Car, Car and more Car.. How many is Enuff? How many in your life time?

1989 Daihatsu Charade - Sold 1992
1992 Honda Civic EX - Sold 1995
1995 Volvo 850 - Sold 1997
Expat assignment 1997 to 1999 (Personal driver had an Audi)
2000 BMW 328i - Sold 2009
2004 Chrysler Crossfire - Sold 2016
2009 BMW 540i - Sold 2012
2011 Subaru Legacy 2.5i - Totaled (t-boned) 2012
2012 Subaru Outback 3.6 Limited - Sold 2015
2015 Subaru Outback 3.6 Limited - Sold 2019
2019 Lexus 350 ES - Sold 2019 - Biggest disappointment, owned new and sold in 12 months. Won't touch another Lexus again.
2020 Subaru Ascent Limited

Looking at replacing the Subaru Ascent in 2026 or 2027 with either another Subaru Ascent, a BMW X7 or possibly X5 (X5 if we no longer make those long road trips). We are also toying with having a second fun car like a Bentley or a Maserati. We have been doing with one car since 2020. Husband used to have a BMW 325 when we first got together. I also got an old 1999 Honda Prelude for my son when he first got his driver license back in early 2000s and sold it when he went off the university. I also bought a new 2012 Ford Fusion Titanium for my son which he still drives today. I have been trying to get him to buy a newer car but have met with resistance. His car has 40K miles on it.

One thing to note is that I only got my driver license in my mid twenties, and I bought my first car then.

Tom52 said:

Probably more than anyone else posting so far except Car-Guy. I know there are a few more that will come to me later.

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So I spent a little time trying to recall all the vehicles I've owned and added them up as daily drivers (me and the family) and collectables.

Daily Drivers = 36 Cars and Trucks (+7 Motorcycles)
Collectables = Unknown # but decades in the hobby and my best guess is 68 to 70. Add another 3 if you want to count rolling donor cars. I know there were a few years about the time I retired that it seemed like I was buying/selling/trading collectables like some people would buy and sell "baseball cards." Crazy but fun.

197? Toyota Corona Wagon, used
1985 Toyota MR2
1992 Mazda Miata
2004 Mazda MX5 (Miata!)

92 Miata was my daily driver through 2017 and still running strong with 220K before selling to simplify life. Garage queen 04 now has 88K, and factory turbo keeps it fun!

20 so far, but slowing down

67 Impala
74 Nova
77 Grand Prix
79 Buick Regal
77 Trans Am (DW)
Chrysler Laser
Toyota Celica
82 Chevy S10
86 Toyota truck
90 Mercedes 190
95 Grand Cherokee
98 Grand Cherokee
2000 Grand Cherokee
2001 Acura
2001 Corvette
2003 Wrangler
2009 F-150
2012 Acura (current)
2017 F-150. (current)
2021 Wrangler (current)

OH Lord... I would hate to even try and put a list together. I know the list would include a couple dozen motorcycles... At one point in time, we had 6 vehicles and 2 motorcycles tagged and on the road.
Had a collection of 7 Toyotas that a guy came for parts, and made an offer on the whole lot...

Tom52 said:

Probably more than anyone else posting so far except Car-Guy. I know there are a few more that will come to me later.

1963 Impala SS

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Tom, what engine did your '63 Impala SS have in it? My Dad's second car was a '63 Impala SS Sport Coupe (hardtop). It had a 409, 4-speed. He said it had the optional 425 hp setup. He bought it used, for around $2,000, but then sold it when he got drafted.

Just to be sarcastic, he put 6-cyl badges on the fender, but I imagine they weren't fooling anybody!

