So, you’ve had your eye on that classic car for awhile now, have you? Before you enthusiastically pull the trigger, allow me to offer a few wet blankets to douse the flames of your desire.
You see, if you haven’t realised this by now, Singapore is no place for the car enthusiast, and much less so for the classic car enthusiast. As I’ve said many times before, you don’t so much own a car here as have lease it from the powers-that-be for 10 years. If you’re foolish enough to renew its COE, you’ll be hit, amongst other things, by a surcharge on your annual road tax bill.
But let’s just say you can afford the monetary part of owning a classic car. I think the biggest price a classic car extracts isn’t from your wallet, but from your time and patience.
Cars are mechanical things, and like all mechanical things, performance will deteriorate with age, no matter how well it’s taken care of. To that end, there’s more than a good chance your classic car will be out of commission for long periods while it’s being fixed up.
And because said car isn’t being produced anymore, spares will be difficult to come by. I should know: my grandfather used to have a “pagoda-top” Mercedes-Benz SL from the late 1960s that spent a good nine months in the workshop while his mechanic scoured the globe for a distributor cap.
Now, don’t get me wrong. A classic car is an incredibly rewarding drive. Because they have little to nothing in the way of electronics, you feel a connection to the car that you’ll never have in a modern automobile. This is true even for the most mundane of them. I drove a Toyota Corolla from the 1980s and it was glorious. There’s a deliciously mechanical feel to it that even the best modern cars (yes, even the supercars) can’t replicate.
But if I still can’t convince you not to spring for a classic, then perhaps let me just say do your sanity a favour and buy a bombproof modern one to go along with it. If nothing else, at least you know the air-conditioning will work…
