run and be registerable and insurable. And not be stolen, full of drugs with a maniacal drug lord looking for it or with an alien body in the trunk. OK, the last one is negotiable.
I think I’d only be able to take.it if I could get rid of it just as easily if I needed to without offending the person who gave it to me.
And I hope to never be in a position where I NEED a free car.
For me, it all comes down to rust. I don’t weld, and am not good at shaping body filler, so I don’t want something that’s already rotted out. Especially if it impacts structure: been there, paid others to do that. No more.
I figure that I can fix mechanical stuff, or figure out how to at least.
A free car also needs to fit my outsized body.