Daily driving a stunning vintage Fiat or other classic car.

Felipe

Felipe

Low mileage
Many of us have beautiful classic cars (preferably Fiats of course) that we have invested time, money and the occasional drop of blood into to preserve or return them to their former glory.

That said, if your driving habits allowed you to stay at home on inclement weather days and your geographic locations weather allowed, would exposing your near perfect classic car to the "slings and arrows" of daily driving be a SIN in the eyes of the automotive God's???

Would love to hear everyone's opinions on this.
 
Nope. It is your car. Drive it daily all you want. That was easy. Next question. :)
 
I like seeing interesting cars any day of the week, especially Italian!
I daily drive my X in everything but snow and/or ice.
 
When temps are above 32 there isn’t much that keeps me from driving something classic.

Salt is the enemy.

And dum bass other drivers
 
Wife had studded snow tires for her's. She has been out in the snow/ice. But does not have a 9-5 type of job. On the bad day's we don't go unless we have to.

Also, our car's are not as nice as most posted here. All of our car's need paint, bodywork and rust repair. Mostly we Drive them an enjoy the heck out of them.
 
I think the biggest risk would be parking lot dings, rock chips, fender benders, and such. I go to great lengths to protect all of my vehicles from those hazards, but they still happen. Like Karl suggests, it is impossible to predict the behavior of stupid people...and there are a LOT of them out there. It might depend on where you live (traffic, congestion, attitudes, roads, mentality). Also how often you are willing to pay to have those blemishes removed.
As far as actually driving it though, isn't that what it's made for? However one factor I might add to your list of criteria (weather, etc) is having the flexibility to be late getting somewhere in the occasional event the car lets you down.
 
Interesting topic.
In Jan of 1976 my first X, the '74 in my avatar, was my daily driver for many years/miles. The miles took their toll and the car was eventually taken out of daily driver status. A series of newer X's took their turns as the daily driver, which ended in Nov1993 (after hundreds of thousands of miles) when I finally got tired of doing brake maintenance just to get to work the next day and bit the bullet and bought a new car ('94 Z28). The '85 X (with the sticky brakes) became the sacrificial anode to preserve the Z28 (which I still have) and eventually gave it's all to the salt gods. It was a great winter car (in Illinois) and would go in the snow when other vehicles wouldn't.
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Today...my X's are pampered and driven only in good weather, and never in the snow. A Toyota is the current sacrificial anode because it's a very economical car to own/operate. Funny what time does, once the X's were just a car, today they're a bit more.
 
My X was my daily driver for four years when I first got it in February of 1980. Since 1984, it is my fair weather car. I only drive it in nice weather late spring through late fall. It has 86,000 miles on it and is running better than when I first got it.
 
I daily drove the X for 12 years, then it sat for various reasons under a cover for 10 years, then I resurrected it and have been driving it daily for the last12 years. Sure it is dry here, but can get hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. My main issue is that I do about a mile on I-40 each way every day. AT 65 mph the small stones can inflict mighty damage to an X 1/9 windshield and I cringe the whole mile. AS to wet and other bad weather, I check the "MyRadar" app before departing and either wait until the latest rain shower passes or if I am at home, I grab the Bronco. Other than that I keep it clean and if it does get wet, no matter how late ore tired I might be I towel it off. It still wins at car shows. Best of all I don't see another vehicle like it everyday that I drive it. Priceless.
 
Your Fiat is your car, do whatever you want with it. If you spent too much money restoring it then that was making it a garage queen and that's your fault. For goodness sakes, they are cars, not investment objects.

Of all the decades (centuries?) of Fiat ownership I have had four Fiats wrecked. My 67 850 coupe was sideswiped in 1968. My 86 Rat was parked in front of my house and rolled down the street on it's own and ran into a light pole and put a nice dent in the bumperless nose. That same X and a 77 X were parked in front of my house and both totaled by a driver who took her eyes off the road for just a minute. My garage is for working on my Fiats, not storing them...when they are runners with tags they stay on the street.

My current Fatrat is worth the nice parts on it and nothing more but then my Fiats tend to be at the lower end of the "nice car spectrum".

Make a Fiat a daily driver, sure, no problem if that's what you want to do with it.
 
