Last Monday, after waking up at the crack of noon, I made my way to Handlebar Coffee Roasters here in Santa Barbara. There, parked in the primo handicap spot near the front door, was a '95-or-so BMW 850CSi. A V-12 sleek shark among blunt crossovers, it was luscious, lascivious, and somewhat loony. It's a car I drove back in the day and remember with pointed passion. So, as I'm wont to do, I shot a few photos with my iPhone SE—official iPhone of old writers who refuse to join AARP—and posted them to Facebook.

"The one car to have if you're only having one car forever," I posted. That unleashed all sorts of comments from many of my 3323 friends. And the next day I posted again to keep the conversation going. "What is your one car to have if you're only having one car forever?" I added. My idea was to take all the resulting 195 comments and turn them into a column. And that's what you're reading now.

I've been writing about cars for nearly 30 years. So a lot of my friends are also writers or people in the car biz. Keep that in mind.

There's no one car everyone wants to keep forever. What's interesting is how people differ around the reasons for keeping that one around forever. They divide into general categories.

But there is one car that stands out among them all. Hint: It's not the 850CSi.

Sentimentalists

"My '92 Mustang GT, which I still have, that I bought new in college," wrote Vu Nguyen. "My kids are now 17, 15, and 10. They refer to the Mustang as their older sibling. And after all these years its looks and rumble still garner thumbs-ups every time I take it out. This is my forever car."

Kids who came to consider the Mustang a sibling. Vu Nguyen

Ford made a lot of '92 Mustangs, and none of them are truly practical cars. Lots of people have raced them, but there are faster race cars. And well, they were built like Fords. But all that doesn't matter to Nguyen because he's got one and he's got history with it. That's enough.

John Baechtel was my boss at Car Craft in the early '90s. I never pegged him for gush, but he's got a soft spot. "My 1968 Camaro SS 350 four-speed. Bought it new when I came back from Vietnam. Still my favorite after all these years and all the cars I have tested during my career." Baechtel bleeds nuts and bolts, but the first new car after coming back from Vietnam trumps test numbers.

"Already own it," explained Tim Esterdahl, a freelance writer summarizing the sentimentalist case for his well-beat '62 Chevrolet pickup. "I'm keeping this one forever. Kids get it when I'm six feet under."



Sentimentalists want connection more than reason. "My dad's 1989 911 coupe, the last car he bought before he died," wrote Bob Chapman. "It's the car in which I took him for rides in the Texas Hill Country when he was sick . . . the car that's in my garage."



Rationalists

Practical choices for practical reasons. "Jeep Wrangler Unlimited," Frank Williams precisely chose. "Holds three friends and cargo; almost infinitely personalizable; parts widely available." It makes perfect sense, but also somewhat drained of passion. And "personalizable" is a word of questionable provenance.

"Depends on the person," concludes Dominick Infante. "For a non-sports-car person, Subaru Outback. It goes off-road, is comfortable, safe, fits a ton of cargo, and will last forever. Still looks good outside a restaurant. For a sports-car person, any variation of the Porsche 911, for practicality, performance and funkiness." Yes, Infante is Subaru's pooh-bah of PR, but his professional bias doesn't diminish the power of his logic. And many other respondents came up with various Subaru products as the one vehicle to accompany them through life. And the Porsche 911 is the only sports car anyone mentioned as making logical sense to own forever.

Volvo, Mercedes-AMG, and Audi wagons got mentioned, too. Particularly the spectacular Audi RS6, which I find a damned near impossible proposition with which to argue. But I'm pretty sure the current RS6 will someday be superseded by a new one and I'll lust after that one even more. Plus Brian Scotto wants one, and I already resent his success over at Hoonigan.

’62 Chevy, already well on its way to "lifetime car" status. Tom Esterdahl

Trucks, from old F-100 pickups to current Raptors, were also frequently mentioned. Ben Stewart skewered me for not mentioning my two Toyota Tundras. "We're the trucks you always take pictures of, gush about in stories, and post loving comments on Facebook about," he wrote, hinting at my hypocrisy. "You're not loving us forever? Suck eggs, buddy."

Finally, proving she's the complete mom, Erin Riches, formerly of Edmunds.com, efficiently suggested the Mazda 5. I forgot they even made those, but it's only three years since they stopped.

Fantasists

These are the people who dream big and in great detail. "My choice is this: a Marina Blue '67 Corvette coupe with an L79 350-hp 327 and a Muncie four-speed," wrote Miles Cook, who also worked at Car Craft and graduated from the same high school I did. "Swap a Tremec TKO five-speed into it, add a set of 16-inch Rally wheels, then drive and enjoy." Cook dreams in spec sheets.

There's really only one vehicle that was mentioned for all three reasons.

"Original 1920s WO Bentley,” asserts Andrew Comrie-Picard. "Can take four people and luggage from Peking to Paris, be repaired with fire and anvil in Kashmir, and still take stall number one at the Ritz.” I'm with Comrie-Picard's spirit of adventure, but I want A/C and power windows on anything I'm keeping forever. And I'm staying away from Kashmir.



Karl Brauer, whose career peaked as an editorial assistant at Hot Rod, asserts that the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is the ideal 800-hp family car. His argument that it's a practical everyday machine is long and extensive. It is also, to me, totally unconvincing.

Mike Allen, who wrote for Popular Mechanics, hit the fantasist sweet spot with his post. "Porsche 911 Turbo Tiptronic. Stupid fast, comfortable on long trips, happy chugging along in Lincoln Tunnel traffic."

The Car to Keep Forever



Those were three general categories of reasoning, and there's really only one vehicle that was mentioned for all three reasons. That, of course, is the Porsche 911.

Sorry, 850CSi, I was wrong.

I don't know anyone, even the most muscle-minded lunk or Brit-car loyalist, who doesn't look at the 911 at least occasionally and think, "I could drive that thing forever." The early 911s are built like tanks, are easy to work on, and, even nearly 60 years on, are still among the very most rewarding cars to drive.

Pick your year: This one’s a 1993 Porsche 911.

Go up through all the permutations of this Porsche, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991, and whatever the new one is, and they all are staggeringly attractive. The new 911s will need rocket scientists using specialized supercomputers to keep them working well, but I get the feeling that the expense will be worth it.

So I hereby pronounce, probably to the surprise of almost no one, that the one consensus car to drive and keep forever is the Porsche 911.

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