Cars are usually a long-term commitment. Even if you’re leasing, you’re usually going to have the car for at least a couple of years. During that time, you will fall somewhere on the spectrum between adoring that purchase or feeling furious every time you think of the vehicle. But some ownership stints are shorter than your average high school relationship. What was the shortest time you’ve ever owned a car, and why?
I generally consider myself someone who is in it for the long haul. I’ve been with my wife for over five years and am looking forward to still being together decades from now. I still have my second-ever car, my 2012 Smart Fortwo, that I bought new. I also still have my third-ever car, a 2016 Smart Fortwo, and my fourth car, a 2005 Smart Fortwo. If I love a car it’s almost impossible to pry it away from me. I’m unlikely to ever sell these three Smarts, or my Smart diesel or my more recently acquired Smart Cabriolet.
I’ve also been finding other cars that I want to keep long-term, too, like my 2006 Volkswagen Touareg, my 2002 Nova Bus RTS-06, and my 2008 Saturn Sky Red Line. Certainly, it would be a subzero day in Death Valley before I let go of my 1976 Suzuki RE-5 or my 2005 Buell Lightning XB9SX CityX.
But I haven’t always been like this. There was a time that, aside from the Smarts, a vehicle in my possession was lucky if it stuck around for longer than a month. My shortest stint of car ownership was easily my 1991 Ford Festiva. I’ve written about this car before, so I’ll keep it short.
My Festiva, which cost me $500, was a real pile that had sat in a field for at least three years. There was a giant rust hole in one of the doors that had been covered up with a patch of metal from an old dryer that was self-tapped into place. One of the rear axle’s mounting points was almost completely rotted away. The brakes were also sold discs of rust, and it was so bad that applying the brakes did not scrub the rust off.
The worst was the fuel tank, which had giant holes at the seam, meaning that you couldn’t fill it past half. It wasn’t long before the gas tank return line broke off of the top of the tank, making that situation so much worse. My modifications made the car even worse still. I removed the doors and windows and then attacked the wheel wells with a reciprocating saw so I could fit bigger wheels on it. I then daily drove the thing for a month in a Chicago winter, probably leaking gas all over the place and ruining my winter coat. Shoot, the seatbelts were held in place with zip-ties. They would have done nothing in a crash.
The Festiva was, without a doubt, the worst car I have ever owned. I decided to put it out of its misery only a month into ownership after the car blew a brake line at an off-road park. That night, my friends gave it a sort of funeral by ramming it until it rolled over.
Yet, shockingly, there was a vehicle I owned for an even shorter amount of time. The crown for shortest stint goes to a 2005 Honda Rebel that I owned for less than a month. I thought I’d love a Rebel as a first bike, but didn’t, and got rid of it lightning quick.
How about you? What was your shortest ownership stint for a vehicle?
The shortest I ever owned a car was my 2003 Suzuki Aerio… bought it in September of 2018… and it was gone just 3 months later.
On the evening of December 23rd, 2018, I was driving down the road near my house (coming come from Xmas shopping) and a guy sitting in his car on the side to the right of me with the lights off suddenly decides he needs to do a U-turn… right in front of me.
No warning.
No checking.
No signal.
No lights on.
I slammed on the brakes and leaned on the horn.
What does jackass do when he hears my horn and sees me skidding toward him?
He stops… right in my path.
I T-boned him just behind his front wheel.
If he had gunned it, it might have only been a close call.
Lucky for him I probably only hit him at a speed of maybe 20-30km/h… not hard enough for my airbags to go off.
The guy was okay, but his side airbags went off. I was okay too.
But because the Aerio was only worth about $2300 and even though my airbags didn’t go off, the estimated damage to my Aerio was close to double that. So my insurance wrote it off.
And that really pissed me off because I got a fantastic deal on it… bought it for just $1000. Then had the brakes, belt and tensioner replaced and I had it on the road for $2000. It was a great low mileage car that I was guessing had at least 5 years of life in it.
All gone because some jackass was in too much of a hurry to bother to check and signal before doing a U-Turn.
Eight years. Sold because I had bought another car after this one got hit and was in the shop.
Mind you, I’ve owned+primarily driven three cars in my lifetime.
I have two that are close parallels with each other. In college, I purchased a used Suzuki Swift GT that, 2 months later, was hit and totaled while it was parked in a parking lot. About 20 years later, I bought a Fiesta ST, which suffered the same fate in month two.
