Chasing Perfection – Should You?

See that up there? The old Mercedes-Benz with the silly wheels? Yeah, that’s mine. Or one of mine. It’s worth about four quid, yet I lavished attention upon it. I do it with all my cars. I have a problem, and it’s a problem that I know a great deal of you suffer with, too. You, like me, chase perfection. Now, in my case, it’s outright silly, as I dabble with a revolving door of old, cheaper cars. I like taking something down at heel and making it better. Then rinse and repeat. It’s my hobby. I never make any money from this hobby, but I do derive a huge amount of satisfaction from giving an old car a second chance. But it’s not sensible. I’ll readily spend more than is entirely logical on an old car.

How it started. Rough. 

But that’s me. You might be sat there, reading this, thinking that chasing perfection is a valid and justified pursuit when related to car worth more than a multi-pack of Quavers. And while there is some sound logic in that, I’m here to tell you it’s not entirely true. Chasing perfection is an endless, thankless, frustrating habit that can dampen the experience of owning a classic. Why? Because it’s your perception of perfection, and by the very virtue of your (and my) determination to hunt it down you will never achieve it. There will always be something else. Another thing to change, to tweak, to repair… though those things probably won’t, in all reality, need to be touched. Carrot, stick. It’s the same mentality.

The solution? Take a step back, take a breather, stop looking for that perfect bit of trim to replace what is ostensibly an already decent part and instead, pick up the keys and go for a drive. Engage with your classic and use it in the manner its designers intended. Remind yourself why you bought the car in the first place. Take it to the pub, order an orange and lemonade, then sit and gaze upon your classic. Fall in love with it again. Stop finding work that isn’t there.

In doing so, you’ll no doubt be subject to people outright swooning over your car. It happens to me when I take one of my other cars out, one that I have been chasing perfection on for half a decade. People will be amazed at the condition, the shine, the sound. They’ll eagerly tell me how good it is, and in those moments I have to remind myself that the onlooker sees the car in a different way. My need for perfection stems from me owning the car, as does yours. We see them differently, and we see them more acutely. We criticise and we stress over things that really, nobody else would notice. And that’s not to say we should make our cars great to appeal to other people, what I mean is that we can lose perspective on what we have achieved.

One thing that helps me, a lot, is to look back at photographs of my cars when I bought them, then look at the car now. It’s a great, to use that word again, way to realign your perspective. The familiarity we have with our cars robs us of that. It’s like looking at your adult kids and still thinking they’re toddlers, or someone telling you you’ve lost weight but you don’t believe them because you’re not witness to any dramatic before and after. You have a constant, not a comparison. That’s why we chase perfection, because we still see the old car we bought that needed a load of work. We need to step back sometimes and get a bit of distance.

Of course, that’s not to say I’m telling you to stop chasing perfection completely. I’m sure a great many of you have cars that are worth the effort. Proper, bona fide, high value classics that will benefit from your fastidious eye. I should pack it in with my bargain basement cars (but I won’t). If you have a classic slice of exotica though, crack on. But, please, for me and for you, take a step back every now and then and just engage with it. Drive it. Take yourself back to the mindset and utter joy from when you first bought it. That will keep the relationship and the passion going, it will balance out the frustration that comes from hunting perfection down. It will be worth it. Trust me.