Downsizing the Collection, The Art of Collecting Cars; Finding Focus in a Sea of Possiblities 255

Swell AI Transcript: Downsizing Final.mp3

00:00 Gary VO The gloves are off. Welcome to the authority in car talk. No driving gloves. From exotics to brass era to I'll get to it someday. Where experienced knowledge and controversy share the same seat buckle up and hang on for the ride. Now for your host for no driving gloves,

00:38 John John and Derek. Happy generic time of the day, Derek. You doing well? Oh, you know, I'm doing all right, John. How you been? Oh, alive and kicking, busy as heck. Trying to keep all of this together. Starting the new business thing in addition to trying to relaunch podcasts, you know, I need to learn to focus. Now, that's no fun. Why would you want to focus on something? And I take all this adderall and it just doesn't help me focus. You'll find that out in the show. If you're a new listener, we seem to go round and round. Wherever we start, we'll end up at somehow. Something like that. I've got a question for you. Okay. I've seen some of this Ford's been in the news a lot. They've been introducing all these new patents. I want to get your feeling on some of these patents that they've come out with or they've patented the ability that they can auto repossess your car. Yeah, I love it. I think it's hilarious that they can send a signal to your car and your car will auto drive itself somewhere so they can pick it up. If not necessarily drive it back to the

01:48 Derek dealership. I just, I just want to know how that conversation is going to go for the salesman. Right at the dealership. You're looking at a new Ford F-150, whatever you're buying, whatever car you're going to look at. And going over the purchase, going over the features, all that. And I mean, did they have to say it or is it unspoken? It's like, we are so glad that you are coming to the Ford dealership and you want to purchase a Ford from us. But we have so little faith in the fact that you're going to make these payments. We've made sure that this vehicle can drive itself back to the dealership when you miss a payment. I mean, it's, it's basically telling your customer, we don't trust you. We have no faith

02:38 John that you have the financial wherewithal to purchase this vehicle. Like I really want to know the mentality behind that because that's that to me, that's what that patent says. I see it more as a Ford Motor Credit patent rather than the company. And that's because I doubt if Ford's going to auto repossess your car that's financed by Wells Fargo, why would they have any interest in that? But if you finance your vehicle through Ford Credit or you lease your vehicle through Ford Credit, I can see the disclosure being in your loan agreement, not necessarily the purchase agreement. I don't see a salesman ever saying, oh, and by the way, a feature of this car is if you miss a payment, it'll auto repossess itself. It just seems to be more when you sign your loan, you know, you're buying a car and there's, you know, 8,000 pages of stuff you've got to sign. And now they make you sign everything on an iPad or similar. So you never really get to read it unless you

03:39 Derek really, really want to. And man, dealerships get pissed if you sit there and actually read this. Can't imagine why. And finance persons there for three days with you. Of course, the last finance person I dealt with, I could have spent three days with her. Yeah, I just see it more of being a Ford Motor Credit deal. Well, it might be a Ford Motor Credit deal, but the company itself, the manufacturer, Ford Motor Company, is putting that ability into the vehicle. So it still goes up to Ford Motor Company, in my opinion, that they are allowing it to be able to happen, which to me, it falls right to the manufacturer that, you know what, we don't trust you.

04:29 John Well, does it fall to the manufacturer or does it fall to the consumer? Because auto repossession rates are going up again. And default rates are going up, I guess. Default rates are going up, hence repossession. So is it the consumer's fault? I mean, if consumers didn't ever default on their loans, there would be no need for this technology. So is it the consumer's fault or is it Ford's fault? And we're in this world of subscription-based automotive options. I said earlier, Ford's not going to repossess the car for Wells Fargo. But what if Ford licensed or sold a subscription to Wells Fargo that every vehicle you finance through us, if you give us a discount on the finance rate to the dealer or with a fee, will have this repossession feature available to you too? Can it be a backdoor way to make additional money? Exactly. Well, they've got that patent. I don't know how that's going to work out. It's going to be funny to, when the first cars start being repossessed that way. What about their idea for long-distance electric car transport? Have you heard that one? I have not heard this one. They have patented, and there's the drawings where basically they're using car transports. I'm going to say car carriers, like they would deliver new cars. And for a fee of X number of dollars, supposedly supposedly very reasonable, less than a hundred dollars, they'll drive your car to your local Ford dealer, your electric car, drop it off, fly to your destination, and Ford will deliver your car to your destination. So say you're in New York and you're flying to Chicago, you drop your electric car off, and then Ford will deliver your electric car to the airport in Chicago on one of these transports. And it will be fully charged because the truck will have the ability to charge the electric cars during transport. But for say a hundred bucks or 150 bucks, your car will arrive

