The circle of life concept as I understand it is that something in the animal kingdom eats something, then itself gets eaten by something else; that something else eventually dies and its carcass gets consumed by some bug that gets eaten by the first something which starts the process all over again in a gastrointestinal dance of life and death. For me, as both a top tier grocery store predator and car guy, the circle of life has a different meaning. My circle of driving life finds me concluding my career in the same fashion as it started over twenty years ago; as a mega mileage road warrior. For the next twelve months I’ll be working in one state, staying in another during the week and returning to a third state on the weekends. In the early 1990’s I was working at one job 70 miles from home, finishing at midnight, then getting four hours of sleep and driving 50 miles in the opposite direction to work the sign-on to 12 O’clock news shift at a local television station. I put 45,000 miles on my brand new $6,500 Ford Festiva that year including 40 mile trips to my National Guard drills one weekend a month. All went perfectly with this ill-conceived plan until I passed out at the wheel from exhaustion and rolled the little tin box at 65 miles per hour. I walked away unhurt, (thanks to escaping through the handy pop-top) the car, however, was totaled.
The organic abacus on the end of my sleeves tells me that I’ll put more than 40, 000 miles on a car this year. The true road warriors like over-the-road truckers, traveling sales representatives and delivery/messenger service runners may scoff at a mere 40,000 miles but for a work commute it’s on the upper end of stupid. I’m not sure what 24 hours a week of rolling solitary confinement will do for my mental health, the steering wheel may become my closest confidant, but I do know the mileage plus stop-and-go traffic is hell on a car.
Conventional wisdom may dictate going to a car dealer and getting a fuel efficient new car with a warranty and zero miles on the clock. I possess neither convention nor wisdom and the thought of subjecting a new car to the horrors of the Baltimore-Washington Beltway is intolerable. At the end of the year I may have a scratched, dented, duct taped Frankenstein of a car with payments and full coverage insurance. My first day of this commute was illustrative of the contempt this roadway has for other people’s possessions. I was driving my wife Ginger’s Focus (Ginger using the beloved van to move into a new house) when I heard a loud crack like a gun shot and the sickening sound of something hitting the side of the car with great force. I don’t know what the “it” was but it left a softball-sized dent and 12 inch scratch on the fender. Option one; return the car at night with the passenger side facing away from the house or option two; fess up and promise to use the dent repair as the subject of our next do-it-yourself video.
With that incident fresh in my mind, I rationalized an excuse to indulge my sick propensity to buy and nurse along that blight on the automotive landscape, the beater car. My reasoning, if it can be called that, is to buy a cheap, disposable car, keep it mechanically fit and let the body suffer the slings and arrows of the Beltway commute. At the end of the year I’ll pry the VIN tags and license plate off the rusted hulk and leave it burning on the side of route 95.
(Note to the authorities, I don’t really intend to burn my car up on the side of an interstate highway but plan to dispose of it properly in an approved trash receptacle.)
I will now take this opportunity to examine why I find such joy in looking for and purchasing cars that should be put to a merciful death. I’m not even sure what phase of Operation Hopeless Cause I enjoy more, the hunt, the frugality of ownership or the constant list of new maintenance projects.
The reasoning for the beater car is logical and may even stand up in court. The narrative goes something like this; if you purchase a car for under $3000.00 the money you’d save in payments on a $20,000 plus new car in addition to full coverage insurance will more than pay for maintenance and service of the car-roach. The added benefit of the beater is liberation from the anxiety of door dings, shopping cart assaults, fender benders and spilled drive-thru super sodas. The first hurdle to overcome in hoopty ownership, however, is psychological. You have to convince yourself that you are not too cool to drive an ugly car and your identity and self-worth comes from your hot but vacuous trophy spouse not what you drive.
The second step is getting over the fear of the mechanical breakdown. Most cars built in the last fifteen years will survive well over 200,000 miles with minimum maintenance. If you take care of the car and pay attention to the warning signs of potential disaster you should never be left on the side of the road. In essence turning up the radio to drown out that mystery sound or adjusting the review mirrors so you can’t see the trail of blue smoke behind you is not an effective maintenance plan. You must be in tune with your car’s inner machine-ness and sensitive to its signals. In other words, in order to know crap you must become crap.
For me, the hunt is on. To revisit the psychological aspect of my beater car passion I think it boils down to two things. First, I enjoy the search. That Indiana Jones discovery of hidden treasure is very alluring. I feel that by finding and running a ridiculously cheap car I’m beating the system, throwing off the shackles of debt and proving to myself that serviceability doesn’t have to come with principle plus interest. The second factor is the satisfaction of bringing something back from the brink. Usually there’s a time when someone gives up on a car, even one that served them well. A lot of people get to the point, especially if they don’t do their own repairs, when they’re tired of being nickelled and dimed to death by an old car. In a lot of cases the old girl can be brought back with a few hundred dollars and a good weekend of wrenching.
It has to be as common as a Hollywood divorce. If it’s the kind of car that you see so much that you don’t even notice them anymore it’s a good candidate. Common cars are easy and cheap to get parts for (including junkyard parts) and there’s usually a wealth of internet knowledge out there to help you fix it.
