For many, me — the Rust Man himself — buying a 2014 BMW i3 was a massive surprise, and possibly cause for concern. “Has DT gone Hollywood?” one could hear whispering in the streets of Detroit, Pittsburgh, Lincoln, and other fine American midwestern cities. I don’t think I’ve gone Hollywood, but what I will tell you is this: I bought that i3 for a specific reason — LA was making me hate driving my classic cars. And to be clear: This was no fault of the cars, and very much just a byproduct of how LA is laid out, how it operates, and what I need from my cars.
I’m liking Los Angeles so far, after having spent a decade in the Motor City, which I quite liked as well. I’m still way behind in telling the story of the move, the pre-move party, and my current garage situation, but right now it seems everyone is curious about why the hell I bought a tiny electric BMW city car. Why would someone who once daily drove this:
And this:
And this:
Want to drive a newer BMW like this?:
It seems like a major 180.
LA’s Roads Will Chew You Up And Spit You Out
The answer lies in the way LA is laid out. Detroit, my former home, is basically one giant grid, with massively wide and traffic-free streets:
If I wanted to drive from my former home of Troy down to Detroit in my 1965 Plymouth Valiant, it was no trouble — I’d just head south on one of the gridded streets (Rochester Rd) then west on another wide and gridded street (14 mile road), then hit Woodward Avenue (that’s the one labeled “1”) and cruise down it at 45 mph until I got to Detroit. Literally three turns, including the one out of my driveway.
LA is different, in part because of its geography (lots of canyons) and in part because of how tightly everything is crammed together:
Look at that twisted up mess of roads. They’re hardly gridded at all, and in the areas where they appear to be, the grids themselves are tiny. There simply aren’t as many wide, traffic light-free surface streets that you can cruise for miles and miles, and the ones that do exist are choked with wild amounts of traffic.
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I’ve been driving my brother’s 1966 Ford Mustang and my 1985 Jeep J10 here every day, and it just hasn’t been working out. Specifically, I’m referring to my commute from studio City (labeled on that map with a heart) to Van Nuys just northwest. That’s even a gridded part of town, but because of traffic on surface streets, I’m forced to take the freeway. There’s no Woodward Avenue to cruise up, it’s 65 MPH followed by a hard stomp on the brake pedal, some slow moving traffic, then 65 MPG again — rinse and repeate. Meanwhile, vehicles are moving in and out of lanes on every side of me. There’s zero lane discipline.
When driving my old iron on the highway, all I see is danger. Huge, modern trucks and SUVs weaving in and out of my lane, stomping their brakes, and behaving erratically at the slightest sign of precipitation, of which there has been much lately. On surface streets, all I see is potential fender benders, as gridlock abounds.
Compared to Detroit, LA just doesn’t feel as conducive to classic-car commuting. Cruising on weekends? Absolutely. The weather is great (I’m told), and there really are some great cruising roads. But commuting on the highways, then gridlocked surface streets — it doesn’t feel safe to me, and it’s just unnerving.
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I don’t feel that way in the i3. The car is small, visibility is great, it’s quiet, it can handle high speeds without issue, and I know that if I crash it, I’ll have a much better chance of surviving than if I crashed one of my old cars. Also, less will be lost (as much as I appreciate the i3, it’s not rare). Just listen to how relaxed I sound in that video above; that’s not the case when I’m behind the wheel of my J10 on the highway, especially in the rain.
Parking Ain’t Easy
And then there’s the issue of parking. Believe it or not, the first-generation Ford Mustang is humongous, at over 15 feet in length. My 1985 Jeep J10 is well over 16 feet. These are long machines, and though they offer fairly decent visibility, it’s still hard to precisely park them in tight spots, especially without a backup camera. The i3 is about 13 feet long and comes equipped with parking sensors and a backup camera.
Again, I don’t need any of this fancy stuff, but it does help.
Gas Prices Are Tough
And then there’s the obvious point about gas costing $5 a gallon. I realize that buying an $11,000 BMW i3 that needs expensive insurance isn’t going to save me money, even over multiple years driving my 13 MPG Jeep J10, but there’s just something that feels off about pouring $100 worth of fuel in your vehicle each week. It hurts a bit. I guess if my i3 is reliable and holds its value, maybe it could save me long-term, but I’m not expecting any cheap electric car to hold its value long-term, as the technology is advancing too rapidly and government incentives keep bringing the price of new EVs down.