Subaru GL wagon, threw a rod the day after I bought it..
Not me, but my folks bought a new Caravan in 2011. They got hit head-on on their way home from picking it up, totaling the van. So, what, about 20 minutes?
wow! Folks were OK though?
A little dinged up. They spent a few days in the hospital with a sprained wrist and some broken ribs. The wonders of modern safety tech kept it from being a lot worse. The guy who hit them was in an old pickup and broke a bunch of ribs and both his legs.
It really is amazing and under appreciated how much safer cars are.
My biggest automotive ownership regret was selling a 1977 IH S1700 crew cab dump truck. I traded a non-running ‘63 CJ-5 with a wooden flatbed for it, which was probably the biggest trade-up I’ve ever had. The dump truck needed brakes and the pto needed rebuilt, but otherwise was a fully functioning vehicle. For some reason I didn’t recognize the opportunity in owning a dump truck, and I sold it after only 2 weeks of ownership for a couple grand. At the time I thought it was a big win, taking what was essentially a parts Jeep and turning it into cash.
However..:the number of times I really could have used a dump truck since then has been many, and every time I have to rent a dump, I’m cussing 2013 me.
1987 Honda Civic Si had it for 11 days someone in a Cadillac Coup Deville ran a red light and took the front end off the car. I went back to the Dealer and bought the car I really wanted when I bought the Si a 1987 Honda Prelude, drove that car for over 250K, went from the shortest to the longest.
6 months for a winter beater – a ’73 Fury III. I bought it for $50 and put another $50 in it to be street legal (1987 dollars). Sold it in springtime for $75 to a friend that crashed his and needed a car immediately. It lasted the summer, not much longer, but I don’t think he was very good at checking fluid levels – which is a *must* on any winter beater.
That honor probably has to go to my white Sonoma, a 1993, that I bought in the fall one year after wrecking my S10. I had it for maybe 6 months if that after pouring way more money than it was worth to keep it running because I needed something to get to school and work.
It went away because one day it decided it was no longer fit for driving in this world by itself and committed suicide by fire in my driveway.
The crazy part was when fire department showed up to put the fire out which at this point had made its way into the interior refused to go out even with them shoving a fire hose directly into the dashboard it refused to quit. That truck had to have been one of the most cursed vehicles I have ever owned which is a story all unto itself about it trying to kill me unsuccessfully and any other passengers that ever rode in it that were men.
One year. I bought a 2008 Mini Clubman with something like 34k miles on it back in 2013? 2014? Something like that. Anyway, I was super excited for it because it was fun to drive and I could pack my camping gear into it and hit the road. At about 50k miles – while driving home from Big Sur – there started to be a jerk when slowing and the engine downshifted.
This got progressively worse and at about 54K miles, the transmission was basically shot. I took it to my mechanic and he didn’t even want to work on it. It would’ve been $3-4k to fix with no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. He told me to just sell it. So, I ended up going to my friend who worked at Honda and they were trying to unload the 2015 Accord models for the 2016s and I got a manual Accord for 20k flat. I traded in the Mini and even though I was underwater, the day I took it in, the car didn’t have any engine lights and it didn’t jerk at all when the appraiser drove it around lot. So, they gave me $7k for it. SOLD!
The Accord was fun though. It was the last year they made a coupe and the last year with a stick. I ended up selling that about 6 years later and traded it in for my current FJ Cruiser. Arguable decision but it all started with that damn Mini. I was so excited for it and boom, 12 months of use.
Month and a half. Inherited a Nissan frontier in June and sold it yesterday. Don’t need another vehicle, and it was a 2019 but felt 20 years old already.
6 months. I had a 1998 Ford Contour, sort of a sleeper, had the 2.5 liter V6 and 5-speed. Was a fun and reliable car. After owning it 10 years the SUV craze was on so I decided to try a Ford Explorer. Found a nice Eddie Bauer Explorer with a 302 V8 and AWD, that thing was a highway cruiser and almost unstoppable in the snow. But it was so big and bulky for daily driving, no fun on curvy back roads, and fairly thirsty. After buying floormats and accessories and stuff I traded it 6 months later on a 2008 Mazdaspeed 3. Handled better, much faster, and more efficient to boot. The utility of a hatchback still gave it decent cargo capacity.
7.5 years and counting. The car it replaced I thought I’d sell after about 5 years, but ended up keeping it for 12 given the many, many disappointing test drives of potential replacements I thought I’d like but didn’t.
