Re: What\'s your thoughts on garage queens?
Well, when we first got out first '96, it was the ULTIMATE garage queen. It was treated like art - in the air conditioned garage - only coming out for car shows and to get washed.
We wouldn't even leave it anywhere. Here's some good mocking fodder for the next time you all see Henry. He used to wipe his feet with a towel before putting them in the car.
Then, we decided to drive the car to Vegas for the 1999 VOI. We had to hurry up and get the break in miles on it. We drove to Vegas - washing and covering the car almost every evening, and throwing a coat of wax on it in Flagstaff AZ before rolling into Vegas. We then stayed for the one day Viper Days event. He went off track, and got it dirty. We washed it before leaving it with Reliable for the ride home.
Over the winter, he decided that he wanted to do more Viper Days events, so we bought a second Viper (ostensibly my car) as the original 1996 was too perfect to track. Then, I decided to run some Viper Days events and we readied both cars.
They were still kinda garage queens - we didn't do anything with them but clean them, go to Viper Days and car shows. And even though we were tracking them, we had elevated them to such a status, that it was a major event just to take them out - clean this, check that, can't park it anywhere. It was tiresome. I drove the car out to work to pick him up one night and instead of being glad to see me - he was pissed becasue it was getting dark and the car would get bugs on it (oh - the horror....) It was like their "pristine-ness" was more important that our enjoyment.
Gradually, they became cars. Cars to be driven. They would still be clean, inside and out, but they could go to the store or out to dinner. They started to become FUN again. We DROVE them - we autocrossed them, we tracked them, we ran some errands in them.
For a while, my 1996 was my DD. It was great - although I still didn't run excessive errands like go to the mall, etc. And then, with my SRT - I did anything and everything with that car.
Bottom line - I've had WAY more fun driving these cars than I had polishing them, prepping them, worrying about them and keeping them in some sort of auto-coccoon.
We said just the other day how glad we were that we got out of the "treat the car like a piece of art" phase and started having some fun - because we are having so much fun and have met so many great folks - it would have been a shame to miss all that just because we wanted to keep the cars pristine.
If that's what you enjoy - then enjoy it - but for us - reformed polishers - I can't imagine going back to having them own us instead of the other way around!
