Elana Scherr: The Best Cars Have Been Places, So Take It Out and Drive It

From the May/June 2025 issue of Car and Driver.Hemingway didn’t write the world’s saddest short story, although he’s often credited with it. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I can see pathos in the tale, but I don’t think it has to read as sad. It’s possible the baby just had big feet and the shoes didn’t fit. Maybe the in-laws bought the shoes and they have terrible taste. There are all kinds of reasons why new parents might have an excess of infant footwear. Babies don’t even really need shoes. If you want a poignant sentence, try “At auction: sports car, low miles.” I’m tearing up just thinking about it. Is there anything sadder than a good car, undriven? I don’t mean everything needs to come to the auction block with worn-smooth pedals and a rolled-over odometer. I’d be the first person to jump on a nice classic with, say, 60,000 miles or recommend a modern collectible that has yet to reach its dirty thirties, but when I see a 2022 Ford GT up for auction with 13 miles on it, I get the blues. Heck, I’ve driven a Ford GT more than 13 miles, and I’ve never even owned one. Those were memorable miles too, with the ocean mist of Big Sur whirling through the windows in the car’s flying-buttress roofline and the breathy turbo whistle ping-ponging off the cliff walls. If I hadn’t had to return the hotel pillow I stole so I could fit in the nonadjustable seat, I would have kept going till I ran out of gas or the Ford handlers caught up to me. The owner of this 13-mile car missed out on a good driving machine. If an unused supercar isn’t tragic enough for you, how about a 2001 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 that sold at auction in January with just 29 miles? That’s barely more than a mile per year of its life. It never left the garage. That’s not a sports car; it’s a veal calf. Greg Pajo|Car and DriverEven if you subscribe to the idea of buying a car as an investment and getting every dollar out of it upon resale, that Z06 went for $47,300, and a quick search of Vette sales shows similar models going for $35,000 to $45,000 with 250 times the mileage. Those owners had some fun and are still poised to make most of their purchase price back now that the time has come to move on. Some cars are vastly more valuable as a result of their low miles, but those are rarities—backup chassis for competition models that were never raced and are only now coming up for sale, or those occasional never-registered ’60s Impalas from forgotten dealerships that are finally liquidating. Even though nobody purposely bought those cars to not drive them, they can still bring low-mileage sorrows to the winning bidders, for two reasons. One, machines deteriorate while they sleep, and two, if your hook for paying top dollar was a car’s as-new status, every mile you add after that is just depreciation.Low Mileage Means You May Be Missing the Point”When it comes to actually using something, low mileage is an albatross around your neck,” says Jim Pickering, an automotive market analyst and author of several books on classic-car restoration. “You can’t drive it, because all the seals are going to be dried out. Injectors will be gummed up. Fuel tanks will be full of varnish. You can’t restore them, because the value is in the originality. People tend to think about cars as investments in the same category as stocks or bonds. And they miss the point that you’re supposed to be able to take these things out and enjoy them.” Aaron Kiley|Car and DriverEven though Pickering believes cars are best used for their intended purpose, he points out that I’m being unfair to claim that non-driving owners and investors get no joy from them. There are automotive spaces for cars that haven’t spent time on the road. A car like the low-mile Z06 might be eligible for competition in events like Bloomington Gold, where its Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperCar tires still whiskered by vent spews would inspire awe and jealousy in attendees. But: “If your enjoyment is having it in your garage, and everybody comes over and looks at it, there’s nothing wrong with that.”–Author Jim PickeringPeople like cars in different ways, he reminds me. Some owners just like the thrill of buying and selling, or find more pleasure in the having than the driving. “If your enjoyment is having it in your garage, and everybody comes over and looks at it, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. And, of course, Pickering is right. It’s good for the hobby to have a few original examples for future restorers to check paint markings on, but we only need a few. The rest should be out in the world finding the twistiest of roads and wearing not just the whiskers but also all the tread off their original tires. The best cars have been places. Take your car out, and let it run free.AuctioneeringLike a sleeper agent activated late in the game, Elana Scherr didn’t know her calling at a young age. Like many girls, she planned to be a vet-astronaut-artist, and came closest to that last one by attending UCLA art school. She painted images of cars, but did not own one. Elana reluctantly got a driver’s license at age 21 and discovered that she not only loved cars and wanted to drive them, but that other people loved cars and wanted to read about them, which meant somebody had to write about them. Since receiving activation codes, Elana has written for numerous car magazines and websites, covering classics, car culture, technology, motorsports, and new-car reviews. In 2020, she received a Best Feature award from the Motor Press Guild for the C/D story “A Drive through Classic Americana in a Polestar 2.”  In 2023, her Car and Driver feature story “In Washington, D.C.’s Secret Carpool Cabal, It’s a Daily Slug Fest” was awarded 1st place in the 16th Annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards by the Los Angeles Press Club.
 
Source: caranddriver.com