It has to have some reputation for quality and longevity. A good way to determine this is to do a search on Autotrader, if you see many examples of a particular car for sale with 200,000 miles or more, you’re on the right track.
The organic abacus on the end of my sleeves tells me that I’ll put more than 40, 000 miles on a car this year. The true road warriors like over-the-road truckers, traveling sales representatives and delivery/messenger service runners may scoff at a mere 40,000 miles but for a work commute it’s on the upper end of stupid. I’m not sure what 24 hours a week of rolling solitary confinement will do for my mental health, the steering wheel may become my closest confidant, but I do know the mileage plus stop-and-go traffic is hell on a car.
Conventional wisdom may dictate going to a car dealer and getting a fuel efficient new car with a warranty and zero miles on the clock. I possess neither convention nor wisdom and the thought of subjecting a new car to the horrors of the Baltimore-Washington Beltway is intolerable. At the end of the year I may have a scratched, dented, duct taped Frankenstein of a car with payments and full coverage insurance. My first day of this commute was illustrative of the contempt this roadway has for other people’s possessions. I was driving my wife Ginger’s Focus (Ginger using the beloved van to move into a new house) when I heard a loud crack like a gun shot and the sickening sound of something hitting the side of the car with great force. I don’t know what the “it” was but it left a softball-sized dent and 12 inch scratch on the fender. Option one; return the car at night with the passenger side facing away from the house or option two; fess up and promise to use the dent repair as the subject of our next do-it-yourself video.
With that incident fresh in my mind, I rationalized an excuse to indulge my sick propensity to buy and nurse along that blight on the automotive landscape, the beater car. My reasoning, if it can be called that, is to buy a cheap, disposable car, keep it mechanically fit and let the body suffer the slings and arrows of the Beltway commute. At the end of the year I’ll pry the VIN tags and license plate off the rusted hulk and leave it burning on the side of route 95.
(Note to the authorities, I don’t really intend to burn my car up on the side of an interstate highway but plan to dispose of it properly in an approved trash receptacle.)
I will now take this opportunity to examine why I find such joy in looking for and purchasing cars that should be put to a merciful death. I’m not even sure what phase of Operation Hopeless Cause I enjoy more, the hunt, the frugality of ownership or the constant list of new maintenance projects.
The reasoning for the beater car is logical and may even stand up in court. The narrative goes something like this; if you purchase a car for under $3000.00 the money you’d save in payments on a $20,000 plus new car in addition to full coverage insurance will more than pay for maintenance and service of the car-roach. The added benefit of the beater is liberation from the anxiety of door dings, shopping cart assaults, fender benders and spilled drive-thru super sodas. The first hurdle to overcome in hoopty ownership, however, is psychological. You have to convince yourself that you are not too cool to drive an ugly car and your identity and self-worth comes from your hot but vacuous trophy spouse not what you drive.
The second step is getting over the fear of the mechanical breakdown. Most cars built in the last fifteen years will survive well over 200,000 miles with minimum maintenance. If you take care of the car and pay attention to the warning signs of potential disaster you should never be left on the side of the road. In essence turning up the radio to drown out that mystery sound or adjusting the review mirrors so you can’t see the trail of blue smoke behind you is not an effective maintenance plan. You must be in tune with your car’s inner machine-ness and sensitive to its signals. In other words, in order to know crap you must become crap.
For me, the hunt is on. To revisit the psychological aspect of my beater car passion I think it boils down to two things. First, I enjoy the search. That Indiana Jones discovery of hidden treasure is very alluring. I feel that by finding and running a ridiculously cheap car I’m beating the system, throwing off the shackles of debt and proving to myself that serviceability doesn’t have to come with principle plus interest. The second factor is the satisfaction of bringing something back from the brink. Usually there’s a time when someone gives up on a car, even one that served them well. A lot of people get to the point, especially if they don’t do their own repairs, when they’re tired of being nickelled and dimed to death by an old car. In a lot of cases the old girl can be brought back with a few hundred dollars and a good weekend of wrenching.
The game’s afoot Watson and here’s my criteria.
The car must be cheap to buy, cheap to run and cheap to fix. It has to be as common as a Hollywood divorce. If it’s the kind of car that you see so much that you don’t even notice them anymore it’s a good candidate. Common cars are easy and cheap to get parts for (including junkyard parts) and there’s usually a wealth of internet knowledge out there to help you fix it.
It has to have some reputation for quality and longevity. A good way to determine this is to do a search on Autotrader, if you see many examples of a particular car for sale with 200,000 miles or more, you’re on the right track.
An internal word of caution here: that high mileage BMW or Porsche 944 may tickle the imagination but the first parts bill won’t have me laughing.
Finally, for me, it has to be a stick shift. I know this is limiting my selection greatly but it’s a point on which I won’t budge. Even in D.C. area traffic I’d rather shift my own gears than suffer a slush box, clutch replacements be damned!
Stay tuned.
Marve Harwell
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