Cars/bikes that hindsight tells us we should have kept!

[zxr250cc]

Hi all,

Reading another thread made me think of this topic.

I will offer a short list as I have usually kept cars for long periods of time but I do have some that I parted with that I should have kept: 1972 Honda Z-600 Coupe I bought in St. Louis for $1,510 new off the lot and used for a decade, 1966 Plymouth Barracuda that was $200 while in college and needed an engine rebuild, 1956 MGA with Paxton supercharger, 1972 Rickman 125 MX, 1974 CZ 250 Enduro and 1989 Kawasaki ZXR 250 4 cylinder Japan model sport bike I used when in Tokyo, the tachometer went to 19,000 rpm and the red line was 16,500 IIRC and my final regret would be the 1983 Triumph TSS 750cc 8 valve I bought in 1984 and sold in 2011.

Others?

Cheers

[john keefe]

1994 SVT Lightning; 5.8L, probably the best looking truck body I've ever seen (IMHO), great handling. 1994 Land Rover County LWB, perfect except for the damn airbag suspension; ours was in great shape when sold... wanted another so recently JOC looked it up to see what they were going for, and "rebuilt/refurbished" ones were going for $125K+. "Project" ones going for $17K+

04 Subaru WRX STI; my wife's "commuter" car, only negative was the rock hard seats, which were literally a PITA and lumber. We debated replacing the seats with Recaro's, but she opted for a Land Rover LR2 for the rear seats for the grandkids. That LR2 was also a very good, trouble-free car (one of the years Ford took over at LR), which she still laments selling.

1972 Toyota Hilux pickup. Bought it used, put on almost 300K miles driving all over US & Canada for ski races. Only thing which ever went wrong was a disintegrated timing chain slipper @ 290K miles. Got the parts at the local Toyota dealer, BS'd some with parts manager and owner. Sold it a week before that dealer called me and asked if I wanted to be in one of those Toyota commercials where owners with 300-400K+ mileage cars jump up in front of their cars and shout "Oh what a feeling," and I might even get a new truck. Go figure.

One that got away? 1956 TBird. Was a kid in early 70's, working for local MBnz shop, and had to drive a very sweet, senior lady home after she brought her 300SE in for service. On the ride, I asked her how she liked her car, and she was just OK with it. Kinda' surprised me because that was luxury and performance back then, so I asked what she didn't like about it. Nothing, except she had to choose between that car and her husband's "baby" after he passed away a couple months before, but now she was worried she made the wrong decision. I asked her what the other car was, and it was a 1956 TBird he only drove to shows... many trophies, records, etc., etc.. So I said something like, "Well the MBnz is a great car, and at least you probably got very good $$$ for a car like that," (probably worth about $35K back then) and she said, "No," she sold it just that morning to some guy her husband knew from the shows who offered to "take it off her hands" for $650.00. :shock.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that "friend" was a scumbag crook who took advantage of her while she was vulnerable. Heck, if she had told me on the ride that she was only considering that offer, and just wanted a painful reminder of her husband gone, I would have offered her 3-4 times that much and driven her straight over to my Dad to beg-borrow the money! The buyer was also a customer with the shop, and when I told the owner what happened, he was so pissed off that he banned him from the shop, and called every other local Euro shop owner he knew and told them about it.

[andyofcolumbusmerkur]

I should have kept every car! They would be worth millions nowadays.

[john keefe]

I should have kept every car! They would be worth millions nowadays.

Wow, that's a rare, eclectic collection! Don't know much about bikes, but I imagine that '66 Barracuda will be worth big $$$ in a couple years. After Barrett-Jackson has gone through all the old Chevies, GTO's, Vettes, Mustangs, Shelby's, and Camaros in recent years, the Dodge/Plymouth muscle cars should be next in line to get a major bump in collectors' value. Not that many of them around anymore, though.

Grandad used to always trade in for the next "Salesman's Buick," and one day at 75 years old, still making the rounds to clients for Bethlehem Steel, traded in his last Buick Skylark for a slightly used, black 440 Charger R/T (automatic). Awesome car, and Bullitt certainly didn't hurt the popularity. Clients and shop guys loved it and let him know how cool it/he was! Can still see him smiling about it the first time they came over. I think my Grandma was bewildered how/why it happened. He never drove it hard, just smooth riding from meeting to meeting. Wish we had been able to keep that one. That would be worth something now.

[eaton53]

1994 Cadillac Seville SLS.
Car was working perfectly but the wife got scared because it was an expensive car that was 12 years old.
So she decided she wanted a new car. Bad idea!!
It wasn't nearly as good as the car she had. It was just newer.

[john keefe]

It wasn't nearly as good as the car she had. It was just newer.

Yeah, lots of "new and improved" stuff are often just "new label, packaging and marketing." Or, unproven technical complexity and more things to go wrong. When I bought my last F-150, I just wanted a reliable work truck with a long bed. They really pushed me to go with the new Ecoboost V6, but I thought it would take another 2 years to work all the bugs out. So I stuck with the 5.0L, and its the best engine I've ever had in a vehicle. Zero issues, plenty of power and torque, very good mpg for a truck.

The N/A V6 is great in the Flex, and I'm sure the EB V6 is now pretty reliable, but it did take a couple years to work out flaws across a couple model lines. If I could afford it, though, I'd love a Raptor with the twin turbo EBV6. Talked to my service tech at Ford, and he said the ONLY issue they've had with the Raptor is the rear diff, which is electronically controlled and built to constantly adjust for off-road and pounding... but most people drive them only around town, and never push it the way it was designed to be.

[eaton53]

It wasn't nearly as good as the car she had. It was just newer.

Yeah, lots of "new and improved" stuff are often just "new label, packaging and marketing.

"

The new one did what it was supposed to do, it just wasn't nearly as nice of a car.
That's how it goes when you go from a car that was $45K in 1996 to one that was $20K in 2006.

What really sucked was I only paid $11K for the Cadillac with 45K miles... and it was really clean, too.
The one owner was the wife of a well known rich guy, so it got pampered.
I wanted to keep it and just fix anything that happened. Oh well...

[Matt01]

My first car..
a 1984 Mercury Cougar v6 auto. i liked it,it was horribly slow (lost in a race to a SX2.0) but it was cool and it had character. I was young and when the head gasket blew, I thought that it would be impossibly expensive to fix, and I couldnt do it myself back then. I sold it to a guy who promised he'd do a project with it, but he later scrapped it.
It was clean, if I still had it today, it would definitely be fast, really fast.

I also miss my old Volvo 850 AWD. this model was never sold in the US, and only a few hundred were sold in Canada, it had problems, and I was broke. It got sold and I never knew what happened to it.

[toffeepeanuts]

The first car I bought (half) with my own money was an '89 LX Mustang. 5.0 5 speed in gray. Was a nice little thing. I enjoyed it for a couple years before I sold it to my friend because I thought I wanted a motorcycle instead. I sold it for $900 which was.... 5x less than it was actually worth.

Said friend proceeded to completely total it within a month. He had roasted the rear tires doing burnouts, and potentially related, was driving it in the winter when he binned it into a guardrail. At the very least it sorta lives on because he bought another shell and swapped basically every last piece over.