As someone who has owned dozens of cars, I’ve had to make some really tough choices. You see, I don’t just buy cars for the content, I buy cars because I think they’re awesome. I never buy a car solely with the plan to sell it; every car gets a fair shake, and many cars end up causing me to fall in love. The problem is: I can’t own every car. There are practical considerations that force me to part ways with vehicles that have left lasting impressions on my soul, and this thread article here is the place for you to tell us about the automotive loves you’ve had to let go of. It’s a therapy session, and there’s no judgement.
My biggest automotive love that I ever had to let go of was my Postal Jeep. It wasn’t because the vehicle met an untimely demise only hours after I sold it (in many ways that just made the tale of the DJ even more legendary), it was that the Postal Jeep represented me in the most authentic, unfiltered way.
It was the very pinnacle of my time at my old work, Jalopnik — an insanely challenging project requiring to weld, do engine work, rig up a distributor, install new floors, fix a steering box, replace a bunch of suspension bits, and on and on and on.
It was a ridiculous project — madness on full display. A rusted-out $500 POStal Jeep has no business going on a 4,000 mile road trip from Michigan to Utah and back, and it has no business off-roading. But I didn’t give a damn. It sounded fun, it sounded difficult, and I was the singlest man on the face of the planet and just wanted to live the dream. And so I did:
I miss Project POStal. It captured my spirit better than any car I’ve ever owned, and it’s a vehicle that I’ll remember for as long as I live.
In truth, holding onto that POStal Jeep — and thus holding onto the past — is maybe not the right move if progress is the goal. I knew that, which is why I let go. I couldn’t use it as a daily-driver, I couldn’t really off-road it (since it was two-wheel drive), and I couldn’t use it as a truck (though it does fit more than you’d think behind the front seat). Keeping the DJ didn’t make sense, and I’m not upset that I let go of it, I’m just feeling a bit nostalgic that I had to part ways with my automotive best friend.
Let me know if you can relate.
Topshot: Alex Neville
Boss 302.
Medical bills.
Fuck American ‘healthcare’.
Not counting the many foxbody cars that I scattered around the mitten after having my way with them, the one that got away, a black, 1977 Pontiac Trans Am.
“He” (because this car can’t be a lady, it’s a hairy chested feral beefcake taking a drag on a Marlboro while staring longingly off into the sunset) was a 400cu.in., automatic with some lame-ass freeway gear and a shaker hood. Despite the wheezing, chocked-out smog nannies of the day, “he” would grab rubber on the 1-2 shift under WOT wherever there was a gathering of people. The local Dairy Queen was his favorite spot.
I bought it with borrowed money, broke up with the girl, and had to sell it to pay her back. It was as soulless as that.
I..er…she, paid $7,000 for the TA which had a bit less than 56,000 miles on the clock at the time. Can you imagine? Have you seen 77/78 TA prices these days? I clutch my pearls at the thought of selling a low mileage, rust free, all original Trans Am for the same $7,000 that it was purchased for.
The car met an unfortunate demise after I signed the title over. I graduated high school with the kid I sold it too and he blew the trans, bent a pushrod, and slid it into a field. After that I lost track of him. The car.
If I just could have been a bit smarter, or kept the girlfriend, I could still have this car today.
My Twingo Mk1, at that time my newest, simplest and quietest car, developed some kind of wheel bearing whine, but with several other older cars in the fleet, I wasn’t in the mood for fixing problems on the Twingo, so let it go to a collector/hoarder with several of them and better mechanical knowledge of them. Did love it very much until that happened, and often miss it.
It’s still mine but the XJ in my avatar is going to go very soon. It’s just too old and I never drive it anymore. I don’t feel safe putting my kids in it and my hardcore wheeling days are behind me. Everything works on it right now and it just passed smog. Prime time to get top dollar. Plus it’s gonna need tires in the next year and that’s money I don’t want to spend.
It’s been a fantastic vehicle. I’ve owned it since 2002 and it’s taken me on some awesome adventures. Like your experience in POStal they all happened when I was single.
Nearly half my life I’ve owned it. Probably pounds of weed were smoked in there and quite a few lovely ladies got to know the back with the seats down.
It was the perfect vehicle for a young, single guy who loved the outdoors and didn’t have a care in the world. That’s just not me anymore.