A bunch over my lifetime (in order of purchase):

1970 Maverick - first car, I still miss it
1976 Chevy Vega
1979 Mercury Capri - sister of that era Mustang
1985 VW Golf
1989 Accord Coupe
1990 Isuzu Trooper - great off-road, but crappy quality
1993 Nissan Maxima - the "4DSC"
1984 Porsche 944 - fun to drive but a maintenance/repair nightmare
1970 Mustang Mach 1 - grabber green, 351C, 4-speed, a beast
1999 Ford Expedition
1993 BMW 325i
2000 BMW Z3
2005 BMW 330i - by far the best vehicle I've ever owned. Wonderful inline 6, 6 speed, sport package. Had 190K on it without a single repair when a water truck t-boned me. I'd still own it if that hadn't happened.
2008 Nissan Xterra
2014 Audi A4 - changed to Audi since BMW stopped being a drivers car and became a luxury car
2023 Porsche Macan - consolidated to one vehicle. it has lived up to the billing. A joy to drive.

Last 4 bought new and I doubt I'll by used again. Being able to maintain from new is important to me now.

70 Camaro RS
73 Monte Carlo
72 Vega
65 Corvair Convertible
73 Torino
67 Camaro
86 Chevette
82 Subaru
78 Buick Regal
84 VW Gti
85 Camaro
86 Pontiac 6000
86 Mazda pickup
84 Ford diesel pickup
86 Blazer
89 Plymouth Laser
88 Chrysler Conquest
93 GMC Typhoon
93 Plymouth Voyager
97 Ford Expedition
01 Ford Expedition
06 BMW X5
97 Mustang Cobra
03 Infinity FX 35
07 Infinity M40
14 Jeep Cherokee
13 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT

Currently in the stable
05 BMW Z4
03 Dodger Viper SRT
21 Jeep Wrangler Sahara
18 VW GTI
18 Jeep Trackhawk
23 Camaro ZL1 convertible

We aren't very brand loyal!

Andre1969 said:

Tom, what engine did your '63 Impala SS have in it? My Dad's second car was a '63 Impala SS Sport Coupe (hardtop). It had a 409, 4-speed. He said it had the optional 425 hp setup. He bought it used, for around $2,000, but then sold it when he got drafted.

Just to be sarcastic, he put 6-cyl badges on the fender, but I imagine they weren't fooling anybody!

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That was a real powerhouse for the 5 year run of that particular engine. (1961 to 1965, IIRC) It did have a tendency to self destruct at top RPM's but some have survived and are still out there today.

Andre1969 said:

1967 Chrysler Newport hardtop coupe. Belonged to a friend's grandmother. When she died, the family just wanted it gone so they could sell the house, so they gave it to me. It was pretty beat up though, and I got rid of it when the brakes went out.

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Interesting. My 1966 Newport Custom was acquired from my uncle's estate for $250 in 1978(?). One winter night I was driving home from a movie and the brakes went out. Applying the brakes and the pedal went all the way to the floor with zero resistance. Pretty scary.

I happened to be going down a hill on a frontage road (service road to those living east and down south) and was able to safely come to rest as the road curved around and leveled out. Pinhole leak in the brake line. Those cars had single reservoir master cylinders. I fixed it and kept driving it. I don't remember why or how I eventually got rid of it.

Mine until 2002 when wife's cars arrived.

78 Ford Fiesta
80 Ford Fiesta
78 Ford Fiesta
78 Saab 99 Turbo
88 Subaru Justy RS 4wd (new)
86 Ford Tempo coupe
92 Ford Ranger 4wd (new)
93 Nissan 240sx (new)
96 Saab 900 SE convertible
2002 Mercedes C280 Kompressor (new)
2005 Subaru Legacy GT wagon (new)
2007 Saab 9-5 (new)
2008 Porsche Cayman (new)
2009 Toyota Tacoma 4wd (new)
2010 Volkswagen Jetta (new)
2012 Jeep Wrangler sport 2dr (new/still have)
2013 BMW 328i xdrive (new)
2014 Porsche Cayman S (new)
2016 BMW X1 xdrive (new)
2017 BMW 428 gran coupe xdrive (new)
2014 Porsche Boxster (still have)
2019 BMW 430i gran coupe xdrive (new/still have)
2023 Porsche 718 Cayman S (new/still have)

We are debating replacing the bmw and wrangler and getting down to 3 cars instead of 4. She doesn't drive the porsches and they take the garage spaces. No kids and cars are my hobby.

