How my four-car dream car collection has become a bit of a nightmare
How do car collectors manage? Porter’s struggling to cope with just four vehicles
One of the great clichés of car writing is ‘all the car you’ll ever need’, the answer to which is usually a Golf GTI. This is probably right, at least until you need to move a small wardrobe and it becomes a Range Rover, though this argument collapses like malfunctioning air suspension when you’re invited to a trackday at Cadwell Park. In truth, there’s no one car that can do everything, which is why, as a car person, you might be tempted to own more than one car. The question is, how many cars do you need? Or, to put it another way, how many cars is too many cars?
If you’re my friend and Smith and Sniff podcasting partner, Jonny Smith, the answer is yet to be found but has easily crested double digits, may well start with a 2 or even a 3, and includes a 1960s Chevy Impala that he’s owned for 20 years and never once driven on account of an ongoing restoration that may redefine science’s understanding of infinity. Let’s also discount my mate John who, last I asked, was unable to remember how many often-rotten cars he owns, though his best guess ended, worryingly, with ‘and a half’. Perhaps our inspiration here should be evo co‑founder Harry Metcalfe and his ever-changing platter of delights, which always seems to be a source of relaxed joy. And this puzzles me.
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At risk of showing off, I’ve got four cars, which seems like a manageable number, even if it’s twice the number of people in our house who can drive. The roster is as follows: for day-to-day duties such as hauling around two fairly small children and one fairly huge dog there’s a Tesla Model Y, which is an excellent family wagon, though it’s also the only car I’ve owned which I’d describe as ‘problematic’ and mean it in the ideological sense. Then there’s a VW e‑Up, a terrific urban zipabout from what feels like the tail end of peak VW before they started making their cars more annoying. Next, an end-of-line old-school Land Rover Defender, bought new in 2015 because I’ve always liked old Defenders even though I know they’re crap. Finally, a new arrival that is bright red, mid-engined and styled by Pininfarina. That’s right, a 1991 Honda Beat. Because who can resist a 656cc triple with individual throttle bodies that revs past 8500rpm? Not me, which is why I don’t mind that behind the wheel I’m one tiny fez away from looking like a 1940s circus bear.
I’m quite pleased with this fleet because, on paper at least, it seems to cover a lot of bases and there’s not a lot of overlap between. In practice, however, I’ve created a tangled web of personal admin that goes beyond the regular need to sort tax and insurance and, oh bollocks, the MOT is due tomorrow too.
I’ve sometimes heard people with loads of cars say the one they take is the one that works. For me, the car I take is the one that’s not blocked in. I moved house three years ago and, for the first time in my adult life, I had a driveway. Deep joy. But my drive is not the vast gravel lake of my dreams. A driveway is a driveway, I grant you, but this one is steep and thin and can accommodate three cars at a push, parked line astern. So the car I take is the one I can get out. Unless I need to drive to Aberdeen and the machine closest to the street is the 64-horsepower kei car. Then I have to do The Shuffle, which involves acting like one of those waistcoated valets at an American restaurant, running up and down the street to the jangle of keys, as I re-arrange cars like a deck of cards. If you want First World problems, I got ’em.
The Land Rover sits outside this equation because it lives in a storage facility hours from my house and I haven’t driven it for three years. Yes, another part of my personal idiocy: I own a car that I don’t use. And this brings us to another part of the multi-car equation: finding places to put everything and trying to make sure those places aren’t miles away. It’s probably okay if you have to drive one car some distance to fetch another car, but if that distance is 130 miles, and for me it is, you’re going to end up with a car you never use, and that’s just stupid.
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here, but it’s probably my failure to own a modern and spacious barn right next to my house. You never see Harry presenting a video from his big garage in which he spends 45 minutes trying to set up nine trickle-chargers and another hour tapping in 16-digit reference numbers from his car tax reminder letters before sighing as he realises the model he’d like to show you is blocked in by two others. And he’s got loads of cars. Here’s me with only four and constantly getting in a tangle, except with the one I never drive because I’ve put it out of reach. If you’re a car person, having more cars than you need can be a delight and a privilege. But sometimes it would be easier just to buy one Golf GTI.
This story was first featured in evo issue 334.
