My beautiful Nightmare
To properly enjoy your classic car, conditions have to be right with everything else in your life.
I bought this one at the wrong time, changing job (which I didnt realise meant setting up my own engineering design business) not much spare cash and this alone would have ruined the experience would it not have been for getting ripped off by a garage.
The C2 corvette from the mid 60’s is beautiful to behold and the garage I bought it off had picked a stunner - beautiful paint job and colour scheme.
It wasnt however great to drive and the windscreen leaked.
An old mate told me to take it to some mates who ran a Ferrari garage and they said they would have a look.
10k later - I got it back unfinished, the garage was not experienced enough on the specific car and I should have known better, but they said they could handle it.
The garage that originally sold me the car - (Dave Fox Cars staffordshire) finished it off free of charge and said that they would have done all the work for free if I had taken it back to them - oh no !
I wont go into details, I was in possession of an absolutely stunning car, but the whole experience had been spoiled. It had become a bit of a nightmare, a distraction that I didnt need. Like being married to a supermodel who had been up to something behind your back.
I put the car into a classic car show and won 2nd prize, but I decided that it had to go - just auctioned it and got back what I paid for the car an expensive lesson.
The lessons are - make sure you can well afford your car, dont stretch yourself, make sure the timing is right and you have time to enjoy it (i.e. retirement or semi-retirement) and be very careful where you take your car for any work.