06:42 Derek in Chicago and then you will arrive in Chicago and your car will be there for your use. Yeah, I think that's maybe Ford just getting ahead of what might become a business here in the near future for car carriers. I mean, that sounds like it's just smart business planning. That would be smart business planning, in my opinion, for a car carrier to start doing. The interesting thing would be, I think, to see the time frame because you're going to have to drop your vehicle off days ahead of your flight. You're not going to be able to drop it off on the way to the airport, get on your plane, go because they can't make it from New York to Chicago or New York to California in the time a aircraft can. So you're going to have to drop it off. So what do you do in the meantime when you're trying to, you know, it might be nice to have your car at your destination for your vacation, but what do you do for the four to five days ahead of your vacation where you have to drop your car

07:42 John off the Ford dealer to get it to where you're going? That's one of the challenges in the logistics. But I guess the idea is maybe if you're going to drive your electric car, you're going to have to take some charging time in that. So your trip can get down to maybe a few hours to get somewhere without dealing with the charging, but your car might arrive a day later or once you get settled into your destination. I mean, I guess a lot of times I would think you could get, unless you're going coast to coast, three days maybe, you know, and this could be where Ford's ahead of, say, the major auction transporters or whatever, that we can have it there this period of time. But if I'm getting ready for a vacation, maybe it's not such a big deal for me to drop my car off on a Tuesday, get on my plane, you know, Uber back to my house, get on the plane on Wednesday, fly. Because usually when I arrive somewhere, especially on a vacation, I'm not, you know, balls of the wall when I land, usually there's a little bit of decompression time getting settled. And then Thursday, your car shows up sometime, shows up at your hotel or such. And you, you know, you just have two cab rides or two Uber rides as opposed to, I guess I'll say Lyft,

09:04 Derek too. Lyft needs a Lyft in their publicity. I don't know. It seems like a crazy idea, but- Well, I wonder what the, I really wonder what the costs are going to be because, I mean, I've, you know, 20 years in the museum world and, you know, automotive, we ship cars a lot and ship cars across the country and ship them all around. And, you know, number one, it's not really cheap. I mean, it is not cheap to ship a car anywhere on one of the big carriers. But also it's only becomes more and more affordable so long as the carrier that you're running on has a full load because they can disperse that cost over the number of vehicles that are in the carrier. How much is it going to cost if you're the only person that wants your car shipped from New York to California under this service and they're using a carrier to go one, because, you know, like we're saying, the time frame, they can't make it more affordable by driving from New York to Michigan to pick up another car and then maybe down to Alabama on the way. And, you know, because that takes a couple weeks. If you're the only car on the carrier and they can't get other cars, that's going to be an

