Against All Oddities: New Year, New Matt?

As regular readers will have noticed by now, a new car enthusiast has appeared in our family: baby August. It’s a bit too early for him to be cutting cardboard patch panel templates with safety scissors, so for now, I’m just shooting for learning by osmosis. And he’s not the only one developing new skills; I’ve had 39 years to be selfish and am only months into unlearning most of those behaviors. It’s a daily battle between pre- and post-kid Matt’s decision-making prowess. So how have I/we been doing?

Shortly after the baby was born, a particularly strong stork dropped off an irresistible BMW E30 at my doorstep. At first glance it didn’t really appear to much work, and it was available to me at an absolute bargain price. The previous owner, a friend and work colleague of mine, and started disassembling the dash and interior with the best of intentions of reassembling it with newer, nicer bits. Somewhere between disassembly and moving to California, loss of motivation set in, letting me scoop it up. With all of the work happening above ground level, it’s been something that I could periodically tend to between feedings, diaper changes, and naps. (That-a-boy, Matty. Make the baby adapt to you. -Old Matt)

In the course of about two weeks, in 5- to 15-minute intervals, I got all of the door locks working, put all of the door cards back together with new fasteners, installed new shift- and handbrake boots, and wired up a slick-looking Continental radio. By my standards, it feels a bit lame to even note such progress. But the fact that it was coupled with simultaneous childcare was a monumental accomplishment for me. August was well-fed, rested, and socialized, and I was regularly driving the E30 to work. Both projects seemed to be going pretty well!

Naturally, my eye began wandering toward other ventures, because I cannot help myself. Old Japanese ventures, to be specific. My friend Thomas had once told me about an old Toyota junkyard near Burlington, North Carolina, and last summer, I went to scope the place out. Deep in the brambles, I located a potential project: a 1968 U.S.-market Toyota Crown. Robin’s egg blue, mind-numbingly obscure, and a four-speed manual transmission: the neglected piece of crap had my name all over it. There was also a locust tree consuming a red FX 16 GTS, which Toyota geeks will know is closely related to one of my old projects. I marked them mentally and left emptyhanded (Take them home, you idiot! -Old Matt)

Just weeks ago, hot off a trip to Japan, I felt the junk car call. I dialed up the junkyard and asked if they’d still be willing to part with that old Crown. As I feared, they were willing to do so, and I said I’d be there soon with a trailer and cash.

Thomas overslept. I left without him, which bought me some alone time to contemplate my own maturity. As I crawled up the junkyard’s driveway, the baby blue Crown came into view, and I realized that I had made a grievous error in judgment. Last summer, I had seen a few bits of the car through the blackberry brambles, and what I saw seemed solid. Using the highly optimistic, rust-ignoring capacities of my car-addled brain, I had stitched together a completely unrealistic image of the car and let it marinate in my skull for a week. In reality, it was much less structurally sound.

My recent spate of micro-work sprints bore fruit when it came to E30 door panels, but I reckoned it would be less fun to weld floors into a hopeless Toyota Crown in 5-minute increments. “When would I even have time to start this, let alone finish it?” New-Matt asked himself. Feeling a bit dejected and sick, I sheepishly backed out of the deal, thereby wrecking my track record of buying basically every car I inspect.

Wait a minute… I already had a trailer and cash earmarked for this! Surely there was something at the yard I could drag home, no? Thomas arrived in the middle of my existential crisis and wasn’t successful in persuading me to commit to anything. I walked around, kicking rocks and a half-dozen old Corolla and Celica tires before calling it a day. Dejected, we started the hour-and-a-half ride home. Just a year ago, I would’ve made three trips and returned home with trailer after trailer full of DOA projects. They would’ve littered my yard. What just happened? Did I just grow up? Whatever the opposite of buyer’s remorse was, I had it. (You couldn’t have just nabbed a souvenir, like a $200 Camry or something?! I… don’t… understand! -Old Matt)

So now you can picture responsible me with no new rusty Toyotas, driving my E30 to and from work. A supremely responsible parent. As my wife and I were starting to get into a good routine with the boy, our schedule allowed for some slightly longer stints of car work in the driveway. At least 10 minutes at a time. I took the opportunity to replace the front spoiler and throw on some Bilstein shocks and H&R springs. Look at that, no more Starsky and Hutch-style rake! No more dangling wires under the front valance, either! I can even listen to the news on the way to work. What’s not to love?

A friend of mine, Jon, aka former Fuggles the Foundry Truck owner, saw the Bimmer’s beauty. Being partly responsible for wiping several E30s off the planet when we were in high school together, Jon was also drawn in by nostalgia. He already told me that he hated me when he found out what a deal I got from the car. He informed me that if he did not get a reliable vintage car soon, he would have to drop out of a rally that he had signed up for.

Feeling the need to jump in and save our friendship and reduce the car count by one, selling him the E30 seemed like a good Dad thing to do. After all, I did make the necessary repairs over a handful of lunch breaks to get the Renault GTA on the road, and hogging up all of the recently resurrected red 1987 European sports sedans in Iredell County seemed unfair. So I agreed to let it go. Never wanting to make a deal too straightforward, we agreed that I’d give it to him for what I had in it.

For New Year’s, my wife and I decided to head down to Charleston to catch up with some friends. Still casually looking for old Toyotas, I had been in Facebook Messenger communication with a few prospects. One in particular: a 1980 Cressida in a textbook grandpa spec. I loved it, and the correspondence took on a highly friendly tone. It was like the seller and I were pen-pals, but instead of asking about how their day at school was and getting an update two weeks later, I was asking about potential rust areas under a vinyl top and getting back small, grainy photos. It looked awfully suspect… but I reserved a trailer just in case.

Fast-forward to a very non-hungover New Year’s Day. How are we going to usher in 2025? Of course, we did we always do: Load the family up into the truck and ride out to meet strangers in the middle of nowhere, all to pick up a vehicle I don’t need! The locale was salty Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina. Upon winding up the remote gravel driveway and making our way ever closer to the saltwater, there stood a beautiful brown Cressida beneath a live oak. A Charleston postcard, if there ever was one.

The beauty was laid bare and hideous from 20 feet away. The vinyl Crema atop the metallic Cafe Americano was the source of concern. The rust was far, far worse than I prayed. The area around the windshield looked like a raised-relief topographical map of the American Southwest. The chrome trim that was previously riveted to the C-pillar to clamp the top had fallen off years ago and taken the trunk’s ability to seal along with it. What a mess. Again the mantra: “When would I even have time to start this, let alone finish it?” I also thought about the logistics and the complexities of riding home with an infant, which already turns a 3.5-hour trip into a 6-hour saga.

With those things in mind, I couldn’t even make an offer. The owner and I briefly conversed around a Ford Jubilee. I canceled my trailer rental. (You wouldn’t have needed to fix the top to do burnouts with a 2JZ swap. Just sayin’. -Old Matt)

A normal holiday that pre-August would have rendered me two cars richer now had me at with one fewer. Maybe I might make some incremental progress on the other cars I already own and have written about recently.

I tried to get that momentum going by replacing the ignition lock on the GTA yesterday. The car promptly broke down before I’d left the neighborhood. New year, (mostly) same old me, I guess.

(This was, easily, your worst article ever. -Old Matt)