(I still love the outdoors though)
In 2003 I lost my job. That resulted in a major garage sale. I had a new mortgage and ZERO savings, but a lot of cars. I sold my:
’79 Peugeot 504D sedan (this HURT, I will never, ever find another one as nice)
’80 Peugeot 504D wagon
’69 Saab Sonett V4
And worst of all – my ’02 Golf GLS TDI, my first new car (and I LOVED that car almost as much as the 504D). It was leased, and I took a *bath* getting rid of it (thank Dog for the First Bank of the Old Man), but that payment had to go. I owned the rest of them, and they got me a cushion of money to live on. That Golf taught me valuable lessons about the folly of leasing cars and being underwater on cars. NOTHING sucks more than making payments for a year (to pay the Old Man) on a car you no longer have.
I kept my ’90 Volvo GLE 16V and ’74 Spitfire. And then after four weeks I got my job back (long story). Valuable lessons learned by that as well. And I bought a couple more cars.
I can relate. Mainly because your Project POStal stories were what got me reading stories online. I never really heard of Jalopnik™ before a link to one of those articles came up on whatever news feed I was using back then.
And now here I am still reading your articles, only at your own site. (although I’m still too much of a cheap bastard {not THE Cheap Bastard} to be a paying member)
Keep up the awesome work.
Oh, the best car I had to let go?
Probably my ’71 Olds 98 Regency Custom Brougham. The car itself was a huge land yacht, but imagine the fun I could have had if I had kept it and swapped that Rocket 455 / Turbo 400 into some of my future cars like my ’79 Pontiac Grand Prix or my ’76 Olds Omega.
The year is 2006, I am 12 years old and my family drives from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to some farm town in Indiana to pick up a 95 Jeep Cherokee my dad had bought on Ebay. It’s rustier than the pictures showed, but we weren’t going to drive all that way and come home empty handed. My dad had a plan for this Jeep, he had been reading Peterson’s 4 Wheel & Off-Road and Four Wheeler for a few years and he knew he wanted to make his own rig. When we got home we took it for a spin around the block and that’s when the floor fell out, literally, the driver seat was now much lower than when we had left, I guess it’s time to get to work. Instead of buying a whole new floor pan for each side we decide to patch it up ourselves, and also do a few other things. We spent many nights and almost every free weekend working on it. Somewhere along the way my dad made me a deal, if I could put 1000 recordable working hours on it by the time I turned 16 it would be mine. At one point this jeep was 5 different colors, it had doors from a junkyard jeep (since the jeep came with power doors and we wanted manual ones), fenders from a different one, and a hood from yet another. Eventually we got it painted My favorite color when I was 15, orange. A month before I turned 16 I finally hit that 1000 hour mark, and I named it El Tigre. It was my daily until I headed off to college, then it sat at my parents and got used seldom while I was gone that first year. One time my sister drove it and didn’t roll the window all the way up and some water got in and well the floor started to rust and the bed liner we used as carpet started to peel. When I went back to college the next year I was given my mom’s old Taurus and so El Tigre sat some more. By the time I moved back home it had been sitting for 3 years and I told it I would come pack and fix it up. Fast forward 2 more years and I’m getting married, buying a house and then having a baby all within a year, eventually I’ll get the time to look it over and make a list of things to fix. 5 years after that I have 2 kids and my parents are sick of it in their backyard so I decide to see what it would take to move it into my own yard.
My dad and I go to look it over and let me tell you what, Cherokees and Rust must be the most toxic relationship ever. There are no more floors under the seats, and the body wobbles around just shutting the doors.
It is 2024 and I know that I cannot save it, so I find someone who can make use of the good parts that are left, and I cry myself to sleep that night.
My ownership history is filled with cars I regret letting go, but the one I regret getting rid of the most (and I’ve mentioned it here and other sites before) was my 1968 Volkswagen Fastback. I picked it up cheap from a friend with the idea of it being a father/son project for my dad and I. Nine years of ownership was enough time to go through the thing completely mechanically, with a new engine (1915) and gearbox, narrowed rear end, all new suspension bits. Everything.
Like most of my project cars, it came down to needing paint and me not having the time/interest/skill to do paint. When we decided to sell our house and move closer to where my wife worked, I lost my garage. Rather than let the car languish somewhere, I decided to send it off to a better home. So one day a guy came down from New Hampshire with a rollback, I loaded it – and all the spares I had amassed over the nine years – and sent it on its way.
Ultimately, we were in the apartment for a year before getting sick of renting and bought another house, this time with a bigger garage. Had I known…
For me, the one that got away was my 2000 BMW M5 (E39). It had a bunch of Dinan goodies, a great-sounding exhaust note, and drove brilliantly. I only paid $7k for it back in 2016, fixed a bunch of stuff, enjoyed the hell out of it, and then sold it at a decent profit to pay off a bunch of debt, figuring I could buy another one at some point. And then prices for them doubled over the next few years. I still want one, but they’re getting further and further out of reach for a nice one.