10:27 John expensive trip. Well, I would look at it more like the auto train is on the East Coast where Ford's going to have a transporter that goes New York to Chicago. And it will leave at this time on, I'm going to say Monday through Friday because that's a popular route. And then they would have one that would say be New York to Washington, D.C. and then maybe Washington, D.C. to Miami. And you would have these set, they would have these set routes. So they're not going to, if you decide to fly into, no offense, but say Bowling Green, not many people are going into Bowling Green. Maybe you'll have to pick your car up in Nashville. Maybe you'll have to, you know, it's kind of be like major airport hubs. You know, maybe they'll go to Charlotte, North Carolina, because that's a major, what is it, American hub or something like that. And it's not going to, you know, they won't bring you to Birmingham, Alabama, but they'll drop it in Atlanta, which getting it to New York to Atlanta, that's kind of convenient. That's going to be 600 miles. So it's going to be two charges unless you have a Lucid or something. Or I guess Dodge is saying their new truck will go 500 miles. But that's just another piece of technology. You know, I don't want to get too deep into them because they're really not releasing too much. And then the last radical one, and then we'll get to our main topic here. What about their drone car repair? Okay, I also have not seen this. It is new, new Ford vehicles would come equipped with a signal that transmits the problem and location to nearby drones. When batteries cut out and the car dies, the drone will then fly to the stranded vehicle, open the hood, boost the battery and allow the motor motors to resume the trip. So your car dies with a low battery, which of course is only caused by the battery, no ensuing problems. The drone flies out, opens your hood, connects its own jumper cables, and then you get jumped off by a drone. It never does say if the drone closes your hood,

12:47 Derek but assume hood closes, your car's running, you drive on and go 20 miles till the battery dies again because the alternator is bad or something. But now is this for wait, is this for internal combustion vehicles or electric vehicles? They fly out and do like a supercharge so you can get to

13:07 John the next charging station. They never really get that much farther. That would be my starting your jumpstarting your dead car. And I'm surprised they would have to open the hood. I would assume there might be a port, you know, land on your little antenna on the roof or something. But yeah, that's a United States patent application filed March 1st. Actually, this was filed March 1st, 2018. So this, I guess people are bored again and we're going through our patent applications. Yeah, obviously. It's showing the car. It looks like a 2008 Fusion in their drawing. It's showing the drone landing on the roof, but I don't. This one seems of the three that I just

13:54 Derek threw out, this one seems the most far-fetched. Yeah, sounds like somebody got bored reading about Amazon's package delivery drones and thought, hmm, wonder what we can come up with for cars.

14:07 John Which I still don't understand the Amazon package delivery drones either, but you know, drones are cool. Drones are cool. But just to let everybody know, if you're afraid of TikTok and whatever company puts out TikTok, the DJI drones are also made by a Chinese company. And where TikTok and all this gets in there, not to get too far off automotive subjects, the Chinese government requires any company, any Chinese company that gathers data to report all that data back to the Chinese government. So if you have a DJI drone, you are just as bad as a TikTok user because all of your data, because keep in mind your drone's normally connected to your cell phone or some sort of controller that has a lot of your personal data on it. And all that data is available to the drone. It's just as bad. That's something I picked up on one of my tech shows this week. This is why I own nothing. That's why you live in the middle of the woods in a cabin. Exactly. And you drive pre-World War I cars. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I always tell people, like, if an EMP was to go off, I could still drive at least two of my cars. You throw me off topic again. What was that movie with Tom Cruise where they had the EMP and he ends up driving around a mid 90s Chrysler minivan? It would still be affected by an EMP. Was that the new version of War of the Worlds? That might've been. I think it was. I think it was the new version of War of the Worlds. Yeah. Again, details about movies that I probably shouldn't be paying that close of attention to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But just to remind everybody, go to nodrivinggloves.com. Pick up all the back episodes. Send us a message. Subscribe to the podcast. Many links there for that. Let us know what's up. Give us your email. You'll be entered into a monthly contest, which will be beginning shortly. Again, nodrivinggloves.com for anything you need. And the most important thing you can do is if you enjoyed the pre-topic chatter and you're longing for the real topic here in a moment, tell a friend about the show. That is the best thing you can do to us. It's even better than the like us and leave us a review. The leave us a review only helps us if we're going to have paid advertising. We don't want paid advertising. We want you to be there. So tell a friend about us. And if you feel like you got to do more, buy us a coffee. That's on the website. So Derek, I was reading a blog this week and he was discussing downsizing his collection. And I've been there and it's almost the same number of cars. He says he's got 11 cars and he would like to get down to three, but in reality, he's probably never going to downsize. I was at that exact same point. I had 11 and I downsized to well, two because in part of it, I got divorced. The sell-off started to happen before the divorce talk started. I get to the point now that, you know, even I'm a single person with two cars and with my relationship, there's three cars. And it's almost a lot of times inconvenient to have three cars because I find I never drive, one of the cars never gets driven. Have you ever thought about, because you're living that situation, you've got a dozen cars or so, maybe not quite that many. Do you find yourself ever considering, is this collection too big? Let's just talk about us as car collectors, regardless of our job, as a private individual, is there a such thing as too many cars in a

