Can you go “closet shopping” for cars?

There’s a phrase I’ve heard women use: “Closet Shopping.” It describes rooting around in your closet to find clothing that you’ve forgotten about and reconnecting with it, maybe wearing it in some new way.

First, let me say that I don’t think I’m engaging in gender-stereotyping. I’ve simply never heard men use the phrase. I will, however, freely admit that I have two dozen sport coats in my closet from back in the days when I managed a team of engineers and wore a coat and tie to work. They’re mostly Italian labels that I found in thrift stores for the price of a DIY oil change. When my wife and I head out to a social obligation or a nice dinner, I will admit to trying a whole bunch of them on, sighing, wondering why I still own them, then not being able to part with any of them. But I doubt that there is any “new way” to wear a sport coat, at least not one that wouldn’t make me look like I’m off my meds.

I’ve written quite a bit about the 13 cars I own (the Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special, the three BMW 2002s, the 3.0CSi, the Bavaria, the 1979 Euro 635CSi, the M Coupe, the Z3, the 530i daily driver, my wife’s DD Honda Fit, the little Winnebago Rialta RV, and the Duramax Diesel truck), and how the 70-mile distance to the spaces I rent in a warehouse in the town of Monson on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border has made it so it can be months between visits to the five cars that are stored out there.

It made me wonder: Is the Monson warehouse my “closet?” If you own enough cars, is there such a thing as “Garage Shopping?” And, if so, can it actually stave off the desire to buy another car?

Maybe, maybe, and maybe.

To be clear, I’d have to own a lot more than 13 cars to simply forget about several of them and then rediscover them like an old sweater or last season’s Capri pants. I do, however, have recurring dreams about cars I once owned. They’re very specific. The 1970 Triumph GT6+, my wife’s ’69 VW Westfalia camper, a particularly spritely 1972 BMW 2002tii, and a 1983 BMW 533i daily driver (the exception in an otherwise passion-centric list) all make repeat somnambulic appearances where I dream I stashed them in a warehouse or garage and forgot that I still own them until I stumble upon them. But I digress.

But there is something to be said for the proposition that, when you don’t drive a car for a while, you get reintroduced to it when you finally do. And that reintroduction can go either way. It can be like running into an old college flame and thinking “What did I ever see in her?” Or you can react viscerally and walk away weak-knee’d and feeling, “Oh man, am I in trouble.”

A few months ago, I wrote about driving the five cars in Monson after not seeing them since Thanksgiving and not driving some of them farther than around the block for over a year. The experience was generally a positive one, with one glaring exception—when I drove the 1999 BMW M Coupe (the “Clown Shoe”) the 70 miles home, I was painfully reminded of the fact that, after 45 minutes, the seats cause me sharp lower-back discomfort.

Because of this, I began to seriously think about selling the car. I clocked through a few punch list items—I had the wheels refinished and one slightly bent one straightened, shelled out for new tires, repaired a cracked taillight, and investigated refinishing the front bumper cover.

As I wrote (here and here), it’s a lot of work to sell a car, particularly if you want to get market value for it and supply the information necessary to address the questions you’re certain to get peppered with. I had a few friends and online acquaintances who expressed interest in the car, so instead of shooting hundreds of still pics, I did a simple walk-around video of the car, and a second one with it up on the mid-rise lift in my garage.

But before even a quick walk-around video, the car needed a rudimentary cleaning. Really, what the car badly needs is to be detailed. There’s so much particulate matter embedded in the paint that once it gets a clay bar treatment, it’ll make the bar look like it’s been rolled in a granite quarry. And interior-wise, you can probably find a 10mm socket in the dirt in the seat crevices. But doing something is better than doing nothing, so I simply gave it a quick washing and interior vacuuming in my driveway. On the drive to the parking lot where I often photograph cars, the car was still dripping, so I took it up onto the highway for a few exits to blow the water off.

And that’s when I found it in my closet and remembered why I bought it in the first place.

When I bought the car in the winter of 2007, it had four bent wheels and all four shocks/struts were either seized or blown, but it didn’t matter, because when I got it on the entrance ramp to the highway and nailed it, it wound up so quickly that I hit 90 before I knew what happened. By modern standards, the car’s specs (240 horsepower from the S52 engine, 5.3 seconds 0-60) don’t cause hyperventilation, but it was quicker than and completely different from anything I’d ever owned, and between that and the car’s “planted” rear end, I was immediately hooked.

The funny thing is that, 16 years later, that’s still the case. And now that the car is sitting on completely round wheels with brand-spanking-new rubber, the quick drive on the highway was transformative. Mash the gas, and car rockets forward, glass-smooth on the asphalt. Throw it around an entrance ramp, and it feels glued down. Back pain after 45 minutes? Who cares when that’s still 35 minutes away? Since this is a family publication, I’m not sure I can print the meeting-the-hot-old-flame analogy, but you get the picture.

I’ve been strident about my view that, as a regular non-hedge-or-trust-fund Joe with finite resources, a car needs to be for something in order to stay around. The 3.0CSi is to look at and swoon over, and after 37 years, I still get to be its partner (sort of how I look at my wife). The other vintage BMWs are for long-distance driving to events. The ratty Z3 roadster is for top-down stress-busting, even on a trip to the hardware store. The Lotus Europa is for driving on twisty roads through leafy suburbs west of Boston at 4 mph over the speed limit and having so much fun that I feels like I should be arrested. The Rialta is for quick inexpensive beach getaways. The dailies and the truck are for the disposable stuff of life. By this analysis, the M Coupe hasn’t been for anything in many years, and thus has felt like the odd girl out.

But maybe, if money and space concerns don’t get too pressing, being the feels-like-nothing-else-I-own-and-I-go-ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod-when-I-nail-it car is enough.

Regarding the overly-stiff seats, when I wrote the “maybe I’ll sell it” article, I received numerous comments that I could replace the seats with something more comfortable like the vintage Recaros in my old BMWs. It’s not that simple. Like most cars built since the 1990s, the M Coupe has seat belt tensioners—sensational devices that are triggered along with the airbag and other Supplemental Restraint System (SRS) components to pull the seat belts tight in the event of an impact. The belt tensioners are a part of the seats and thus are not easily or safely retrofit onto an old Recaro.

However, years back, some Clown Shoe folks alerted me that I wasn’t alone in finding the seats uncomfortable, and that some people found that simply tilting the normally-unadjustable seat base slightly back by adding spacers in the front makes a difference by providing more leg support. I tried throwing a few washers under the front seat bolts six years ago and didn’t find it to be a magic bullet. However, someone sent me a link to an inexpensive adjustable kit for the M Coupe. I have it on order.

Holy hell. I’ve not only found an old article in the closet, I’m about to wear it in a new way. I’d better check my meds.

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Rob’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of Hacks, Kluges, and Assorted Automotive Mayhem, is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

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