Hey this is weird topic but I have to ask other people about this.
I bought my Toyota Yaris back in 2011, a really simple small car I was able to buy in cash without going in debt.
I wanted to replace this car so many years ago but everytime I searched for new cars it was the wrong time. For example when I changed my job, I didn’t want to go in debt. Or when Corona the prices skyrocket for simple cars I didn’t want to replace it.
Now, 13 years later I am still driving this car and today ( I am from Germany) it got through TÜV again. Good for me, I can still drive it around. I once again dont want to buy a new car now anyways (just built a house, got no money and expensive asf here).
But now I am at a point I dont ever want to replace it ever again. I want to get this car through so many TÜVs as possible and use it til it just dies.
It transported me to my first shift as a nurse, to my first night shifts, it transported me through my cancer back in 2013, it transported me to my first flight ever in Frankfurt and back, it never let me hanging. Heck, we crashed into three animals (two dears and a rabbit), someone opened the door against us at a parking lot on accident, we failed many times in parking houses cause of failing to stop and go on “ramps”…
And this thing is still running good. It needed one new battery replacement in all these years.
I feel really bad if I give it up one day. I dunno, it somehow feels like I’d lose a good friend at this point. The car itself really sucks, its slow on highways, it’s very loud, but come on… its doing what it should.
Like I am giving up my identity. I can’t give us up. I am at a point it’s a “us” and “we” and not a car. It is me.
Yeah it can’t get to 100 km/h in 3 seconds. In fact, it takes almost 15 seconds. But I’m fine and it’s fine with it too. If someone would trade my car against a newer car I am really not sure if I’d do it. I’d honestly have to think about it a while. It’s stupid because a new car would remove all my worries “what if it wont work tomorrow” but I’d still need time to think about it.
Is my behaviour somehow kind of pathological? Is this something really awkward? I am not even a “car” person. I couldn’t care less what I drive…
I currently ain’t in the position to replace it anyways, but in 2 or 3 years I will be and I am not sure if I will replace it or just try to get through the “TÜV” again and drive another few years.
I have friends that visit once a year from Berlin and Hamburg and every year they say: “Wow you are still driving that car?!” Yes, the seatbelt in the back has the green blue red marks that my friends drew on them when I picked them up from a party where they were totally drunk. My now wife (30 years old now) who was my girlfriend back then (17 years old) puked in that car when I picked her up from a party after my nightshift LOL.
This is insane because time flys… people I am saying it, time really flys.
I felt that way about many cars. They can be a part of your life and define you in odd ways. There are other cool versions of you out there when you are ready though. Don’t be scared to go find them.
I’m weird I guess, in that I have never really owned a normal car. Everything I got was cool and everything I owned I sold for more money than what I paid. Like my 71’ FJ40 over doubled its value over the years that I owned it. My last Camaro was like a totally different car with a different interior, motor, rear end, suspension, and supercharger. I started riding a bicycle everywhere to justify building that one for higher compression than pump gas supports and running a water injection setup on a street car. I was a real car nut that learned to paint cars and owned a body shop just because that is the one aspect of car culture that the fewest people are capable of doing.
Once upon a time I fell on hard times in a recession and had to leave said Camaro with a friend and move back across the country for awhile. It had a cracked block and I had no way to fix that on the fly. I got a job at a machine shop, built a new motor, got a $400 Fiero, fixed it, replaced the passenger seat with my motor and drove 2k miles to toss the motor in the Camaro without a cherry picker or anything but basic tools. I sold the Fiero and then drove the Camaro back 2k miles across the country while troubleshooting and tuning a fresh motor in a beast of a hotrod. That was an epic journey. I even had a ridiculous clutch issue where a stupidly designed plastic ring broke and wiped the disk in the middle of a native American reservation in New Mexico and I had to wait a week to get shipped a replacement, then pulled a trans on the side of the freeway and tossed in the clutch.
If I wasn't disabled now, I think I would find someone willing to part with a GC8 impreza with a modern STI swap (popular build to do in the USA, but not an actual vehicle that was ever imported here). That is one that will also appreciate with time. It is the best of all worlds as utility of a 4d, but it is by far the smallest impreza ever built and that light weight makes it a blast with a newer motor swap.
Cars that can be owned will be worth a lot more in the future based on the present trajectory of the world. Even if we start swapping engines for motors and batteries that is more valuable than anything new. New cars running proprietary software that is connected to the manufacturer cannot be owned completely and are not reparable. New cars are worthless long term and are already destroying the independent used car market. We still haven’t seen this end game but it is only a matter of time before cars become the new HP inkjet printers. It is already a situation where only the manufacturer’s dealer can service the car so when that stops, so does the car. There is no longer a possibility to buy something cheap or repairing it yourself. I can repair anything including reverse engineering electrical hardware, but not the entire software stack.
In that sense, keeping anything you can actually own is an investment in yourself and your future. Citizens in a democracy are never asked to trust others and sign away their autonomy. Not owning tools and property while trusting others is feudalism. In the present way the world is changing, your old car has far more value than you may realize right now.