I’ve come to a realization today that will inform all my future automotive decisions, and hopefully will help you, too. As a car collector, I’ve owned many, many automobiles, and I’ve never purchased one with intentions to flip it. I buy cars because I love them, and then over time I choose which ones I keep and which I let go. These are sometimes grueling decisions that torment me night in and night out. But then, ultimately, I do decide and… well, that’s it. I decide, the car goes away, and I move on with life. I’ve never regretted selling a single car, and that’s something I want to remind you all of (and also me) as we struggle to make tough automotive herd-culling decisions. As I did with my 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle.
I’ve owned probably 30 cars in my life thus far, and I currently own about 13. So that means 17 cars have come and gone; and since I only buy cars I love, that means I’ve had to sell 17 cars that I care about. That’s not an easy thing to do; like I said, it’s kept me awake many a night!
My most recent sale just finished up: My 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle is gone. It’s a car I thought I’d regret selling because it’s just so dang beautiful. Just look at this gorgeous machine:
I bought the SJ-platform Jeep way back in late 2017, and though it was running, I removed a cylinder head to replace a broken exhaust stud, moisture got in my cylinder, I decided to yank the whole engine, and frankly — I just really made a huge blunder.
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Working on that AMC 360 proved to be a pain in my arse, and I ultimately replaced that motor:
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It took me years to get the Golden Eagle back on the road, but even then, that replacement motor ran terribly:
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I towed the 4,600 pound hulk across the country — from Detroit to LA — with hopes that I’d someday get the gorgeous SUV (the most beautiful SUV of all time, in my opinion) back on the road:
But what ended up happening is that my life became infinitely more complex once I arrived in LA, leaving me with really no time to wrench on the Golden Eagle. So it languished in that hot Van Nuys parking lot for almost two years. I never even came close to placing a spanner on any of its bolts:
So I spent lots of time — many months — struggling to let go, and writing articles like this one:
Seriously, if you type “David Tracy Golden Eagle” you’ll find dozens of articles involving me just generally struggling with ever facet of this Golden Eagle ownership. Deciding whether to buy it, buying it and towing it home, ruining it, struggling to fix it, struggling to get myself to sell it.
It was a shitshow from day 1, and — as an expert mechanic — I have to say there was a bit of pride holding me back from just cutting the Jeep loose. I struggled to let go for so long, but then I put the Jeep up on Facebook Marketplace for a price I’d be happy with — $8000. I didn’t think I’d get any nibbles, and for the longest time, I didn’t:
But then a business owner out of Texas called me. I told him what was up. Engine is seized. Numbers matching. There’s some rust (I sent videos). The buyer didn’t even remember how much I was asking for the Jeep, and just agreed to pay me what was on the listing. I received a check the next day via FedEx.
Shipping the car was a bit of a shitshow, as I have been traveling a lot these past few weeks, and the buyer kept arranging for the truck to come when I was in Europe. Then the truck arrived without a winch. Then the buyer went radio silent for weeks before telling me “oh, the truck is coming today” when I wasn’t expecting it. It was a bit of a pain in the arse, if I’m honest, but the Jeep is now gone. I now have $8000 in my account, and, well, I’m happy.
I feel zero regrets, and even if the buyer fixes the Jeep and sells it for $25 grand, I won’t be bothered in the least.
This process made me realize something that I hadn’t thought of before: In my years of selling awesome cars (I’ve sold two Jeep Grand Wagoneers, two Willys FC’s, a Willys CJ-2A, a Plymouth Valiant, a mint-condition five-speed Jeep Grand Cherokee, a mint-condition five-speed Jeep XJ, and on and on) I have never once regretted letting one go.
That seems pretty wild, in a way. Look at how minty this 1991 Jeep XJ was — a five-speed manual!:
And look at how perfect this 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee “Holy Grail” (also a five-speed!) was!:
I sold the XJ for $7000 and the ZJ for $9500, and I haven’t had a single regret. Selling those helped me move to LA, put a little jingle in my pocket, and though I’ll definitely never own an XJ or ZJ that nice in my life again, I don’t really care about that. I own a junky version of each of those cars, and I love them just as much. In fact, I’m less worried about driving them, and I feel less guilty having that much money tied up in them.
I’m going to quote the article above from two years ago:
Loving a car is all about the balance between the great moments you’ve enjoyed with that vehicle and the hardships it has caused you. You want the former to outweigh the latter, of course. And while yes, I could probably take the black XJ on some epic trips, the problem is that I’d have to live 200 years for the joyful moments to outweigh the misery.
