I bought the 1971 VW Type 3 Squareback off Facebook Marketplace. I wanted a Porsche-ish car that I could take to cars & coffee events during the winter, while the Speedster replica was in the dining room. The VW had been abandoned in Vegas about 20 years ago with a bum engine, and the buyer put in a Porsche 914 engine and transmission.
The VW was offered for sale in LA, so I flew over to take a look, and I was sold as soon as I saw the paint job. It’s so much better than it looks in pictures.
It had tons of personality and I loved it, but shortly after buying it, I got the opportunity to grab a Porsche 356 coupe that had sat for decades in a California garage. We did the mechanical work to bring that one back to life, and now that it’s running, I don’t really need two air-cooled coupes. Anytime that I would drive the VW, I’d rather drive the 356, so I put the VW up for sale on a few online sites.
I never got any serious interest, so I offered it on BringATrailer with no reserve. That auction finishes up tomorrow – whatever it sells for, it sells for, and I’m comfortable with that. The collectible car market is down right now, but if I put it in storage and wait for the market to come back up, I’ll be racking up storage and insurance costs the whole time, and cars don’t like to sit without being driven.
The Ferrari was a different story. I bought it on BringATrailer sight unseen, despite spending a lot more money on that than I spent on the VW. (Dumb, dumb, dumb.) I’d never actually driven a Ferrari 328 before, but I’d always wanted one, and I adored the color combo of that one.
The moment I sat in the driver’s seat, I knew I’d made a bad decision: I simply don’t fit in the car, not even close. I’m 6’3″, and my head was literally tilted to the side in order to fit under the top. I was only comfortable with the top off. To make matters worse, if you want to bring the top along in a 328, it goes behind the driver & passenger seats – forcing the seats to be pulled forward, which meant I again didn’t have enough room. I was only comfortable with the top off, and the top left at home in the garage! That meant I couldn’t use the car on long road trips – not to mention that the only luggage space was in the back of the car, behind the engine, and it got really hot.
I tried having a well-known Ferrari mechanic lower the seats, but the more he looked at it, the more problems he found with the car, and I ended up investing a ton of money in repairs just to get the car to the point where I could sell it.
What I learned from these cars
Owning these two cars taught me something valuable: I need to think of my car collection as a series of roles rather than a series of cars. The roles are:
- Vintage car for the spring/fall – when the nights are 60s, and days are 80s. You want a convertible here. That’s my Speedster replica, which I adore, and it’s only useful with the top off. It has a top, but the car is too low-slung for me to be in it with the top up. If I didn’t have the Speedster, I’d want a Porsche 550 Spyder replica or a BMW Z3.
- Vintage car for the winter – Vegas winters are mild, averaging the 40s at night and 50s-60s during the day, but you still want a car with a roof. That’s my 356 SC. If I didn’t have that, I’d get a Land Rover Series 88.
- Modern road trip car – with safety features, CarPlay, AC, lots of luggage space. That’s the Defender, which we wrapped in black camo. If I didn’t have that, I’d get a slightly-used Chevy Tahoe.
I’m down to just 3 cars roles. I’ve been selling everything that overlapped in the same role. I can’t have 2 cars for the same role when I’ve only got a 3-car garage, plus one dining room space.
The only time when I’ll allow myself to buy another car for the same role is when I’m considering upgrading, like when I upgraded from the VW Type 3 to the 356 SC. I’ll need time to mechanically sort out the new one – the 356 took several months – so it’s okay to have overlap in the garage temporarily.
I’ve considered consolidating the vintage car roles down to 1: a convertible that I can actually fit in with the top up, like perhaps a 1960s-70s Mercedes W113 convertible, an R107, or an old VW Rabbit convertible. However, I just totally adore the Speedster replica, and the only way I’d sell it is to get a replica done exactly my way from the factory, or if I hit the lotto, buy a genuine Speedster. (I’m loving the 356 SC too, but not to the extreme level that I love Sabine.)
Math-savvy readers will note that I’m down to 3 cars, but I have 4 parking spots, which means I could get another car. However, I gotta be careful not to buy another car – I want another role. Some of the roles I’ve considered:
- Street-legal race car – I’ve always loved the Porsche 917, and while the originals sell for over ten million dollars, RCR makes a pretty convincing replica. At some point, I’m going to fly out there, try to shoehorn myself in the cockpit, and probably make the decision that I should have made when I looked at 328s: I’m probably going to skip it altogether. I gotta try, though.
- 4-seat car to take people to dinner – we have a lot of visitors over and go out with local friends. It’d be fun to have something like an old Lincoln Continental sedan. (I had the 83 Caddy but I sold that because the HT4100 engine couldn’t survive stop-and-go traffic in the Vegas summers.)
- Modern luxury car – Yves has always wanted a Rolls-Royce Dawn, but we’re both worried about the depreciation and maintenance costs on those. I think they’re going to be expensive cars to own for the next decade. I’ve always loved the look of the BMW Z8, but they held their values way, way too well, so they’re expensive cars to buy (although not to own.)