HOW MANY CLASSICS CAN YOU REALISTICALLY OWN?

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We’ve all read about guys who have several hundred classic cars in their collection.

Most of us envy them because they clearly have cornered the market on every car that ever made an impression on them at every phase of their life.

The most obvious issue is the mechanical side. For example, you can buy a mint 2nd Gen Corvette from a museum and think you won the lottery—but the reality is obvious. If the Vette sat for 30 or 40 years, you just bought a major project.

The outside may look pristine, but there are hundreds of problems lurking under the skin if that car hibernated for decades. It doesn’t matter if the room was climate-controlled—that just slows down the obvious decline. Things leak, seals deteriorate, fluids go bad, rubber gets hard, and metal parts weld themselves together—those nasty things just happen slower in a warm garage.

That’s also what happens if you own a fleet of classics and don’t have a mechanic on constant retainer who really knows how to work on old iron.  It’s possible that a skilled owner could look after 20-25 cars, but he’ll be chasing a rabbit down an endless greyhound racetrack.

If you’re a major hoarder like Jay Leno, you’re going to need an army of guys to keep your classics from imploding because of neglect. Dig into any car in a major collection and you’re going to get a large list of things to do—whether you baby them or not.

Most car guys will never own hundreds of classics, but some are definitely into multiple numbers. The question is simple. What is a reasonable number for classic car ownership?

Let’s use Leno as an example. He probably drives his fleet of old iron, but if he only drives  them once a year the question is obvious. What’s the point?

One more thing—it’s obvious Leno likes to be the captain of his ships, so very few other guys will drive his old classics…unless they’re his auto techs on a test run.

What about smaller numbers in a fleet?

If a guy has 30 cars in his collection and he lives in a winter climate that means he can drive a different car every day of any given month for about 7 months. That’s assuming his wife wants to go to the grocery store in a 62-year-old Ford. 

If his fleet is 15 cars deep, then he can drive them twice a month. That’s enough to get them on the road 14 times over the course of a spring, summer and fall. That may be enough to keep them loose if every run is at least 40 miles—but you’ll want to run the fuel level down because today’s fuel is more like Jack Daniels than real gasoline. It attacks carburetors like hyenas attack a gazelle—with equally gruesome results.

So what is the perfect number for an old car fleet?

I’m going to say seven because with seven classic cars or trucks you can do most of the maintenance yourself and you can put some realistic miles on them.

You’ll connect with each vehicle for different reasons, and you’ll keep them out of a divorce settlement because you can always give up your house to keep them.

By: Jerry Sutherland

Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post,  Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.

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