17:57 Derek collection? That all depends on your financial wherewithal, right, John? I mean, the problem is money didn't play a factor. No, no, there's never, in my opinion, you can't ever have enough cars, right? You know, it's a challenge because the more cars you have, the more places you have to put them. So the more buildings you need, so you start becoming a building collector or maybe a building leaser, depending on how you approach it, it gets to be challenging and you wind up spending a lot of money to have a collection. So, you know, it's not just the, it's not just the car that is costing you the money to have the collection, but it's also just the buildings, the overhead, the maintenance and upkeep of everything that goes behind having that car collection. Yes, John, there are many times I have questioned how many cars I have and if I need to

18:57 John downsize because it costs money. I tell people a lot when they talk about, oh, I'd like to have this or they're jealous of what I've had or having 11 cars, just simply put, like you said, you got to have a place to put them. When I had that many cars, I lived in Virginia. So unlike, well, if you're in say Alabama, all your tags become due in one month. You all of a sudden have 11 tags to renew. In Virginia, your tags are one year from date of purchase and rotate. So at least I had my car spaced out. I was just buying a new license plate every month. That was just kind of the monthly expense. Oh, what car do we have to update the registration this month? And then you have insurance on all the cars. And of course, then if you do it right, you have a collector's policy and then you have your standard insurance policy. And then you've got to worry about battery tenders. And it really, it doesn't matter unless you're Seinfeld, Leno type money, you got to be a member of the three comma club, basically to not have to worry about maintaining your cars yourself. If you can't afford to really hire somebody to maintain your cars, and once you get to, I would say 15 or 20, that's probably, you might want to start considering at least a part-time helper,

20:26 Derek because just to keep track of everything, oil changes, tire life, battery levels, any of the fluids that need to be changed out, it gets to be tedious. Yes. And I would say even, I don't even know 15. I mean, and I guess it depends too on your personal life situation, kids impact that. I have a lot less time with my cars now with two kids in the family. And so that impacts that. And that also drives some of the thoughts of whether or not the collection needs to be as big as it is. The kids love the cars, but it also reduces the time that I have to maintain the cars and do what needs to be done. So is it better to whittle down to a couple that I can keep regular maintenance schedule and keep up with all those small details and make sure that they're all one, two, three of them, whatever, are ready to go all the time? Or my problem is I have a hard time letting go. I like what I have. I have the cars I have for a reason. There's a thought process behind each one, which in most good collections or most, I won't even say good collect, but most collections, there is some kind of theory behind why the person is collecting the cars they're collecting. And that's what hopefully helps you stay on track and not have automotive ADHD and start having things that don't really fit.

