Yesterday I did something I knew I would dread: I took inventory of my cars. How many do I own? What shape are they in? Will I ever get to them? I feared my answers would be “too many,” “horrible,” and “probably not.” As you’ll read below, my fears were confirmed.
OK, let’s start with the good news.
Some of my cars are in great shape! I have a gold BMW i3 in my garage just sitting there.
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It’s basically in mint condition:
I also have a gray i3 that’s also basically perfect:
What’s more, The Autopian’s company car, a 2003 Pontiac Aztek (now my daily-driver for the next month or so) is also in phenomenal shape:
Continuing on the positive side before we fall off a cliff, here’s my 1985 Jeep J10 pickup — it runs and drives like a dream! It does need some brake work, but it drives well, and though it looks rough around the edges, I kinda like that about an old-school truck:
My 1991 Jeep Wrangler YJ, which as over 190,000 miles on the clock, is also basically perfect:
Sure, the driver’s seat is a little torn, but otherwise the Jeep is flawless. That 4.0-liter straight six under the hood purrs perfectly without burning a drop of oil, and the AX-15 five-speed shifts like a dream. Plus, the paint looks great, especially with XPEL PPF giving it that candy-ish look when it’s clean.
My 1954 Willys CJ-3B is probably the Jeep I’m most excited about, because I feel that it’s really not that far off from being on the road. The engine turns over great; just take a listen:
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I do have a rusty fuel tank, which I need to probably replace. And the brake pedal seems to just… bottom out, telling me my master cylinder is toast. I also have no working headlights or taillights, but an old flatfender is easy to work on, parts are plentiful, and the fact that I can fit this thing into my garage at home is going to make fixing this thing happen that much quicker. In theory.
My 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ — a rare, five-speed manual that I lugged all the way from Michigan — remains in peril. It sits next to its parts-car, which hilariously is in better shape than it.
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The red ZJ’s cylinder head is off since I broke an exhaust bolt and had to extract it with an EZ-out. As you can see above, I pulled the bolt-extraction off without drama.
The interior is horrible, there are no brakes, the steering isn’t connected, and the whole thing smells terrible after a cat gave birth to a litter of four kittens. Frankly, this Jeep is in shambles, and it’s not clear how I’m going to remedy that.
Speaking of shambles…
My Nash Metropolitan is still sitting where it has been for around two years. According to the previous owner, the engine has a bad rod bearing and possibly a worn out automatic transmission. I haven’t started tearing into this thing because I’ve replaced it with my BMW i3 as my fuel-efficient, easily-parkable LA daily driver. I have a buyer who wants it, so I need to get this thing back on the road soon.
I also have a WWII Jeep that a younger, naive-er version of me hoped to electrify with parts from a Nissan Leaf (which I recently sold), but I’ve ultimately decided not to, as I don’t have the time, so the WWII Jeep must go away.
As for my brother’s Mustang, it’s still healing from its fiery ordeal the other month. The suspension remains completely worn out, but for the most part, it’s solid and mechanically sound.
I’m seriously working to reduce the fleet to a more manageable number of cars, and I think that number is five. My inclination is to ditch the WWII Jeep, ditch an i3, ditch the YJ, ditch the Nash, and end up with this fleet:
- BMW i3 (one of the two)
- Willys CJ-3B
- Jeep J10
- 1966 Ford Mustang
- 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ 5spd
The Aztek will remain the company car, so it won’t count, even though I have to fix it if it breaks (so really, it basically counts, functionally speaking). The i3 and CJ-3B will be with me at my house, while the J10, Mustang, and overlanding ZJ will take up those precious Galpin parking lot spots. I’m sure my coworkers will appreciate the extra parking availability once I let those four cars go, and maybe I’ll have enough time to, you know, actually give my cars the love they deserve.
Letting go of that YJ is going to be hard, though.
We need an update on the Jeep kittens!
Having just contracted my fleet by one – this is a good plan. I personally don’t get the manual ZJ thing, though. Rarity ≉ value; like, I have a bunch of Star Trek Collectible Card Game cards from the ’90s but who cares? And they have zero cat placenta on them.
This is the first sensible plan I have heard you articulate, but experience tells me you will absolutely not follow it.
If the Mustang is truly your brother’s car, then it should be in his care and you shouldn’t have to worry about storing, fixing or maintaining it for him
So I say that your brother should fully take over its care.
But he lives in Hong Kong.
“The interior is horrible, there are no brakes, the steering isn’t connected, and the whole thing smells terrible after a cat gave birth to a litter of four kittens. Frankly, this Jeep is in shambles, and it’s not clear how I’m going to remedy that.”
Well you’d better find out fast because the smell of a Jeep that’s baked in the SoCal sun after being used as a cat birthing room/nursery ain’t nothing compared to what that Aztek is going to smell like with you living in it for a month.
That seems like too much of a fleet reduction, if you actually go through with selling that many vehicles, you’ll have less than me!
Yeah, but he’ll immediately buy another six.