Some car enthusiasts allow themselves to collect or hoard more cars than some people may own in a lifetime. We recently wrote about a guy who collected 1,300 cars over 26 years, and now he’s finally selling them off. Then there are your favorite Autopian writers, who probably also own way too many cars. If someone forced you to downsize your fleet by exactly half, how would you do it?
This subject has been rattling around my head for a bit, and, admittedly, these thoughts have been supercharged by the responses to my post about the mechanical maladies of my spouse’s Scion. Maybe it’s time to be a responsible adult and downsize. Logically, downsizing would mean less time fixing stuff, less money spent on storage and insurance, and the miles that I drive each year would go into fewer cars; thus, all of them would get more miles per year.
As of publishing, I have 15 non-motorcycle vehicles in the fleet. That’s cars, SUVs, and a single bus. Let’s be a bit aggressive here and say half will be seven. That’s eight vehicles to get rid of. How would I handle that?
I think I would just go back to my roots, and also keep a couple of teenage dream cars. This would mean selling the manual BMW X5, the Honda Life, the Suzuki Every, the Plymouth Special DeLuxe, the BMW 530xi, the Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI, the 2005 Smart Fortwo, and of course, the Nova Bus RTS-06. The Jetta was already on my “to sell” list now that I finally have a valid title for it.
That would leave me with four Smarts, which are super easy to take care of and cost me very little money. It would also leave me with the Volkswagen Touareg V10 TDI, the MGF, and the Saturn Sky Red Line as the three teenage dream cars.
Admittedly, it would not be easy to sell the other cars, except for the Jetta. I generally enjoy every moment I drive all of my cars. I also usually enjoy cleaning them and fixing them, too. I think I have narrowed down the Plymouth’s lack of spark to one component! So, I would heavily regret selling the cars, even if doing so would benefit me.
Post-sale, I think I would press my 2006 Smart Fortwo diesel into service as my daily driver. It gets 70 mpg all day long, is nearly bulletproof reliable, and it would hit the spot of being weird and different. I used to daily nothing but Smarts for eight years, so I know it can be done.
I pitched this plan to my spouse, and she’s fully against it. But maybe I should do it, anyway. I don’t know, I suppose I should look deep within myself.
What about you? If you had to reduce your fleet by half, what cars would you get rid of? Which would you keep – and why?
If this is like a “reducing the budget deficit” type exercise then I would buy a Camaro.
Don’t forget to have the state of Canada pay for said Camaro for you…
I have 8 in my fleet to take care of and all but 1 are roadworthy. But if I had too…
Keep:
1999 Ram 2500 V10(My high school vehicle)
1973 F250 (Wife’s)
2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel (Wife’s Daily)
2012 VW Sportwagen TDI (My Daily)
Sell:
2017 Subaru Outback(Salvage Title)
1981 Dodge D150 (But its Restored and 360 Magnum EFI swapped…)
1990 Suburban (With a major arm twist… 6.0L LS and 4L80 swap in progress and is a family favorite)
1961 Willys CJ5 (Dead)
Realistically it would be hard to get rid of more than 2 of these.
I’m actually being posed with this question after recently getting married and moving onto the wife’s family farm. Plenty of space for vehicles, but doing my best to respect other people’s property and the idea that they might not want it littered with old Mopars.
Keep:
98 Ram 2500 12v AT
My grandpa bought this in 2000 so it’s both very useful and sentimental
2006 Dodge Magnum RT
Will become my wife’s commuter now that the weather is too bad for motorcycles.
68 Plymouth Valiant
My first car, I painted it just to be the getaway car for the wedding. A near irreplaceable car at this point
04 Golf TDI
Commuter, can’t beat 45+mpg for this price
Sell
67 Valiant
Rusty pile I bought to build a gambler car then flip. At least it was cheap but no time for it.
98 Buick Park Avenue
Wife’s current rainy day daily, not as cool as the Magnum so it’s going to go.
Bikes:
Keep: BMW F800, Suzuki Vstrom, Yamaha FZ1
Sell: both 05 Rebel 250s
So maybe we’re not cutting the fleet in half but it seems like a tall task. If push comes to shove, the Magnum is gone because it can’t tow or house our truck camper
Dude! You live on a *farm* – this is every vehicle-hoarder’s dream! I dream of having a big barn I can just put everything in.
The problem is that I don’t live on *my* farm, so I really want to respect the space. The addition to all this is that during the wedding prep, I got wayyyy behind on the regular maintenance for everything and still haven’t caught up. Regardless of space it’s still too many projects, not enough time or money.
Your wife knew what she was marrying into! 🙂 For real, though, I feel you on too many projects. I’d like to N-2 my cars because my time for wrenching on them and driving them is fixed, and I can get a lot more done if I’m only focusing on the two most important cars.