22:11 John Oh, I see a lot of these half a dozen car collections and that may not have a rhyme or reason. Oh, I bought this because I got a deal on it and I got this. I can go back as long as I can remember. And we all remember the poster justification for a higher education and there's five garage stalls and it's all exotic sports cars or whatever theme. I mean, I guess if you were into probably four by fours and something, there was probably a justification for higher education, a bunch of lifted four by fours. And I always thought three cars, three cars for me would be ideal. I never considered a significant other or anything in the equation. I always thought a four door sedan so that you could have people over and go out to dinner or something like that. Maybe do a long trip in your sedan, which now could be one of these BMW GTs or something. So designed for a road touring and then some sort of exotic sports car, whether it be a Porsche or your Ferrari or something. And then some sort of four by four truck because I grew up in the Midwest, so I'm used to snow and used to think a Jeep would be great because you could four wheel and have fun with it. But maybe a four by four pickup, I guess a Gladiator or a Bronco could kind of be a happy medium in today's world because then you'd have something you could haul stuff with. You could pull a trailer, driving the snow, maybe put a plow, maybe not on a Gladiator. That would be to me almost an ideal collection for middle class, everyday type person. You would have something fun, you'd have something practical and you'd have something that was utilitarian. I kind of got there. When I had the multiple cars, there was a Saab, nice four door. There was a Civic, which was a very economical car. There was a Jeep, there was your four by four. I had my four by four Dodge Dakota, so there's my pickup. I had my Lotus that were my sports cars. So I had that. I just had multiple type versions of each of that. And I always thought that's a very good mix. Right now, I have my Mini, which would be my fun car. I have my Fiesta, which would be the four door sedan. I almost bought a Camry instead, but they claimed to have sold it. And then they realized they had sold one, but they didn't sell the one that I was calling about. Unfortunately, they called back and told me that just as I was speaking a previous finance manager. I was in her office signing things when they said, oh, we found the car you were talking about. Sorry. And the Camry would have been much more practical. It was that four door traveling sedan. And then all I need to do is add that four by four pickup or something. And I would be back to that perfect three car collection, but it's still, it's easy to manage three cars. I think when you start getting, that was always my problem with having multiple digit cars is just the work that became involved was more than what the cars were worth. And what my schedule looks like now, while I don't have kids and never had kids and I don't understand personally, I grasp the concept of the time children eat. There's no way I could do it with even just my workload. And if I was to throw a

25:47 Derek kid or two into this, I don't know if I could keep up with two cars. Yeah. Yeah. And then add in workload, kids, and then just, just think about your general. Well, I know you, you've got an apartment, John, uh, but you know, if you own a home and the home upkeep and, you know, I live on an acre out in the country, I had a tree fall down in the storm. I have to spend a weekend. Yeah. I spent one day last weekend and I'm going to spend one day this weekend out there with the chainsaw cutting things up. That takes more time away from family cars, all of that. So, you know, I think it really does come down to your time allotment and, and you know, that is part of thinking about whether or not you're going to downsize, you know, and priorities, right? What are your priorities? And I always find it interesting. You know, you just talked about kind of what your thoughts on a collection looked like. Everybody has a different thought on collections. You have your kind of ideal vision. Uh, you know, Jay Leno has his ideal vision. Seinfeld has his John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt down the street has his idea. You know, and I've always been one and I don't know why I've, I've always been kind of had a desire to do this, but my end goal, which is probably way too many cars in the end, I've, I've been one and maybe it's the study of automotive history, but my goal is, is kind of to have one automobile from pretty much every era of, of automotive history up to about the 1970s, 60s or 70s, you know, looking at a, a horseless carriage from say the 1890s and then something from the 19 aughts, then the tens, the teens, twenties, thirties, so on and so forth, getting fairly close to that, but is it too much? Yeah, right now I have technically three cars from the twenties, late twenties, early thirties era. And, you know, if, if you look at the kind of development of the automobile, some of that's overlapped and unnecessary. You know, it's really, for me, it's about showing the progress and development of the automobile over history in my own collection, you know, significant milestones of technology, things like that.

28:32 John Well, don't you have basically those first four decades? I mean, you don't have the horseless carriage, you don't have the carriage and I don't think you've got the horse to go with it, but don't you have something that's like 1910 or something, which I would almost put into the aughts? 1912 is the earliest, right? And then you've got 1918 or 1919. 17 and 19. And then you've got 20s. 23 and 29 and then a 31. So you've got the first four decades covered, aughts, teens, twenties and thirties. And then I have 50s and 60s. I also, I have a 58 and a 61. Yeah. So really the only thing you need is a late thirties or mid forties because I mean, we know the first five years of the forties, they really didn't produce cars. So you're one car away from having your ideal collection. One to two. Yeah. Yeah. You probably want to really get into your curved dash or your Oh, wait, Cadillac or something,

29:37 Derek you know, no collections complete without a Cadillac. Well, no, see, because I'm, I'm, I'm that one that again, you know, different types of automobiles and, and significant stories. So actually I talk about downsizing, but I also keep chasing cars. And right now I'm, I'm looking at a possible opportunity on a 1908 high wheeler because I don't have a high wheeler represented in my collection. I don't know. I can't stop myself. It is an addiction. I make the con, uh, comment quite often that cocaine probably would have been cheaper. Definitely. You know, may have been cheaper. Uh, alcohol probably would be cheaper. And I'm not condoning any of these activities by saying this because in the end it might be more expensive, but there's less chance of me dying from car collecting than there is other stuff.

