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?
I drove a free, 2 decades old Alfa Romeo 145 for like 5 or 6 months. It had to go because it was, well, a free, 2 decades old Alfa Romeo 145.
Two weeks on the mark; a Volvo V50 “Classic” manual diesel estate.
It conveyed no emotion. It was a driving appliance. So, it had to go.
Funny, I bought a lemon 2006 V50 almost 2 years ago (the 363.000km Ford/PSA 1.6D engine grenaded itself 100km after my name got slapped on the title), and I totally sunken-cost-phallacy-ed that MFer. I patiently waited for a decently priced, good condition engine to appear on my mechanic’s radar; took over a year to get the car back – it wasn’t until earlier this year that it was finally ready – and it practically doubled the cost of the car, but I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit ever since I got it back. After years of relying exlusively on an über-fun, extra-emotional Renault 4, (and having never owned a car this modern), I kinda welcome some of the soulless aspects of it. It’s the first time I have a car with cruise control, and I never thought I’d like it so much. We’ll be testing how well it fares on a road trip in early september (about 1400km in total, likely under a heatwave in southern Portugal and Spain). I’m a bit nervous about it, not gonna lie – the D4164T engine is lengendary for its unreliability – but if it holds up on the mechanical end of things, I’m fairly confident it will be a really nice, comfortable roadtripper.
My friend and I used to watch a video, maybe a DVD, and I think it was called Vehicular Lunatics or something like that in the early 2000’s. It was stupid people doing stupid stuff in cars. Of course we thought we should try it something like that, and that was in a time before cameras recording everything- we just wanted to jump a car and drive it until it destroyed itself.
So we looked in the classified ad for the cheapest car with a manual transmission in the area. We found a rusty Ford Escort in the suburbs of Detroit for under $400 and decided to split the cost. We drove his SN-95 Mustang Bullet GT to check it out and informed the salesman it was “for farm use” so we didn’t get insurance or anything, we put on a random plate behind the shop and it on i-94 towards mid-Michigan.
Our dreams of off roading it, sending it off jumps and crashing through trees, hand brake drifting were all coursing through my veins as I tried to keep it alive and keep it up with traffic but the ending was knocking and missing, sputtering and overheating, the shifter probably had no bushings and the shocks and brakes were beyond worn out. After about 30 minutes we had to pull over. Fortunately, my friend had some ice cube juice that was supposed to be able to bring the temps down a few degrees, so we dumped in a bottle of that and kept going. After about 45 minutes of white knuckled driving my friend and his Mustang was nowhere to be seen.
That’s when engine quit the second time, just outside Saline. It had enough momentum to coast it off the highway and into a Shell station (I guess the wheel bearings were decent and the tires inflated). With the last bit of willpower, it made into the parking lot and I nosed it in. I hung around for a bit, let it cool down, but when I attempted to restart it the engine was locked solid.
This being a time before cell phones, I had to use the phone book to look up the only person I knew in the area and see if she she was even at home, fortunately she was and she could pick me up and take me back home, which was a 45 minute drive for her one way.
After a little bit of waiting, I was rescued and leaving the car in the parking lot. I heard later that it was towed away, but we never registered it or anything and didn’t pay any fines or fees on it after that.
So, TLDR- I co-owned a car for about one hour before abandoning it.
One of my uncles, during the ’60’s and ’70’s, would buy a hundred dollar (Canadian) car and drive it until it died. He would leave it there and seek out another hundred dollar car. He’d see them parked in a yard or next to a barn, and had a talent for finding them. I don’t think he ever registered or insured them. He once made a cross-country trip and back, and of course went through several jalopies before he made it back home. He did pretty well that way, and never got stuck making years of car payments.
Eight years, 105,000 miles for my 2001 Sonoma. Sold it because I had 4 kids and wanted a crew cab for the crew.
We pretty much run the wheels off our vehicles around here.
2 weeks. 1966 Mustang coupe I bought in 1969 for $450. About 35,000 miles at time of purchase. Red with black interior, 289, 4 bbl, 4 speed manual, dual exhaust. Looked decent but turned out to be a certifiable piece of crap. After 1 week of ownership, transmission whined like a banshee in first three forward gears. Some clutch slip in third and fourth gears at lower speed. Front end began making all sorts of noise, likely ball joints. Fuel mileage was about 13 mpg in town and not much more on highway. Decided to not sink money into repairs. Sold it for what I paid for it to a mechanic who was looking for a Mustang to modify for the track. Purchased a 1968 VW beetle, blue with off white interior and sunroof. Kept the VW for 3 years and never had any problems with it.