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit. Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects? How many shoes you've had, movies you've watched?? Different strokes I guess and here I am commenting/contributing. I have had a few interesting vehicles. 63 Corvair convertible, 63 Chrysler Newport with pushbutton tranny, First year 300C with the Hemi, and currently an 83 CJ8 Scrambler. But overall, I absolutely don't care about the past material possessions. What I will not do is #1 have a spread sheet with all the vehicles I've owned and #2 will not sit here and think about it at all. I don't even track my former residences let alone vehicles. Oh well. Thought about having a TP roll tracker after COVID but I'm not that much of a prepper. Have a great day everyone.

As far as I can recall, 15 cars, the majority bought new.
Worst one by far: 1972 Fiat 128. Bought because of a wonderful, glowing review in Consumer Reports.
Best one: Kind of a tie between the 2018 Volvo XC60 T8 (PHEV) I just sold to make room for a 2024 Toyota RAV4 Prime (PHEV).
The longest I've ever kept a car was a little over 6 years, and the shortest was about five months.

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit.

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If it bothers you that much you might be right.

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit. Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects? How many shoes you've had, movies you've watched?? Different strokes I guess and here I am commenting/contributing. I have had a few interesting vehicles. 63 Corvair convertible, 63 Chrysler Newport with pushbutton tranny, First year 300C with the Hemi, and currently an 83 CJ8 Scrambler. But overall, I absolutely don't care about the past material possessions. What I will not do is #1 have a spread sheet with all the vehicles I've owned and #2 will not sit here and think about it at all. I don't even track my former residences let alone vehicles. Oh well. Thought about having a TP roll tracker after COVID but I'm not that much of a prepper. Have a great day everyone.

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Actually you got it completely wrong. I don't have a spreadsheet for cars that I have owned. They are simply recalled from my memory. I never think about how many cars or what cars that I have owned until I saw this thread. Cars are bigger ticket items and not something that you buy everyday, like shoes and movies. I have hundreds of pairs of very new and some unworn shoes in my cabinet and I aint going to count them or worry about how much I have spent on them.

If it bothers you, you should stop being on social media sites. People talk about the most mundane stuff.

RetiredHappy said:

I have hundreds of pairs of very new and some unworn shoes in my cabinet

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Imelda, is that you?

I didn't know there were so many Hoovies here. Impressive to spend that much on cars and be able to FIRE. I'd still be w*rking. I've spent more on computers than I have on cars.

braumeister said:

Imelda, is that you?

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Well, I hate to say it, but I am also that way with clothes. I have a ton of clothes, some brand new with labels, and some may never be worn before I die. I am an online shopaholic. Get the computer devices off my hands!

I put my list together when my dad started trying to remember every car he personally owned.

At some point, we all realize we probably changed cars more than necessary. I am impressed by people who have had under 5 over a long period of time.

But, we did go from single to 1 kid, then 2 kids, then 3 kids. Then you need room for a friend or 2 or cousin or 2. Then we decided to buy a camper.

Some of the cars were meant to be short term. Others just didn't work out or got too many miles on them.

Hopefully my list slows down a lot here. I am keeping my current car (if possible) for 7 more years. At least that is my plan.

Also, there have been other car threads like this, so having the information makes it easier to answer next time. 19 cars and counting. Argh.

G POP said:

Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects?