30:39 John Don't talk to Jay Leno about that. Well, there are instances where we get injured. I've, I've been in the hospital before from injuries from a car. Yeah. You've had the, uh, kickback of the crank start and things like that. I don't know. I don't think I've really ever been injured by a car, but then again, you work on cars more than me. I've been there and I've downsized and I guess I was there, well, 15 years ago. So I was a little bit younger than you when I started to downsize. And I guess actually, no, when I moved to, when I moved to Birmingham, I had my catering, which would be my fun sports car. I would have had my CRX, which was kind of my practical car. And I had the four door Dodge Dakota four by four, which was my four door sedan four by four. So I guess I did have my perfect collection there for a while. And then I sold the eventually sold the catering and got a Porsche to replace it. But I think by then I had also gotten rid of the CR. I got rid of the CRX and I had a little issue. Uh, I guess it was a two wheel drive SUV to go with it. I've been there. You're almost to your ideal collection. Realistically, if circumstances don't change, do you ever see yourself downsize? Ooh, that's a good question, John. Like the article I sent you, he said he wanted to go from 11 to three, but in reality he knows he never will.

32:12 Derek Right. You'd like to downsize, but I don't see you ever really downsizing unless some drastic life change happens. I, yeah, I don't know that I'll ever downsize. I think the collection might morph over time, different vehicles. So at times it may downsize, but it would be a planned downsizing to acquire something else, something more significant. Yeah, there are cars out there I know of that, that I keep track of. And if they become available, then maybe I sell a couple to get that one significant one that I want. So morphing the collection over time might involve downsizing by one or two cars to get a more significant vehicle. So it'll probably be an ebb and flow to develop it where I see it being the dream collection of what I want and the story that I think I want to tell with it. You're right. I don't know that there's any major downsizing from 10 or 12 that I have down to two or three, but I think it will probably ebb and flow over time. And what number that looks like, I don't know, maybe somewhere between six and 12 as things change and I try to get more significant cars. And of course to me too, it's car collecting to some people is merely a hobby or an interest. And maybe that's if you have one or two cars from your youth that you always wanted. The guy that's got the 66 Mustang Fastback and man, it was a cool car when I was a kid. I really want that and I'm going to get it and have it. I also look at the cars that I collect that dad and I have collected over time. They're also an investment. It's just like investing in real estate or investing in something. It's always a gamble because you don't know what the market's going to do, but you own the cars. If you buy them at reasonable price, then you can hope that and take that gamble that in 15, 20 years, whatever it is, when you're ready to remove that car and sell it, remove it from your collection, then you can hopefully make a little bit of money on it because the market has gone up. And in the end, it's an investment as well. So I look at it that way too. And that's part of that process of the ebb and flow of selling some cars to get a more significant car is that you're investing in the vehicle and the hope that it becomes worth a