About 24 hours. When I was 16 I bought an 80’s Caprice wagon from a mechanic the next town over. My parents found out by morning the next day and made me return it. No one was happy that day.
About 6 months, an ’08 Camry SE. Needed a car and it was about the only remotely decent car I could find at the peak of the car unavailability and I imagine that was largely because it was a manual. It was a soul-eating thing to operate, not even suitable as a beater. After my GR86 came in (in January here in New England and with those garbage stock tires), I drove it to work a few times to protect the new car before asking why I was doing such a thing to myself, so I kept it through the winter only for snow days and sold it off in spring. Body and interior were in great shape and it had 195k, but didn’t feel EoL. The seat was abominably uncomfortable even being the leather power seats, it rode pretty poorly, yet also handed fairly bad and without a shred of endearing character or connection. It also ate and leaked oil, had an exhaust leak, and all the motor and transmission mounts were shot except for the pitch mount that had been replaced fairly recently (I imagine because it was easy to do). I didn’t expect it to be fun, though I thought it would at least be comfortable on a near par with an ’80s GM, but it was purely terrible. It never occurred to me that a car could be so bad to drive. Two mk3 Ford Focuses and my mk1 Legacy had nearly the same or more miles (204k, 180k, 270+k) and all were in better shape, more comfortable, very reliable, cheap to fix, likely far more abused, and immeasurably better to drive. The reason I bought the GR86 was that it was 99% Subaru (I liked the Toyota front better, but would have gone BRZ if I wasn’t able to get what I wanted from Toyota or they demanded dealer mark up). One of Toyota’s many smart moves was outsourcing their sports cars.
15 years, I’m car monogamous
What are you driving? I’m 16years into my 1988 Corolla 4wd Wagon
That car was a Suzuki Swift Sport – in the correct bright yellow haha. I loved that thing unfortunately it did get a little long in the tooth and I needed more practicality and the ability to tow so I now have a manual Toyota Hilux which I could conceivably run forever.
Those carolla wagons are bloody durable, nice work keeping it going.
Suzuki and Hilux are solid choices. It’s great having one car that you can just get in and go and not worry about too much.
A few years ago I signed my cars up to a local car wrangling agency for use in movies and adverts and the Corolla has been used by Toyota in adverts and in a couple of movies. This earns enough to pay for all its maintenance and registration! – I can’t get rid of it now!
9 months – 97 Trans Am WS6. Car was an absolute blast – when I wasn’t having problems with it.
I ‘owned’ a bubble Roadmaster wagon for less than 2 hours.
I think it may have had 4 ‘owners’ in under 24 hours.
A friend rescued it from getting junked, but didn’t have space to keep it. I picked it up from him the next day and put it on my FB, and a friend said he always wanted one and came and got it from me immediately.
I think it got bought for $250 and nobody made money on it…
A 1990 4WD F150, for one week. It was 7 years old, paid $9K. Great condition, very nice truck. Fortunes changed literally overnight, needed money fast, sold it for $6500.
6 months. Bought a 90 Taurus SHO with a 5 spd. Hit the right marks on paper, then the problems happened.
Front drive shaft went our and took weeks to find one, it had the rare at the time ABS option.
The AC never worked and looked like it was hit with a sledge hammer.
The front clip was new.
Finally after small fire due to the steering pump, I was shown where the frame was bent and straightened. All done under the table.
This will long before online searches and I called surrounding states that all had a clean title.
Traded it for for a boring as hell but working Lumina.
3 weeks. My son on a “break” from college was working as a lot tech at a new car dealer. He had recently wrecked my XJ and we were in the process of rebuilding it so he needed transportation. Someone traded in an old Cavalier and the dealer gave the customer a “pity trade-in” of $300. They let my son buy it for $300 rather than dealing with sending it to the junk yard. Anyway, it ran for about 2 1/2 weeks until the clutch went out (pretty sure abuse was the cause). He sold the wheels and tires to a mechanic on the lot, cut off the cat to sell separately and then sent the car to the junk yard after they drove over it a couple of times with one of the mechanic’s lifted Jeep. All said, 3 weeks of ownership and around $60 profit. Plus a great video that I can’t find of the car being crested by a lifted jeep CJ.
My Mazda B2200 which I loved, but died in an accident after 2.5 years.