Still, it’s not about the money.There are many reasons why I bought the i3: I genuinely like it! I think it’s technologically fascinating, I think there’s value in getting the experience of driving an EV (especially given my current post), and there’s social value in being able to drive folks around in something they feel comfortable in (something I’m realizing as I get older).
But the big factors are me feeling safe, being able to park, not dealing with the sting of pouring hundreds of dollars into a car each week, getting the EV experience, saving my old machines from potential fender-benders, but above all: It’s about preserving my love for those machines. Because commuting in them, especially when I’m running late for a meeting, turns what I see as beautiful mechanical-partners into utilitarian objects that frankly don’t really do this specific job that well. And my old cars are so much more than that.
They’re soulful beasts that bring me genuine joy when I’m behind the wheel on a weekend, just cruising. My BMW i3 commuter is going to make sure that never changes.
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I moved away from the city. Traffic was the main motivator.
A fun car can make traffic seem even worse. If I’m sitting still with bursts of 30mph in a normal car, at least I feel like I’m not wasting it. Doing the same commute in a sports car with no chance of seeing anything around me because of the SUV parade is incredibly frustrating. Makes me feel claustrophobic.
Life is a series of value-judgements. I drove 80s Subarus for almost two decades ending in 2009 when I sold my last manual 4wd GL wagon. Got to drive it again some 6-7 years later and couldn’t believe how scary that shitbox was. And I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains where you absolutely can drive obsolete crap fairly safely.
Back when I commuted about 50 miles each way from Grass Valley CA to Folsom CA I was first driving my VW squareback, and then my ’80 VW Vanagon Westflia camper. Remember that an ’80 Vanagon is still air-cooled. Driving in the summer in the Sacrmento area regularly subjects vehicles and people to over 100 degree F temperatures. And on top of that, I also had to climb from about 90 feetto over 2000 feet. I basically abused that VW driving it in those conditions. Yet another aspect of driving a vintage-ish vehicle for commuting is abusing it due to conditions. And I basically didn’t have traffic as I arrived at work about 6:30 and left for home in the heat of the 3:00 afternoon.
It’s a pretty drive if you’re not looking at it every day. My AirBNB host in GV had been part of an effort to promote teleworking in Grass Valley back in the day, just to avoid clogging up the little highway there.
Everybody laughs at my Lancer until they realize that having a car that just works…works.
Totally understand.
I have my little 1990 Pontiac Sunbird as a weekend/cruise-in/fun car, and a 2016 Mazda6 as a daily driver and kid-hauler. The 6 just works and has ample safety features (and good crash test scores) to make me feel better about putting my kids in it and moseying through traffic on a daily basis.
Commuting in a cheap appliance car made me long for an expensive, comfortable, *quiet* appliance car. There’s a time and a place for enjoying an old shitheap but combat driving is not one of those.
I guess if my i3 is reliable and holds its value, maybe it could save me long-term
Did you miss the badge on the hood?
So true, if commuting kills the love of driving some, commuting in classics kills the joy of driving AND of driving them. Dailying your classic sounds badass until you’re operating your clutch 60 times in 30 minutes crawling in bumper to bumper traffic watching the temp gauge the whole time. Thanks for the reminder, had been considering whether I could daily my e28 when I get caught up on fixing the little things the PO ignored, but I will probably start hating it if I do!
Sometimes you just need a safe comfortable car to sit in traffic jams.
I’m surprised how long a Mustang is, and how short your J10 is. My F150 is over 20′ long and even a regular cab 8′ version is about 18′
I totally get David’s reasoning for the i3…good car for living in a big city environment. Over the last 20 years, I’ve lived and worked and commuted in 3 metro areas–Denver, Phoenix and Cleveland. Each w/ it’s own unique traffic and weather patterns. My current old cars (’67 Cougar, ’69 Mustang, ’87 Mustang GT) once they are restored and back on the road after being stored a long time will only be weekend toys. The ’87 Mustang GT was my daily driver in the late 90s in Colorado Springs, but it was only a decade old w/ 35k miles in ’97.
