How does your family feel about cars?

[BiblioCat]

@pullin

Wife’s van? Immaculate. Every stray dust particle, dog hair, and shoe print are hunted down and dispatched with a vengeance. She even gets on a ladder and scrubs the ROOF! You can eat in it, but heaven help you if you spill something.

My truck? Used for camping, biking, hiking, hauling go-karts, camper, boat, hunting gear… you name it. Inside are usually found wet dogs, muddy kids, smelly RC vehicles, McDonalds wrappers and BigGulp cups. Engine and mechanicals are maintained with near-fanaticism since we go everywhere in it (underhood is probably cleaner than the front seat). Roads, woods, tracks, beaches, interstates…, we are almost constantly traveling somewhere in it (in the last coupla years we’ve ranged from Utah, to Key West; and everywhere in between). Every coupla weeks I run it thru the 2-bucks-with-a-fillup wash at the gas station.

Don’t lose much sleep over scratches and dents. Anything major is fixed, but the little stuff is ignored.

I’m laughing my ass off - you and your wife could be me and my husband - except I have a station wagon, not a van. I keep my car clean and tidy. Yeah, you can eat in it, but don’t you dare spill in it. Minor scratches are ignored, but last winter someone keyed the hell out of the side of my car and we got it fixed. I keep it washed and vacuumed and Armor-Alled and keep the trash picked up, too. The back cargo area is tidy, too; I have a box with rope, a Swiss Army knife, a bottle of motor oil, wet wipes, tissues, a blanket, kitty litter, and some other stuff - stuff I need, but it’s all packed neatly in a cargo box.

His truck on the other hand - yeah, we use it for camping and travel. He also hunts. It’s always full of fast food trash, papers and sales books from his job, various tools all over, crap like that. He went to the quarry a few months ago and got white lime dust all over it and didn’t wash it for weeks. He’s had some big dents fixed, but as he says, “It’s just a truck…”

[Anne_Neville]

My car gets washed when I know about a car wash nearby that requires absolutely no thought or effort on my part.

There are generally old newspapers, etc, in the back seat. Almost never any food, though.

The last major dent I got was when I was in grad school and had a really high deductible, so I didn’t get it fixed until I was in an accident later. But this would probably be different now.

My family are a lot more on top of things, car-wise. No old newspapers in the back seat of their cars, or dirty cars. Of course, they don’t live in an apartment where it’s a violation of the lease to wash their car in the garage or driveway.

We don’t do car payments, either.