I bought one (in ‘91) lightly used (‘88 5spd w/factory camper shell) that started my Mazda infatuation. Drove the hell out of it for 8 years and all it needed then was a clutch. Only reason I sold it was wife and I each had our own Miatas and I was tired of moving the truck side to side on the driveway to get both convertibles out of the garage. I just wasn’t driving it enough to justify the insurance. Plus tired of being volunteered to help people move stuff on weekends. Lol.
I think the shortest time I’ve ever had a car is 3 months. It was a decent enough Toyota Corolla with some rust in the rockers and collision damage to the front,but not a bad car. I was planning to keep it for longer but it died when it developed some sort of electrical gremlins causing the fuel pump to shut down.
I keep cars for a long time, so the shortest I’ve owned a car is about 6 years. I bought an 8 year old XJ Cherokee when my first son was born so that I would have a vehicle that could fit a car seat. I’d been daily driving my ’89 240SX for 10 years at that point, and still have it, 30 years and counting. I sold that XJ about 6 years later when my 2nd son turned 2 years old and didn’t need to be in a rear-facing car seat anymore. The XJ had a rust hole open up in the rocker, and I wanted to sell it while it still had some value. I replaced it with a new 2011 RX-8 that I’ve been driving since then. My wife also drives a 2011 Mazda since new. We also own a hand-me-down ’97 Expedition that my in-laws bought new and then gave to us in 2004, I still drive it regularly. I’ve also picked up a ’67 Volvo wagon that I’ve owned for about 8 years now, though I need to put some work into it.
1985 Pontiac Firebird Formula, a little less than 3 hours till I got rear ended by a dump truck, car totaled.
Thought I’d mention my friend who “bought” a ’66 Shelby GT350 even though he didn’t have the money to pay for it. Kept it long enough to give us all rides in it (maybe 2 weeks) then gave it back. I’ve ridden in a GT350…
1971 Datsun 1200 fastback after just one week when my mechanic warned me of all it’s issues.
We typically keep vehicles for the long haul. so the shortest lived vehicle was our beloved Mazda5 which we only had for 9 months before it was totaled by a pickup running a stop sign
Jeez, I’m honestly not sure. I’ve owned over a dozen cars, and I’ve had most of them for a fair bit: the longest I’ve owned a car is 23 years, and I dailyed (sp?) it for more than 20 of those years. That was a ’00 VW Golf TDI GLS (auto), and I finally sold it (paid $16,500. for it in 2001, and sold it for about $4,500 for it a few years ago… it was in pretty good shape w/low miles) and I was just bored with it, and didn’t much like the ownership experience of a VW that was 20+ years old. Here’s a pic of it right before selling: https://imgur.com/a/xwSRgBy
Racking my brain here… I think the shortest time I owned a car was probably an early 90s Volvo 740 Turbo that I had for maybe a year. It was big, boxy, and not particularly pretty, but it was comfortable, safe feeling (for the time), and much quicker than it looked. Bought it at a small used car dealership on Ventura Blvd. My ex took it in the divorce. Such is life. I searched my PC, but couldn’t find a pic of that Volvo… it was a sort of metallic rust shade of brown and was missing one fog light in the airdam. Still, quite a decent car. Here’s a pic of a similar one: https://gomotors.net/photos/cf/89/filevolvo-740-turbo-sedan-04272011jpg_8642e.jpg?i
Are you me? ‘79 Volvo 244, bought because “all Volvos are safe”… well that reputation was proved wrong a few months later when the engine burst into flames on the highway merely months later… ‘02 Golf was owned for 20+ years, didn’t quite get to 25k miles.
Thankfully, no fires here yet w/any car, but maybe it’s only a matter of time: any car can catch fire since all it takes is a leaking fuel line or badly installed fuel filter. My new-to-me Volvo 240 wagon (aka 245) has 167Kmiles on it, my ’04 XC90 has maybe 133K, and my ’95 Miata has about 85K on it. For the life of me atm I can’t recall what the ’00 Golf TDI got up to when I sold it… I wanna say 82Kish miles maybe?
