My car to the market

A real terrible day on the markets. A whole bloody sea of red. Really wished I had sold the whole lot prior to coming back to Australia. I feel like a total moron. Everyone now reckons that the US economy is headed for a recession thanks to the subprime loan crisis. I really let the ball down on this one. Got too complacent. What the hell am I doing?

On other parts, I restarted my old vintage VW Beetle tonight. It hasn't been run for over 12 months, I got it going after the 11th turn of the key. Naturally it was a little sluggish and felt very tight - but it drove no problem.

Its still noisy - I really regretted fitting in a racing engine into the car. Its a 1641cc engine with racing components and torpedoed a big hole in my wallet.

A slightly modded 1200cc engine would have more than suffice.

But no, I got sucked in by all the beautiful show cars featured in the VW magazines - and I dreamt that I would get my car to look ubercool. So I lowered the car, installed anti-sway bars, new wheels...

One big problem is that none of my friends (including me) are mechanically competent or overtly enthusiastic over car repair and restoration. So each problem usually has to be dealt by a mechanic - I must have spent over $20,000 on the car.

I did try and fix it up myself- but its really beyond me. I guess eventually I would have been more mechanically competent but without a good teacher, I would have taken decades if ever to get the hang of repairing the car.

Its a "romantic" idea tho. (I mean romantic in the idealistic  sense not eros). But like all crazy dreams its got to come to an end. So I'm pulling the plug and saying good bye to this. 

I guess I can still carry on the restoration on the car- it just needs a bit of rust repair, new gromits,  a good respray, and re-upholester of the interior and a new muffler. That would probably set me back another $5,000 if not 10. That was the plan.

But I've lost interest in it. If I do proceed with the restoration, I'm just going to end up with an old car that is still not as quick or safe as a modern car - and needs a fair bit of fiddling.

Time to move on.