She knows that she is also bringing in all of the bikes, which “don’t count” except I’ll be the one maintaining them.
I realized how little time I had when I knowingly doubled the oil change interval on my daily because I didn’t have time to change it.
I have a lot of big dreams with fun car projects and the 67 Valiant isn’t as fun as a 50s wagon on an S10 chassis
Just did this IRL, as part of a cross-country move and getting the kids out of the house. Empty nest FTW!!
Gave up:
E30 – went to my younger son as he loves the car. Frees me up to buy something else fun at some point. And it was not a car I wanted to drive cross country – lowered and with 4.x rear end (80mph = 4000 rpm).
CRV – went to my older son. Perfect as he isn’t into driving, it’s (knock wood) bulletproof and has enough room to lug his crap to model train shows.
Kept:
2002 Impreza RS. My RallyCross car, plus I can use as a daily until I get something else.
2023 Crosstrek. My wife’s daily and our car for long trips.
(Also, we moved to Santa Fe, NM, so we’re legally required to have at least one Subaru in the driveway. Having two gives us a pass on needing to buy an old 4Runner as well.)
I’m down to two cars now, so I don’t really want or need to reduce further. If for some horrible reason I could only keep one, it would be the Chrysler. It makes more sense for day-to-day use than the truck.
Now, if you’re talking RC cars, it gets tougher. I have about 60 of those. But some are duplicates or multiples, and I suppose I don’t NEED four Tamiya Hornets or three Kyosho Optimas. I could cut the collection in half, if I absolutely HAD to. I guess. But I would be sad to see them go.
Keep:
1968 Camaro
1971 Scout II
2023 Genesis G70
2024 Ram 2500
2007 Softail Deluxe
Sell:
2008 H3 Alpha
2007 Silverado
1985 CJ7
2008 1700 Yamaha Silverado
2013 Challenger
though I would probably be loathe to part with the old Purple 392 challenger simply because it is a manual and I plan to let the youngster have it in a few years.
Oof, that’s tough.
Keep:
2015 Mazda 3 hatch commuter car
2004 Toyota Sequoia
1985 Ford LTD I’ve owned since 2001
Sell:
Wife’s 2017 Mazda CX-9
24 Hours of Lemons race car
Upcoming Ford Durango project I’m picking up next week
That leaves me with one practical fuel sipper, one truck for truck things, and one fun car.
But you’d “sell” the Lemons car to a friend so you could “buy” back at a price which gives you room for more mods? 😉
If I had to reduce my fleet by half I’d have half a minivan. If I had to reduce my fleet of bikes by half I’d hang on to the commuter and the mountain bike.
If I had to consolidate down from 2 cars to 1, I’d probably sell both my Accord and Miata and go get something like an Integra Type S.
We’re a two-car family so reducing the fleet by half would leave us with one car remaining. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting thought experiment as it would be choosing between our “practical” 7-seat SUV (Ford Territory) and our “less-practical” mid-size sports sedan (Toyota Crown Athlete).
I actually think we could get by with the sedan, even with a toddler and a newborn. With a bit of careful packing, the boot is big enough to take the newborn’s pram and bassinet, plus the toddler’s travel pram. Sure, you can’t just throw everything in the back like you can with the SUV, but it’s doable. That would mean I still have something fun to take on the local back-roads every now and then.
The spanner in the works is when my wife’s mother and sister will come to stay with us for around twelve months starting next year. Then we’ll need more than five seats. Perhaps we could sell the sedan then and buy something bigger.
Or just keep both cars now. I think we’ll just do that.
Keep my ’06 Sierra that I bought new and the ’74 Buick to cruise around with my kids. The ’01 Accord manual and the scooter could go.
Sometimes I think about just selling everything and simplifying things. Except the Sierra, that I’ll never sell.
We only have 2 cars, but you didn’t specify it had to be automobile related, so bicycles it is:
Keep:
K.Bedford Steel Road Bike
Canyon Spectral MTB
Giant TCX CX Bike
Giant TCX W Bike
Liv MTB
Prevelo 24″ MTB
Sell:
Mid-80s Cannondale Tourer
Giant TCX single Speed
9 Zero 7 Fat bike
Specialized Road
Polygon 20″ MTB
Lectric Ebike
Keep the Bolt and the Volvo XC60, get rid of the Saab 9-3 convertible and the gas-slurping Silverado. Two practical cars that can be dailies and the XC60 can tow (I’m not towing massive loads) and do road trips. If I need a truck, I’ll borrow it from someone else, which is what my friends do to me right now lol
The one car that will never be sold is my grandfather’s 95 silverado. I inherited it when he passed.