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At some level, yes we have tracked almost every dime we’ve ever spent. DW is a bookkeeper and I’m an accountant. We have records going back to when we got married. I don’t recall when we got Quicken, but our records since that time are very good and they’re electronic. So, no, we don’t have a spreadsheet listing all our cars, but it’s an easy sort in Quicken. Unfortunately, toilet paper is probably under groceries given that we buy it at Krogers, so we wouldn’t be able to parse that out. But anything greater than $1000 (probably less), would have likely been individually entered into Quicken and would be readily available.

It doesn’t happen often but this thread is a typical question one might get - how many cars have we owned. Additionally, things like when did we buy a particular house, how much was that roof we put on 20 years ago . . . do come up and DW has the answer. The most used question is when did we buy “whatever” as we try to figure out if it’s still under warranty.

In the 40 or so cars DW found, she did not have my first (pre marriage) cars. All big boats. A Chrysler Newport, a Dodge Polara and a Pontiac Grand Ville. To say that don’t make them like that anymore is an understatement and a blessing. They all had big block V-8’s with 4 barrel carburetors, a back seat that could easily hold 3 to 4 adults and a trunk that could substitute for a pickup bed.

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit.

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I don't have a spreadsheet either, but it is just a fun type topic for those that wish to participate.
Lots of folks on this site are very detailed including me. It doesn't mean anything besides being detailed.
People come and go all the time.

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit. Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects? How many shoes you've had, movies you've watched?? Different strokes I guess and here I am commenting/contributing. I have had a few interesting vehicles. 63 Corvair convertible, 63 Chrysler Newport with pushbutton tranny, First year 300C with the Hemi, and currently an 83 CJ8 Scrambler. But overall, I absolutely don't care about the past material possessions. What I will not do is #1 have a spread sheet with all the vehicles I've owned and #2 will not sit here and think about it at all. I don't even track my former residences let alone vehicles. Oh well. Thought about having a TP roll tracker after COVID but I'm not that much of a prepper. Have a great day everyone.

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I viewed the exercise as a trip down memory lane. I know I missed a few and got some years wrong because it didn't come from a spreadsheet. Now I'm wondering if I need therapy....

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit. Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects? How many shoes you've had, movies you've watched?? Different strokes I guess and here I am commenting/contributing. I have had a few interesting vehicles. 63 Corvair convertible, 63 Chrysler Newport with pushbutton tranny, First year 300C with the Hemi, and currently an 83 CJ8 Scrambler. But overall, I absolutely don't care about the past material possessions. What I will not do is #1 have a spread sheet with all the vehicles I've owned and #2 will not sit here and think about it at all. I don't even track my former residences let alone vehicles. Oh well. Thought about having a TP roll tracker after COVID but I'm not that much of a prepper. Have a great day everyone.

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I don't need a spreadsheet to keep track of my cars, because I've only owned four in my life.

But, I do keep a detailed spreadsheet of all the books I've read since retiring, and the books on my "to be read" lists. I'm usually reading multiple series at once, and I have to keep track somehow.

I'm a spreadsheet junkie, and there are plenty of others in the forum too. You haven't been here very long or you would have noticed this already.

G POP said:

Clicking on this topic and reading these pages makes me wonder if I should step away from the forum for a bit. Some of you have spreadsheets listing all of the cars you have owned in your life?? I don't know what to say. Do you track other material objects? How many shoes you've had, movies you've watched?? Different strokes I guess and here I am commenting/contributing. I have had a few interesting vehicles. 63 Corvair convertible, 63 Chrysler Newport with pushbutton tranny, First year 300C with the Hemi, and currently an 83 CJ8 Scrambler. But overall, I absolutely don't care about the past material possessions. What I will not do is #1 have a spread sheet with all the vehicles I've owned and #2 will not sit here and think about it at all. I don't even track my former residences let alone vehicles. Oh well. Thought about having a TP roll tracker after COVID but I'm not that much of a prepper. Have a great day everyone.

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Just to make it clear that not ALL of us are tallying every last material possession we have ever had, I thought I'd copy my post from earlier in this thread. I guess my point is that we are all different and go through different phases in our lives. It looks startling at first, but the reality of it is really not.

