Why Do We Sell Our Cars?

From Road & Track

From the November 1996 issue of Road & Track.

My friend Steve Kimball, sometime Porsche owner and Master Noticer of Things, once told me he believed that at least a third of all the Porsches ever made were for sale at any given time. "Look at the Los Angeles Times classifieds," he said. "There will be a couple of columns of them, almost as many Fords for sale, yet the total number of Porsches in the world is a tiny fraction of the Fords we have on the road.

"Why do you think that is?" I asked, suspecting Steve might have a theory.

The answer, Steve explained, was fairly obvious. Most people–unless they are absolute marque fanatics–don't need a Porsche, any more than they need a really good bottle of wine. They buy it to reward themselves, as a treat or a diversion. And when they have a temporary need for a big chunk of money, to buy a new house or send a child to college, it is one of the things they can most easily do without.

Besides, they can always get another one. There is an ample supply of new and well-maintained used Porsches for sale, in every price range.

Steve admitted, however, that an equal number of Porsches are emphatically not for sale, because their owners have developed a strong emotional attachment to them. Our Senior Editor Joe Rusz, for instance, has a 1967 911 he bought new, beginning a lifetime involvement with the marque, and I doubt he will ever sell. It's his Porsche, period. As much a part of his life as a family photograph album.

Likewise, my flying buddy George Allez has a Dolphin Gray 1964 356C he bought new with a windfall inheritance and drove everywhere for 10 years, and he wouldn't even consider parting with it. The car is now rusty and inoperable, with 175,000 miles on the clock, resting under a car cover in an old barn. He half-plans to restore it one day, but if he doesn't, so be it. It ain't goin' nowhere, and that's that.

But buying and selling on the used market is not such an emotionally wrenching business for many people, so Steve is largely correct: There are a lot of Porsches for sale.

Airplanes too.

Just the other night, I came home from the bookstore with my two regular monthly purchases, Trade-a-Plane and Hemmings Motor News. Following a carefully prescribed pagan ritual, I made a batch of popcorn and sat back on the sofa to contemplate the huge number of buying opportunities life throws at us, even though we have no money. Or not nearly enough.

So many choices.... Aeroncas, Citabrias, Cubs, Great Lakes and Stearmans in Trade-a-Plane, then on to the usual susects in Hemmings: Vincent motorcycles, vintage Harleys, Lotus 23B race cars, vintage pickup and panel trucks, Cadillacs, Cobras, Lincolns, Minis, Morgans, Mustangs, MGs, Land Rovers, Elans, 356 Porsches, Triumphs, etc., etc.

Later in the evening, when I was half-blind from small print and green around the gills from too much Jolly Time white, I folded both these issues and hefted them in my hand.

Two or three pounds of printed material containing at least a thousand highly desirable cars and airplanes on the market for just this month alone.

Maybe more.

A thousand people, waiting around the telephone, hoping for a quick infusion of cash in trade for a car or airplane they had (presumably) once brought home amid fanfare, at last stabilized some personal dreams.

What had gone wrong? Why do we sell cars we once coveted? Is it disappointment in the car itself, or just a general fickleness? Or both?

Theoretically, this is a question I should be able to answer myself, because I've owned a lot of different cars, and I hardly ever hang on to anything for more than a couple of years. My own excuses usually involve finances and storage space, coupled with a desire to enjoy all kinds of interesting cars in this short lifetime.

Racing, too, is part of the problem; I've cleaned house several times in order to buy a better formula car for the upcoming season. The racing disease alone is the dark force behind many car sales–as well as house sales, foreclosures, neglected careers, unweeded gardens, forced child labor and divorce. Racing makes heroin addiction look like a vague longing for something salty.

But I think many of these transactions–mine and those countless thousands who parade through Hemmings–might come under the heading of Restlessness.

There was a time when I didn't quite understand this.

Years ago, for instance, I bought a brand-new motorcycle, a Norton 850 Commando, and my plan was to keep it forever. It was hard to imagine that motorcycles would ever get more beautiful or satisfying to ride, so I bought the big hardcover official shop manual (for about $50) and lots of spare parts. The company was just then out of business and I wanted to make sure I could keep the bike running until I got too old to ride.

Unfortunately, the Norton was one of those Monday-morning assembly line specials. Everything went wrong. Even with careful break-in and gentle riding, the clutch and valve guides failed at only 3000 miles, oil leaks developed and the side-stand snapped off causing the bike to fall over. Within two years, the Norton was gone. And, at the time, I happy to see it go. Free at last.

The problem here was that I set myself up for a fall. I had foolishly subscribed to what might be called (by a college sophomore who has an entire bluebook to fill) a Utopian version of ownership.

This is the idea that all of our actions should rightly be aimed at achieving a final, perfect goal. In other words, we may own and enjoy a transitory series of minor-league motorbikes, but we are always headed toward that ultimate, ideal purchase that will make us happy forever: a black and gold Norton Commando.

Or, to put an automotive spin on it, we may buy and repair our way through a succession of small, inexpensive sports cars, but we know all along that true happiness and bliss can be reached only with a purchase of, say, a 427 Cobra.

And when that Cobra finally arrives, we will feel just like God on the seventh day; our work will be done and we can rest. Happy ever after.

History has shown, however, that humans are not very good at resting. The seventh day passes and Monday arrives again. As soon as we get this, we want that. Perfection is just out of reach.

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in his fine book, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, has pointed out that a long series of defunct collective societies of the 19th century (culminating in modern Communism) failed to recognize this. They proved Utopia, time and again, to be an imaginary state that exists forever in the future. Hope as we might, the day never actually arrives when people walk out their front doors, look around and say, "There, now. Everything is perfect. We live in paradise."

Likewise, very few of us ever reach a point where we walk into the garage, turn on the light and say, "There, I have exactly the car (or cars) I want. I will never again scan the classifieds or lust after something new and different."

There are no Utopian societies-never have been. There are only states of cooperation and compromise and flux , some more pleasant than others. As Berlin says, this century's worst nightmares have been created by the inflexible, humorless search for the perfect state.

In other words we are all a bunch of malcontents and screw-ups who can't be trusted to pour schnapps out of a jackboot, which is why guys like Hitler and Stalin are always mad as hops. But back to cars. It's possible that many of those ads in Hemmings do, in the end, represent someone's disappointed search for perfection, contentment and timeless happiness. Utopia unrealized.

But I'm also willing to entertain the notion that a lot of those sellers are still experimenting, trying out and rejecting cars in the dogged search for exactly the right one. And it maybe that some enjoy the hunt so much that they sidestep the obvious keepers on purpose, lest they score and end the game.

Certainly true in my case. I don't know what I'd do, for instance, if I walked into my garage tomorrow, turned on the light and discovered a nice 427 Cobra sitting there.

I guess I'd lose my excuse for reading the classifies every month. Or dragging home and restoring all those worn-out hulks and marginal classics on my long and torturous path into a more ideal future. Perhaps the cars we buy and then sell are nothing but way stations on the road to Utopia. Which, despite what the experts tell us, may actually exist.

I'm inclined to think it does. Last week I drove a 427 Cobra for the first time.