Opinion: Why you shouldn't keep your first car

Get chatting to any car enthusiast about the best models that have been through their garage over the years and I would bet hard cash that, at the first pause in the conversation, their gaze will wander to a 1000-mile doe-eyed stare accompanied by the declaration “I should have kept that car”.

It’s a romantic, idealist notion that you’ve likely considered yourself for at least one of your previous cars, but while it might seem like a great plan on a simplistic level, allow me to put your mind at ease – keeping any of the cars you used to own is almost always a terrible idea. A common misconception is that your old banger would now be worth its weight in gold and, if you’d kept hold of it, an early retirement would be on the cards. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Unless you regularly washed your HK Monaro with brick acid it’s almost certain that the classic would be worth more than you let it go for, but value is extremely relative.

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For a start, inflation means a sale price is always going to look less impressive by today’s figures but even the actual value increase after compensation is not pure profit in your pocket. Anyone who has ever owned and run a car knows they are about as expensive as a pokie addiction and the cost of ownership doesn’t simply cease just because it’s your weekender.

It’ll still need registering and insuring, and every time you yank the cover off it and try to go for a drive it will ask for a new battery, or head gasket, or simply won’t run at all. And if you don’t have the space at home, where are you going to keep it and at what cost?

All of these expenses eat into the perceived value increase and that nest egg you thought you were sitting on. Let’s take a hyperbolic example to really understand the problem. Yes, the Ferrari 250 GTO is not a bad investment if you have ever been faced with the opportunity to own an example of the 1960’s icon.

While its as-new price of $23,000 might seem like a steal, it translates to about $310,000 in today’s money. However, the same car would be worth upwards of $63m so it’s still not a bad investment right? But bear in mind you would have needed to keep that car for 60 years and I’m not sure I know many people who had $300k in 1962 and are still alive to reap the reward today.

You might be pining over your long-lost car purely for nostalgic reasons and, even though it might not be worth much these days, the opportunity to occasionally leap behind the wheel and relive your youth is why you should never have parted ways. Here too, you will be bitterly disappointed.

You may remember your XF Falcon being a viciously fast and surgically precise road rocket, but if you were ever reunited with it today it would be a withered old hag. It was never great, yet you were also spoilt by all the better cars you have owned since.

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I know all of this because I did the exact opposite of everything I have advised above and I still own the BMW I bought 12 years ago. In the time it has been registered to me the value has steadily plummeted and probably only just recovered in recent years to what I paid for it in 2009. Over that time I have haemorrhaged approximately twice that sum in ownership with mods and maintenance. By modern car standards it is slow, unsafe, small, inefficient, noisy and there is absolutely no sane reason I should have kept it. And yet I did and I wouldn’t have changed a thing... maybe one thing actually.

While owning an old car might make almost zero economic sense, it makes perfect emotional sense and every time I turn its key, The Rude (as it’s affectionately known) reminds me of all the reasons I love cars and driving. It sounds great, to my eyes it’s beautiful, it’s a joy to tinker with and there’s only one like it.

So what would I do differently? Instead of moving my poor car around to all its various homes, I should have bought a small workshop or warehouse in 2009 and, in the ensuing years, its little home would have appreciated far faster than any marque or model could have matched. Smart cars cost cash, but the smart money is in property. To be continued...