W2R said:

In this century, I have had two vehicles.
(1) Toyota Solara (bought new in July of 2000), and
(2) Toyota Venza (bought new in January of 2010, with Solara as the trade-in).

My Venza still has less than 40K miles on it. I can't drive it any more because Louisiana won't renew my driver's license (they think I can't see well enough). So, I guess that is about it for me, as far as cars go.

Besides, who really wants to buy a car at today's prices? Not me, I'm too much of a cheapskate. Frank drives me places like doctor appointments, and also I am Amazon's best customer. So, that's how I deal with not driving.

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GrayHare said:

I didn't know there were so many Hoovies here. Impressive to spend that much on cars and be able to FIRE. I'd still be w*rking. I've spent more on computers than I have on cars.

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One thing that kinda blows my mind, is how much my grandparents' generation spent on cars, trading them in fairly frequently. I know looking back on my own history, I've had an awful lot of cars, just between 1987 when I started driving, and now. But many of those were just fun/toy/"play" cars that happened to catch my eye at the time, or were free/cheap hand-me-downs from family members.

But, here's the rundown for my paternal grandparents....
1949 Ford (bought used; all the others were new)
1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Victoria hardtop sedan
1961 Ford Galaxie 500 4-door hardtop
1963 Mercury Monterey Custom 4-door hardtop (Granddad liked the reverse-slant "Breezeway" roll-down rear window, that he used as a pass-through to carry ladders, lumber, and other long objects)
1966 Pontiac Tempest hardtop coupe (kids were all grown, so I think they decided they no longer needed a standard-sized car)
1971 Pontiac Tempest hardtop coupe
1975 Dodge Dart Swinger
1977 Ford Granada coupe (the Dart was troublesome, stalled out alot, so they traded prematurely)
1981 Ford Granada coupe
1985 Ford LTD (the small, Fairmont-based one)
1989 Ford Taurus LX
1994 Ford Taurus GL

All that constant trading of cars that still had plenty of life in them (I'll give them the Dart, though), just seems like a waste of money to me. But, I guess they did save money by being a one-car family, so maybe that canceled it out. And in those years, the styles changed quickly, so a new model could make last year's model seem old. Or, at least, the magic of marketing and advertising led us to believe they did. Nowadays though, I swear there are some 20 and even 30 year old cars, that look more futuristic than the current stuff that's out there!

Granddad bought the '94 Taurus, because Grandmom had gotten gravely ill, and he wanted to make sure he had reliable transportation to take her back and forth to the hospital, doctors, etc. And I think the '89 did stall out once. They bought it in late 1993, and she died in June of 1994. After that, Granddad didn't drive much at all anymore. But, that cycle of wanting to buy a new car every 3-5 years still stuck with him. I remember around 2000, he felt like he was REALLY overdue for a new car, even though that Taurus probably didn't have more than 30,000 miles on it. He really liked the 2000 Intrepid I had just bought, but I figured that would've been a bad car for him, because it was hard to see out of, hard to judge the corners, a bit hard to get in and out of, and in my opinion, just not a car that's old-people friendly. Anyway, I took him to a Ford dealer, to look at a Taurus. It had gotten a mild refresh for 2000 that got rid of that "catfish" look, and looked a lot more "normal" and I figured Granddad would like it. But, he took one look at it and said "let's go." I asked him to at least sit in one. Salesman had to beg him to sit in one. He finally did, after a few seconds said "I don't like it, let's go."

Probably for the best, as he gave up driving in 2004, just before turning 90. I think that Taurus finally got up to a whopping 40,000 miles. He offered to give it to me, but I didn't really need it. So one of my cousins got it, and he and his wife pretty much trashed it. I think they got it to around 80,000 miles by 2011 or so, so not really high miles, but it got into a few scrapes and scuffs along the way.