35:21 John little more in the future. Now, I guess a lot of what you said does make sense. I was thinking when you said maybe selling off downsizing your collection for the special piece, what I heard in your, made me think, you know, sell off to maybe acquire a special piece. It immediately jumped me to Adam Corolla when he bought his Porsche 935X Paul Newman car. That cost him $4.2 million at auction. I think, I can't remember if that was inclusive of fees or not. Part of his deal was if he bought that car, he sold all of his Lamborghinis, three Miras. He had a couple of 400s. He had a 350. So he downed, he got rid of significant pieces of his collection to get the centerpiece of his collection. And he hasn't really talked if he's went back out and bought more Lamborghinis, but I assume at some point his income in that will allow him to reacquire because it came down to this is a one-on-one. This is one opportunity. We don't know if this car will ever become available again in my lifetime, or at least in my racing lifetime, because Corolla does race it. And he could always go out and get another Mira. He could always go out and get another 400. It's kind of like you, if you had to sell your Chrysler to get X rare vehicle, you could always go out and get another Chrysler, but it might not be as easy to go out and get. I can't think of anything off example, but, and I guess that makes sense, but I don't know. I guess that's downsizing the collection car-wise, but it's not necessarily downsizing the collection money-wise. But I guess when we get up to, when you get up to four or five cars, you have exceeded where income comes into play. If you're financing your 12 car car collection, you're nuts. You need to be paying cash, you know, for you should be being able to pay cash for your daily driver, let alone your additional cars. I can understand financing your main daily driver, but all your other cars should really probably be paid cash, even though there are companies out there that will gladly, you know, JJ Best will gladly help you finance your collector car. Putnam Leasing will be glad to set you up on a lease program for your collector car. They're not sponsors. They're just people that will do that. So I guess that there's all that kind of thought process when it comes to money, comes to time. Like I said, I just got to a point where I got tired of the maintenance, started selling things, her and I agreed to separate. I took the cars that I wanted. She took the cars that she wanted, and we sold the rest. And, you know, she ended up leaving with the Elan and Volkswagen Eos. And I left with the Caterham, the Dakota and the CRX and everything. And she also kept her Jeep. So she kept three, I kept three, everything else went away. And that worked out really well. I mean, we had a really nice separation on like most people and we agreed to this and this and we're going to sell this. And then the irritating factor was before we were even complete,

39:01 Derek the Lotus she elected to keep, she sold. Hey, she was downsizing, right? Yeah. But I want to go back to something you said, John, because you kind of danced around it. And in my head, it made sense, which you're talking about downsizing to get a different vehicle. And, you know, doesn't necessarily change the financial investment. The way I look at it is you might downsize quantity, but my goal would be to raise the quality. So not have as many cars, but you have a quality collection of cars. And yes, Intel No Driving Gloves makes it big. And we're up there with Adam Carolla and all those guys. We're not in the three comma club. We're not going to have a car that costs 4.2 million. Yeah, it'd be nice one day if we get there. But yeah, I think wise investments and wise decisions in, even if you have very, very affordable collector cars, Model Ts, Chevy 490s, the things that I have, I don't have, I got, I have a peerless. Okay. It's still in the way, the condition I found it in the barn because my financial position allowed me to acquire that car at the time by selling another car, my Pontiac Solstice. I was able to sell the Solstice to have the funds to buy the peerless. It is an extremely rare car. There's a handful of them that exist and it sits waiting because, you know, I wanted it for the collection because of the quality of the car. Now I need to sort out the plan to get it to where it is a part of the collection that is significant and able to be driven and all the things that you want to do with it. So again, you know, it's kind of that story of, you know, trading up, I guess is what they call it, you know, where you start with something insignificant, not worth a lot, but you start trading for better things, more quality objects that you can get more money or more value out of to get up to the next thing. You set yourself a goal of where you want to get to. And I guess that's the approach I'm taking, you know, is when I see a car that is within my financial reach at the time and I can see promise and, you know, a little bit of elbow grease and work on it to make it something a little better that I can then use to elevate the collection by selling that