Bought my ‘22 y used in April. Trading it in in a week for a ‘25 4Runner.
Because it’s an appliance with no resale value, no warranty on anything but the battery and the motors, and the insurance premium on it vs. a 4Runner eats the fuel savings cost.
And it’s not as fun as my 3 was to drive.
First gen Saturn sc. $800 in rough shape with the manual transmission leaking. Brought it home and reattached the subframe. I guess they were trying to pull the transmission but the leak was a driveshaft seal that could be tapped in from the exterior. Filled up the gear oil and got a two week temp tag. Excited about my new ride I drove it to the lake for a day of fishing. As soon as I got on the highway the engine blew. Didn’t even want to mess with it and sold it for scrap before the temp tag even expired.
My shortest stint was my most recent. I had a 2015 VW GTI and I wanted something more comfortable. I had test driven a MK8 GTI and loved it. Found a dealer that had a 2024 GTI with 15k miles for $28k. I got it on April 18th. On June 28th, I was in traffic on a busy road. I’m just waiting for the light ahead to change when this white Ford F-150 shows up in my rear view. My only thought was “is he gonna stop?”. The answer was no. He hit me hard and totaled the GTI. I was okay, my left shoulder was injured by the seat belt., but fully healed in two weeks. I ended up getting a 2025 GTI at the dealer I had the 2024 towed to (it wasn’t my fault and the car was still under warranty, so I felt it should be fixed by the dealer). I thought getting a 2025 would make me feel better, but I’m still sad about losing that car so fast. Before that, my shortest stint was a 2010 Mini Cooper that was my second car. I got rid of it after 3 years because the CVT was going bad and I couldn’t afford the $8k the dealer wanted to replace it. It wasn’t also only worth $5k per Kelly Blue Book. No more CVTs since.
I bought a Cherokee pickup from an employee once, cause I never owned a JEEP. I sold it back to him about 10days later as it was total shite.
After seeing the picture, I totally misread that as the shortest (length) car I’ve ever owned. But with all the Smart Cars, Mercedes has me beat.
Years ago I went to a public auction that was advertised in the paper bought a tempo got it home and got rid of it within a week because the patch job they had done on the block failed. Went back and found out they were basically running a legally sourced car chop shop. With many people in the pay area yelling about their newly purchased cars failing. With how sketchy it was I just decided to cut my losses. I lost some money but some people lost a fair amount they were done in a few months from people complaining to different regulating bodies.
I bought a 1992 VR6 Corrado in 1998 and sold it 4 years later with only about 125,000 miles on it. My primary reason for selling it was difficulty with a car seat. Those car seats have a hoop that converts to a handle and there wasn’t enough headroom to raise that hoop all the way. So you end up fishing your kid into the back seat of a two door car and through this partially raised hoop. I put up with it for a couple years, but the kid kept getting bigger and this maneuver became increasingly frustrating.
Two years. Half of that time, the car in question was under a lemon law claim.
Well, less than that if you count the three months plus it was just sitting in the shop.
Never buying another Wrangler while it’s under Stellantis ownership.
Well I think my shortest time screams “I’m so entitled”. It lasted 10 months and was a 2024 Subaru Crosstrek. I just wound up hating that car. I looked for reasons not to drive it. I learned that I hate CVTs, Subaru’s nanny state safety technology, and their very buggy infotainment. The worst with the nanny state safety technology was the rear seat. Every time my (buckled in) dog shifted in her seat, the seat belt alarm would go off. Dealer swore it was a “feature”. Lucky for me, Subarus hold their value, and I was able to trade it in for a Mazda3 without being too underwater.
Six months. Too many electrical gremlins that I got tired of chasing down.
I had an ancient Volvo 24x which had been scraped down the driver’s side by a snow plow. Looked like it’d been keyed by a giant. My rubbish B3 Passat had just spun a bearing and wasn’t worth fixing, and I was waiting to hear back from somebody selling a well-kept 924 Turbo which would become my 3rd transaxle Porsche.
I paid $500 for the Volvo, and sold it to a Volvo shop for parts about two weeks later for $350. It worked out cheaper than renting and I ended up with the car I wanted so I was pretty happy.
A very ratty 1971 Buick Centurion convertible. Bought it from a friend for $300 who had paid $250 for it, spent a week trying to street-park it in Minneapolis, got two parking tickets, sold it for what I paid for it a week later. Never even got around to transferring the title. Only time I’ve ever floated one.