Cars are meant to be driven. I would rather see a few stone chips and other signs of a car that is used instead of a trailer queen when I see cars at shows or on the street. I've put lots of miles on unusual (for most) daily Drivers including a Lotus M100 Elan at 50,000+ and a "78 Ferrari at 30,000+. The fact that I can do most of my own maintenance probably helps too. The best part of owning these were that I never had a terrible amount of depreciation, if any. Some of the cars increased in value as I drove them!
 
Jimmy II said:
Baby them, they are irreplaceable.
Click to expand...
Funny, that reminds me of the way my father was about many things. He grew up in the depression era and came from a 'challenged' family situation at that. So they learned to treasure EVERYTHING. Nothing was ever thrown away and everything was considered to have great value. After his passing I was left with the huge task of cleaning up his property. I discovered tons of what I consider to be trash that was kept well cared for in storage, while many seemingly valuable items were left out in the weather to rot away. I finally realized that as the storage space was filled, things went outside. So it was more a matter of the order in which they were collected, not their relative value. Anyway, he considered some really crappy cars to be extremely valuable and irreplaceable as Jimmy says. Not sure if Jimmy is being funny or not, but my dad was serious.
 
There are no automotive gods!

And if they were, they’d probably say it’s your car, do what you want with it.

Personally, I have always had a number of cars that fit Carl’s description of his cars (currently own two that fit his description perfectly since I got them from him) & so I guess it’s funny that I go to some far lengths to keep them from being parked out on the elements. I do, however, drive all my cars as more-or-less “normal” cars. I don’t drive them when there is salt or brine on the roads & if the forecast is a day of heavy rain I usually opt for the F150. Oh, and I am mindful of where I park them- even ones that are pretty rough...I mean, I may not want the ONE straight door panel to be dinged! But, I do not really worry about stone chips, other drivers, sun or rain or any of that any more than I would with any car as a careful driver. All that said, do what you want. I see some trailer queens that are quite nice & give their owners joy & I see rusty rolling projects that do the same...and the joy is what it’s all about.
 
My X has been my daily driver for the better part of a decade. Took me to school, currently taking me to work, took me to pick up dates, I even slept in it once. There’s no other car on the road like it here in central LA.

While it’s true that slowly it’s becoming more of a garage queen, I will never drive anything like it. I know, I’ve tried.

Doing chores and getting things done around the city does become a bit of a paranoid situation. I park far away from other cars, I don’t leave it in the streets where people parallel park and run into it. Hell, I refuse to let valet workers park it, after an incident at a restaurant. I do baby my car because I put a lot of money, sweat, tears, and blood into it just for some idiot to come and take it all away in an instant.

Driving in LA traffic is a bit scary sometimes. You kinda have to drive it like a motorcycle; assume no one sees you. Some will say that LA traffic doesn’t move fast enough to warrant such a cautionary mentality. I say that’s not true. Most people here are used to the finer aspects of technology and expect cars to do the driving for them allowing them to bury their faces in their phones, thus creating the potential for a rear end collision.

Does this mean I’m gonna stop driving my X? Nope. It moves my soul.
 
To be honest, "addict's" description of how he treats his X is how I treat all of my vehicles....that is except for one. I try to preserve my cars and protect them from unnecessary damage as much as possible. And living in bigger cities it can be a bit of a pain at times, but you get in the habit. However as I said, there is one exception. I 'inherited' a Ford sedan after my father passed away. It is in very good mechanical shape, he never drove it so it has very low miles. But he wasn't a very good driver in his later years so it has a lot of battle scars. I drive it to run routine errands because I can park it anywhere and not care what happens. And believe me, lots of damage has happened; scratches, dings, chips, dents, road-rash, sun exposure, bird poop, and much more. It is nice to have at least one car that I don't have to worry about. One of the X's I'm working on will be a "outlaw" car; not restored, not nice, just a runner. And that will likely become my "I don't care" car.
 
Daughter #3 has "adopted" my '87 X1/9 and drives it every day, including weekends. Most days, I'm driving the 'new' car, a '91 Alfa 164S, commuting 50 miles a day in heavy traffic. Neither car is a beater, they both look pretty good and are well maintained. Older cars don't necessarily have to be garage queens.
 
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