This was a big part of the problem with some of the cars I’ve sold. The Golden Eagle pained me so much that I know I can never truly love it. Ditto with that XJ. There are some other cars that never pained me — that 1993 ZJ, the BMW i3 I’m currently selling, my old Grand Wagoneers — but I already have variants of those cars. I have a 1994 ZJ, I have a 2021 BMW i3, and I have a 1985 Jeep J10 pickup truck. Those other cars have nothing that I cannot feel when driving my current vehicles.
The truth is: There are just too many amazing cars out there for anyone to get caught up regretting getting rid of vehicles. And what’s more, I think one thing many people struggle with as they battle regret in general: They fail to put themselves into the position they were in when they made the decision. Every time I begin regretting anything, I remind myself: I made that choice because it was the right one at the time.
I often hear folks say they regret selling their 1969 Ford Mustang Fastback or 1970 Challenger or whatever for a stick of chewing gum and $150 cash. “Damn, if I’d just kept that car. Look at how much it’s worth!” I get it; you’re regretting selling that car years later because of how valuable and hard to attain that machine has become. But remember: You needed that $150 cash. Don’t insult your former self; you weren’t an idiot. You made a conscious choice that made sense at the time. And if you’re still bothered, go out and buy another cool classic car. There are too many amazing machines out there for you to let any of this fester.
If I can find joy in a weird electric city car, you can wash away your regrets with a few hours on Craigslist and a trip to the bank. Trust me.
“Damn, if I’d just kept that car. Look at how much it’s worth!”
The other side of that is if they did keep it, they would have had to have a place to store it (preferably indoors so it won’t deteriorate into a pile of rust) as well as doing at least some minimal maintenance to it to keep it running.
And that costs money.
And when you factor in that cost as well as the effects of inflation, most of the time, you won’t even be breaking even.
And even in cases where people made money after inflation, from an investment perspective you’d still be better off putting the money in some corporate bonds, government bonds or dividend-paying preferred shares.
I think there are at least a couple of kinds of regret that can operate here. The kind that David talks about in his cars’ examples seem to be regret over letting go of a car that is some rare/unusual/exceptional example of its type. But another kind of regret is much stronger, and tends to lead to much more resistance to getting rid of a car, and that’s the car that is special because of *that particular car’s* history with you. I still have my Sentra SE-R because it’s the only car I’ve ever gotten new, and I have had a lot of great experiences with it, including a 10,000-mile road trip around the west when it was five years old. I have my Fiat Spider because it’s the car that my dad and I got as a father-song project when I was 15. I’ve had that car for 33 years, and nothing can replace it – not even another version of exactly the same model of Spider. My dad died 20 years ago, but for me a little bit of him lives in that car.
This is absolutely true.
I wouldn’t think of selling my 2015 Fit. It was my retirement gift to myself after leaving NYC. It’s the only new car I’ve ever owned – in fact it’s only my 4th car since I lived carless for 35 years in Manhattan.
My partner and I have driven everywhere east of Montana in it over the course of 8 marathon trips from Tampa Bay. I hope to donate it to Honda when I can no longer drive, and that should be a while since I’m soon to be 70.
My Dad was a Rambler man, and I think he’d be proud of my abstemious Fit.
I’m sure he would be! My Fiat came out of a body and paint restoration last year and is waiting for me to get so all the mechanical maintenance it needs (there was a Reader’s Rides that showed it a while back), but I really wish I could take him for a ride in it. I can’t do that, but what I still can do is drive it to Maryland some time after its road-trip worthy again and let its original owner take it for a drive again. It was a friend of my dad’s who bought it new and gave it to us, and I’m still in touch with him. Of all the cars he’s owned, he says his two favorite were the NSX and the Spider.
Sounds lovely!
And my Dad died 20 years ago also.
You have 20 more years to drive. 70 is nothing.
From your post to God’s ears.
Dad was driving at 86, and I take much better physical care of myself.
Thanks for the boost!
I can’t help thinking you don’t feel that regret because you’ve never owned anything as nice as either of those cars. 😉
I keep a list going in my phone’s notepad app of all of the vehicles I have owned. Over 70 total, none of which I bought planning to sell. If I go through that list I can mark maybe 7-8 that I regret selling. But that regret only lasts for a few minutes after I look at the list. There was reason I sold them at that time, and no point in living in the past. I’ve got 5 nice cars right now, one of which is sitting in my garage partially disassembled. I need to working on that one, not regretting one I sold many years ago.
I come out to Michigan once a year. One morning I went to Tim Hortons, like anyone in the metro detroit area should and I saw the golden eagle in its glory. as I was heading back to Big Beaver Road