Accepting the fact I don't have the skills to run an oldie

I have tried to not own anything retro
I lasted about a month!!
Now with my 15 year old son firmly into the retro scene
I’ll never be without an old motor

Depends on how 'retro' retro is...having gone through Bugs and Campers I can't see me bothering with anything from before the 80s again...

ATM I've got a barely-retro Honda but it means that most jobs aren't a seized bolt and rusty nut affair, and rust hasn't taken full hold yet. With work and family that's about all I can manage right now and I'm cool with it.

You are buying the wrong cars for your personality and lifestyle.

It is very possible to buy an interesting retro car that just needs normal maintenance that a decent local garage can do, with maybe the odd bigger job and a a few harder to source parts.
That way the hobby becomes enjoying driving it and sourcing parts which you can mostly do from your sofa if you wish.

That all depends if you like cars that can be managed that way of course, very practical for 90s cars for example, but less so for 70s and earlier.

I love cars (and bikes, tractors, planes, basically all the boys toys) but know that I neither have the time, cash or skill set to own a Retro.
My oldest motor is a 2010, my daily commute is 100 miles and I'm out of the house from 7 till 7 so know that a Retro isn't on the cards for me, but I love coming here, living vicariously and marvelling at the skill, ingenuity and willingness to support, that resides in this forum.

I second this I had a mk2 golf about 10 years ago bought it for £300 with a full years mot ran it into the ground though but for the 2/3 years it was in my ownership it was the most reliable car I have ever had only needed a yearly service. Would love another one day!

There is no reason you can't enjoy running a daily retro reliably if you buy wisely.
Get something that is as rot free as possibly is the main thing, any other mechanical issues can usally be sorted out relatively easily and cheaply compared to a modern.
I would stick to 80s/90s stuff though, small cosmetic jobs and minor repairs are no issue as you see instant results to give you a sense of satisfaction rather than weeks of welding where there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
If I had to, I would have no issue with dailying an clean old Sierra or suchlike and things like these are comfy enough, you get used to what you drive very quickly.
I think you have maybe just bitten off more than you can chew.

I have, and at the time I was very disappointed in myself. It was a couple of years back and I wasn't working on my Mustang projects I didn't really want to get rid of them, but I needed to find a new place to store them, and I was slowly coming around to the realisation that I didn't have the time or the skills to fix them up, or even build one good one from the pair. So I sold them, I still feel that I let myself down, but deep down inside I know that if I still had them today they would've still been untouched, and on the to do list.

I do enjoy old cars, and even curse word cars! I enjoy the experience of driving them even though I'm not much good at working on them. I have found what works for me is buying something that's useable straight out of the box, and buying an unusable project means that I'll never get around to doing anything with it! I can do simple spanner twirling, but outside of that I have a very good mechanic that helps keep my fleet of rubbish on the road.

I think that true classics can be hard, they're fun to have, but require a fair amount of time and effort required to maintain their upkeep. Older retros can be the same, especially if they come home as a project in the first place. A ten year old retro (or even slightly newer) Is a good place to play. Depending on what it is they're often quite cheap as they sort of fall into the old banger category. But they're a little bit different to the new cars, plus you don't have to invest a huge amount of money in them to buy them, and you don't have to invest a huge amount of time in them to keep them going.

For me this makes them a lot less stressful to own, as it removes the constant worry that someone's going to drive into it and damage it, or that it will go off with a pop at any moment. If that should happen, because I have no financial, time, or even emotional investment in the car I can almost just walk away from it, sell it as spares, and look upon it as an opportunity to buy something new (to me).

Having said all of that I do kinda still miss those little Mustangs, and I do still miss my S-type, and the Scorpio that replaced it. But the reality was that if I had the space to store them they would've still never been fixed, so it's probably a good thing that I sold them. There's always going to be something new to drive that I've never had before, so the way I look at it is onwards and upwards! Just enjoy what you drive, and don't worry about having to restore some car that you think you should be restoring. If you feel you have to restore it, then that becomes a chore, and that will take all the fun out of it.

Lexus would be my choice

As someone said, buy for good bodywork/shell/chassis, everything else is cheaper and quicker to sort out, especially important if you pay someone to do it.

Everything other than body etc can be fixed without too much risk of time and cost spiralling to many times what was expected.


Bargains with bad shells are not bargains, not even if you do have the skills to fix it.
The same car with a good shell wont cost enough more to make fixing the bad one worthwhile, fixing shells is for cars that you love, and want to pour huge amounts of resources into (like my Carlton).