I like all my cars. So it’ll be survival of the fittest. Sell whichever car breaks down.
Shoot… I’ve already thinned out the fleet a hair, so this will be tricky, though if I can swap the sold cars for other cars:
1994 M Edition Miata- Keep
2014 CRV: Sell; Buy new CRV Hybrid
2022 Maverick: Keep
4X8 Camp Trailer- Sell; buy Go Fast Camper for Maverick
We own one car, so…
Motorcycle?
My partner would just love that!
My problem is I already daily a motorcycle. Do I just get one of those 90mph unicycles from the other day?
I suppose I’ll keep the left half since that’s where the steering wheel and pedals are.
At the moment I only have a single Chevy Bolt so this will be tricky.
Front half has the motor and most of the components, the back half is mostly empty space and a torsion-beam rear suspension. However, the battery is a flat slab under the car between front and rear wheels so making this cut will result in one heck of a battery fire.
Left/right half is out for the same reason.
I will have to go horizontal. Cut off the top half and keep the bottom. I think I can live with a permanently open-air vehicle.
I think whenever we pressure ourselves into making a change, we always gravitate towards taking DRASTIC measures. We tell ourselves we’re going to diet, and then try to starve ourselves, or we start working out and immediately go too hard 4 days in a row and leave ourselves tired and sore. We start a new hobby and go whole ass into it and burn ourselves out.
If I had a fleet of 14 cars, and it was time to cut it by half, I would start by getting rid of ONE.
Which one? Probably whichever is worth the most, because that squares with opening up other things I want to do.
I’m reading the descriptions of everyone’s fleet in here, and I think I can buy more! I only have three cars, so “half” isn’t possible, and if I tried, my wife would be walking (we know how well that would go).
Now I just have to use “but everyone else has 5 or more cars!” and see how that goes.
Keep:
1996 Rover Mini
1989 Ford F150
1971 Opel GT
2007 VW Rabbit
Get rid of:
2016 Focus ST
2006 Scion xB
2006 KLR 650
2015 Fiat 500e
I actually really like the 500e, but we need something that can do long distances comfortably. What we’d probably actually do is ditch both the 500e and the Rabbit and replace them with a Mach-E.
I’d keep the GPz550, the FZ6R, the XT250, and one of the KZ440s.
The three remaining KZ440s and the YCS1 can go.
The KZ1000 rolling frame doesn’t count, so it stays. 🙂
I can’t reduce by half, or I will end up with half a car. 🙂
But I hope to be reducing by 2/5ths in the next year once my new place in FL is complete and I have a real garage. My Mercedes wagon will get sold, my BMW 328! and Spitfire will come to Florida to join my BMW 128i. My Land Rover is already casually for sale, a friend is borrowing it this weekend to see how badly he wants it. I expect it not to come home again. He needs a vehicle, and I don’t need that thing anymore. I basically never go to Maine in the winter, I have put 300 miles on it over the past three years.
But ultimately, I only REALLY have room for three cars even in the new garage, and once I no longer have cars in Maine I will also lose the ability to have dirt cheap insurance, as in FL you can’t drop insurance on cars that you are not using. So I really don’t want to have more than a wagon and a convertible as daily drivers and something classic for fun down here. And three cars are enough to look after anyway. But maybe after 30 years I sell the Spitfire instead of moving it and get another Alfa Spider for a fun car – a better fit for here since the newer ones nearly all have A/C. Probably not though, at this point that would be like selling a kid.
The exercise is too easy if project cars are allowed, so we’ll leave those aside and focus on the running fleet.
If I have to keep cars I have:
-Sienna gone, Viper gone, F350 kept, Blackwing kept.
However, realistically in this scenario, the truck would be traded for a BOF SUV that’s capable of carrying the family more comfortably as well as handle 90% of the work and towing I use my truck for.
I might even become a Cadillac-only household, Escalade and CT5.
I dunno. We have grown to have expectation of you.
V10omous without a Viper kinda seems like Peanut Butter without the Jam.
…or… he replaces the Viper and F350 with a used V10 gas F350.
EDIT: Get a 2014 E-350 van with the gas V10, passenger version. It can therefore replace the Sienna, Viper, AND F-350!
I’m a god damn genius
(username rises from the dead)
There are options everywhere for those with eyes to see.
V10matisse
Why not a Ram SRT10?
Now you’re just making sense
WOAH! My favorite V10-loving reader without a V10? I couldn’t even picture that.
It’s a sign of how unrealistic the exercise is.
But there are little V2omouses to think of, and a 2 seater doesn’t fit them very well.
The scientific term is “v-twin”