Hammer Time: How Old is Too Old?

She seduced my soul.

She is a a 1989 Jeep Wagoneer with just over 200,000 miles and a fantastic maintenance history. With beautiful, thick leather seats and a working A/C system which is a huge deal here in Georgia, the old woody Jeep could only have been better if it had a stick and a four-wheel drive system mated to its iron-block 4.0-liter inline-six.

I started the bid at $700, a dealer who specializes in the Latino clientele bid it at $800, and then another fellow jumped in at $900. By the time bidding was at $1100, I waited a few seconds, and did a slicing motion with my hand which knocked it up to $1150.

Would I get it?

Hell no! Someone jumped it at $1250 and I walked out gracefully to find something else worth my time.

For me, the numerical equation was simple: Could I make a good profit once I threw in all the costs that come with running a dealership along with the hopefully minor mechanical repairs and fixing little things such as the headliner and the interior carpet? The short answer was probably not, and probability is the one factor you always have to weigh beyond all else when buying at auction.

On the nostalgia side, I already had an ace up my sleeve: a 1994 Jeep Cherokee Sport with enough patina on it to look like anything from the 1980s.

If I had bought the woody Wagoneer, I would have one more vicious reality to deal with in the movie business. They don’t want white cars. Ever. White and red cars are considered too distracting for a background scene and are usually avoided at all cost. I’m not sure if this Jeep would have squeaked through that rabbit hole thanks to the fake and fading wood, but the risk of it was just too much. Plus, with four cars now pulling heavy duty at the movie shoots — a ’79 Caddy, a ’92 Volvo (that looks old), a ’94 Prizm, and this ’94 Jeep — I already have my hands full with not quite ’90s cars that can help impersonate a Reagan era parking lot.

But this whole experience brought me to a lingering thought that has revisited my mind over the years: How old is too old for a daily driver?

Back in the ’90s, I used to believe that a 20-year-old daily driver was an ancient, black and grey, smoke-belching turd. God knows I saw thousands of 10- to 15-year-old cars at the auctions that were usually worth more dead than alive — but these days cars hold up. The best examples in long-term quality seem to hold onto their bodies better than most folks keep up with their own bodies.

So for you, personally, how old is too old?