Of my three current and one most recently sold cars, the Golf was the longest-owned by far (23 years, as mentioned) and also the most PITA to work on because Germany, with the XC90 coming in second in terms of repair difficulty/inconvenience (all turbo cars have so much extra plumbing underhood). But the XC90 wins for most comfortable and most safe (of those four cars). Every time I drive past an accident in the 245 or Miata (or even just watch an accident montage on Youtube) I think to myself that I probably ought to be driving the XC90: it’s a tank, and actually somehow still nice to drive… there’s a good chance that I’ll buy another XC90 at some point, assuming I don’t finally give in and get a Mazda CX-5 or CX-30 instead (both of which I like in their non-turbo forms). The Miata is of course the most actual fun to drive of all my cars.
There’s also a very-low-mile Suzuki Vanvan 200 in my garage, but I don’t ride it anymore and will be selling it as soon as I get around to giving it a wash and taking some photos of it. I waited too long (agewise) before starting to ride… even a small motocycle can be a handful if you’ve got a bad back like I do.
If you also had an early Miata at some point, or maybe an old JDM bike, I won’t be surprised at all. There’s only a finite number of different kinds of people on the planet. 🙂 Though it probably upsets him every time I say it, I think Jason and I share a solid 78% of our DNA even though we’re unrelated AFAIK.
And if you haven’t owned a Miata, maybe there’s still time. 😉
Right, the answer IS Miata. But for me, that’s still in the future. Correction from above: 250k, not 25k miles. I got to about 229 before the endless electrical gremlins won out. They made a fantastic engine and 5 speed manual transmission. But whoo-boy that car had electrics trouble from day one, and they only got stranger and more pricey.
250Kmiles is an impressive figure to reach in any car, and it’s downright amazing in any semi-modern (water cooled) VW product.
I don’t miss the Golf much at all: the A4s had much of the dashboard sprayed in that rubbery stuff (also used on Apple Newtons, some SLR cameras, and Volvo dashboards from around the same time, etc…) that feels great/very high end when it’s new, but within a decade it degrades into a sticky mess that attracts every hair and fiber, and retains every fingerprint forever, since it becomes literally uncleanable.
And all those A4 (and probably later) VWs use this white nylon/plastic for the bracket that clamps onto the bottom of the side window glass and is certain to break a few months after the warranty expires. The DIY instructions to replace it (acquired from Fred’s TDI Club, and I think they also appear on VW Vortex) require over 120 steps (I did it three times) or you can pay a dealer to do it (over $500. per window and that was a 20-year-ago price, so at least twice that now). The replacement item (part of the ‘window regulator kit’) has that part now made out of aluminum.
Aside from the MAF sensor and supposed carbon build-up (never happened to me AFAIK) those 1.9 liter TDI motors were pretty great though: 90HP and 151lbft of torque IIRC. My automatic Golf reached 45MPG on long highway trips, and the same car with a manual (my pal had one) routinely get 55MPG highway. The doors close with a nice solid thunk on those A4 VWs also. And until the dash coating degrades, it feels nice to the touch. Those are the high points of an A4 VW, but they are a PITA to own starting about 10 years after manufacture.
VW’s got nothing of interest to me in the US market for years now, so I don’t plan to buy another.
The shortest I have owned a vehicle was when I was 18 and bought a 80s Mercedes for $1000 because my Ford Escort decided to exit life early with engine problems. It was built and owned in Germany and brought over to the USA by someone who drove it until the electrical gremlins appeared. Speedo was in kph and the owners manual was in German.
Total time of official ownership 1 hour and 25 minutes as my dad took pity on me and purchased it from me even though I had just tagged it and registered it in my name. We never left the DMV parking lot before he gave me the money and reregistered it in his name.
He owned it for a few years but his mechanic hated every minute of it because the electronics were a nightmare apparently.
Having had a ’98 MB CLK that was the most unreliable car I’ve ever owned, I’m curious to know what year/model your/your dad’s was. My impression is that maybe into the 80s (or early 90s for some models) is the last/newest Mercedes to own if you want any semblence of reliability. But don’t go too far back because of the vacuum-actuated locks/windows/etc… on the fancier ones. I almost made that mistake a few years ago, but thankfully came to my senses just before signing a check.
I believe it was an 89, but That was over 20 years ago. Not sure it was so much the build quality on the car itself and more the hack job people did over the years wiring in things like speakers, and other accessories.
1 month.
I bought it used from a lease company that supplied cars to companies, the CEL light would not go off, despite the attempts of the dealer, then I found the service logs which showed that it had received a new speedometer/odometer, so the mileage was 10,000 miles more than the seller had represented it as.
They sent a breakdown truck to haul it back.
I owned a Chevy Bolt for about 5 months before getting in an accident. I was so impressed with the car that I bought another.