More and more car owners are letting their old cars rot away.
This is becoming a familiar sight in the city. It has been a common situation in small towns and villages for decades where competent mechanics are unavailable and also the owners lack restoration funds to keep their old cars running.
So, the owners of these cars end up leaving their old cars idle and as the years pass they rot away until it is too late or too rotten to be saved.
We have over the years stopped and knocked on the gate of homes with rare rotting cars sitting in the garage. Some are barn finds and others are just old cars that need to be rescued.
Owners will come out and say ‘do not want to sell’ or ‘I am planning to restore this car soon’ (which is a lie as we see the car sitting and rotting years on) and ‘my son wants to take over this car when he returns’ (and this also never happens as the years pass).
Meanwhile, there are some die-hard car enthusiasts from Klang Valley who have been driving around small villages in recent years and buying up these old abandoned cars to be restored at great expense and also as spare parts for their running similar cars.
Many more want to do the same, but there is the issue of storing the old cars and the parts. Also, when it comes to buying some of the old abandoned cars, there is the common issue of missing owners. Some have passed on, others have moved away and trying to find them can be another time consuming task.
Mechanics who are ‘holding’ on to some of these rotting cars will also request for past storage charges which the car owner owes and this makes little sense as the new buyer will pay to take this rotting car away and free up space in your workshop and still you want to haggle.
And so the situation continues and some nice cars, some expensive cars and even sadder, some rare cars continue to rot and their owners do not want to do anything about it.
So, we hope that with this article, owners of rotting cars take a good hard look at what is sitting in their garage or garden or behind their shop-lot and make a decision to sell (do not dream of getting a premium price as advertised on Hagerty.com or Hemmings.com as these are cars in far better condition.
Interestingly, it will be better to look at websites like Hanamaru.my where a fair price is given for your car, if they want it or let the next person that rings your doorbell take your car away for some paper money that will buy you a short fun filled holiday.