41:57 John and getting that next level vehicle of quality, then that's the process to get there. And that makes complete sense to me. And you put my comparison into a little bit more real world comparison. You know, there's, like you said, there's very few of those hunt mobiles. I can get online and find 40 Pontiac Solstices within, you know, 50 miles of me for sale. And I can't remember if the Solstice was your main car at that time or not, but technically you sold a collector car, a better or more rare collector car, because if you wanted a Solstice today, it wouldn't be that hard to go get one. But if you wanted a hunt mobile today, it might be, you might have to actually go a couple of pages into Google and look a little bit. I'd imagine there's one on eBay or something, but it wouldn't necessarily be the same quality, the exact model. There you are. There's Derek's real world life choice. I mean, I sold my stocker V6 in order to fund my catering. But to be honest, I ended up trading the stocker V6 to acquire my Lotus Europe and then the catering was paid for a different way. And in that same transaction, in that same month, I sold my lowered S10 that I was using as a daily driver to buy the Dakota to be able to pull the trailer. So it's altering the collection. Believe it, I would much rather have the lowered two wheel drive S10 than a four wheel drive Dodge Dakota, but a four cylinder S10 will not pull a closed car trailer with a catering in it, no matter how light it was. Well, I guess I've even been in the same situation where I've made the decision to sell one to get the other when it came to collector cars. My mistake, and this might be how we can look at winding up this show, my mistake and it's something somebody said in a British car club locally, long time ago, if you sell your collector car, be sure you have something else to go buy, because it's so easy to sell your name, whatever it is. And I'll say I sold my Porsche Boxster and I didn't have another car to go buy. And then that money just kind of gets spent elsewhere. Now, granted, that's, you know, mid five figures. And when this conversation came about somebody had just sold their TR6 for six or $7,000. It's really easy for that six or $7,000. If you own a home, become a roof or become a deck, or you've got something else you want, but now you don't have the money you had set aside for your collector car. And I've seen many, many people lose their toy car because of the repurposing of funds and you don't even realize it is, oh, you know, I got eight grand, I'm looking at this MGB, it's there about five. So I can put four to the deck and then I'll save up the other, you know, thousand. And then the next thing, you know, I got the deck, now I want some furniture. And now that four becomes 3,400 after you buy a $600 furniture set, then you buy a green egg grill for 800. And now you're down to 2,800. And all of a sudden, your collector car has disappeared for the ability to cook a good steak. Exactly. I guess that's the advice is there is no too big a collection. Just be careful. Careful what you wish for it might come true. I don't regret having what I've had. I've been lucky to have what I've had. You're in the same boat. I don't think I ever want to get back up there again. You know, I think, man, maybe I should get rid of the mini since it's now become a toy car and go ahead and get another Porsche or some such. But the mini has some other attachments to me that everybody knows I'm a more modern fun car person than the historical value fun on some things. I'll be honest, I am kicking myself for not having a Lotus in the collection right now, since the big Lotus national meets only two hours away from me this fall. But that's

46:20 Derek neither here nor there. Do you have a closing thought? You said be careful what you wish for. And that's very true. Be careful what you wish for and be careful what you get yourself into, because each car you collect and each car you buy has an ever expanding amount of time attached to its care and upkeep. And I also, you know, I like to think that the cars that I collect and hopefully the others collect, we all understand that we're merely caretakers of these vehicles as they're passing through history, because they're going to be here. Most of them are going to be here a lot longer than we are. So, you know, take that into consideration too, that you are the caretaker of this vehicle and it's your responsibility as its owner and collector to preserve it and save it and pass it along to the next.

47:20 John Unless you collect demolition derby cars. Well, you know, I wonder if anybody there. I imagine there is a collection of those. Some.

47:29 Derek I know that's interesting because I'm now I'm wondering, like, is there a collection of historically significant demolition derby cars? That would be interesting to know. And then the theory of how do you how do you preserve them? Do you preserve them in their damaged state? Do you preserve them in the state of just finished by someone to go to their first demo derby? Where does that fall?

48:00 John I would just try to Google it and there's lots of stuff on demolition derby, million dollar demolition derby, but nobody mentions actually having a collection of them. The demolition derby museum. Maybe that's what we need to start. No, that might be something. If any of you know a collection of demolition derby cars and not the Hot Wheels ones or such like let us know. You can do that. Obviously, like I say, through the website, no driving gloves dot com, email us at producer at no driving gloves dot com. Tell a friend about us. You got a friend you think has too many cars or says I've got too many cars. I don't need another. Let them have this episode. We we can convince them you can never have too many cars. Tell you you have too many cars. Exactly. It's been a good conversation this morning, Derek. At some point we will get into the museum, maybe business collector side, you know, somebody who's doing this for profit or for educational purposes and what's too many cars and that because I had a I had an interesting experience around that yesterday. Visited the largest collection of cars on public display in the country again yesterday, but more on that later. Just till next time we talk, Derek. Sounds good to me. Have a good one.