For the daily grind, I want something late model, comfortable w/ the modern conveniences, reliable and all weather capable..for the last 22+ years, it’s been a series of Jeep Grand Cherokees bought new or as CPOs…that will continue..
> reliable
> Jeep
Does not compute
Under 100k miles, mine have been reliable. I made the mistake of keeping one to 170k miles and had a lot of sensor and electronics failures. As with anything, it’s best to trade around 100k before major issues happen.
DT dont worry all of us aged out of barely capable vehicles to at least 1 safe secure comfortable car. Many of us have been begging you to trade in a half dozen crap buckets for 1 dependable car. Of course not all of us i was attacked for suggesting LA is a big city with large parking lots and traffic. I enjoyed my CA time and you will too. Dont let anyone tell you what to own or drive.
I left LA because the traffic was killing me. 100 miles everyday in that mess.
I miss it terribly, and whenever I go back, that hideous traffic feels right. It’s weird and truly irrational
Yup. Welcome to being a grown-up with responsibilities. My commuter appliances just work when they need to, they live outside, get washed occasionally, maintained by someone else, and replaced shortly after they are out of warranty. The little free time I have left, I get to spend working on what I choose. My days of wrenching all night so I can drive to work are over. A modern car not only makes commuter traffic so much easier, it holds up better too. In college I killed a classic AMC Eagle SX4 within a couple months delivering pizza. Aggressive driving, start/stops, and short trips, just tore it apart and I eventually just drove it to the junk yard. Was sad to see it go like that.
Outsiders may miss one of the underlying points that David made, so I will highlight it: As bad as the freeways may get out here, they are *still* better than the soul-sucking experience of driving on surface streets for any appreciable distance.
Perhaps that is to be expected in an urban megalopolis. The “stroads” of the midwest have been heavily criticized from a human factors POV of late, but the whole point is that they are nice to drive on, and they tend to exist in areas of low population density. L.A. is the opposite of that, as we generally have regular urban streets serving (vast) areas of high population density.
tl;dr — The Freeway Is Always Faster
Comparing Detroit traffic to LA traffic is not entirely fair. Detroit has wide North-South and East-West roads laid out on flat ground in a grid pattern, with stop lights generally at 1 mile intervals. This was all designed and built many years ago when the area’s population was MUCH larger than it is now. The roads in the Detroit Metro were built to serve a population and a traffic flow that no longer exists. Of course the streets flow freely! In 1994-95 when I lived in Utica, Michigan (20 miles north of the Detroit city center) and commuted into Highland Park, the boulevard-style roads were the way to go. I-75 South was jam-packed in the morning rush hour, and the same went for 75 North in the evening! My commute these days is in Southern California: running up and down I-15 (the 15, to SoCal types) between Corona and Fontana. It’s not too bad since I am willing to pay some tolls to save time. I usually cover 30 miles in 45 minutes in the morning, and I cover that distance in 45-60 minutes in the evening.
I spent a few days out in LA recently—even rented a house pretty close to where DTs heart is on the map.
As someone who’s lived in DC for 20 years, grew up in Detroit, and regularly drives in NYC, it is genuinely bizarre how awful it is to drive in LA. Like…just unbelievably bad.
I don’t mean the canyons, or Mulholland, or any of that. Those are great. But the day to day stuff? Jesus Happy Gilmore Christ. It’s a whole different thing, from the lack of big surface streets to the lack of freeways to the way that people drive.
You know what LA could use? Some frigging mass transit, that’s what.
LA has mass transit, I use it to commute 50/50 with driving off rush hour.
The Metro system is damn near unusable and *extremely unsafe* due to criminal activity.
Last week there was a guy on the floor of Union Station and I thought it was an OD until I saw the puddle of blood.
Source: L.A. Metro Crime Statistics Are an Absolute Horrorshow, LA Magazine, 3/1/23.
Grew up in LA, Live in Houston. I miss LA driving- Houston is the most dangerous metro in the US to drive and the entitlement here is on another level. I hear Atlanta is second and LA is a distant third. Houston seems to be a lot like LA- spread out with zero mass transit; except in LA people drive cars- here cars are few and far between. Everything here is a huge SUV or HUGE pickup.
With the exception of the Mustang, I have to laugh at your use of “classic car”.
Definitely not true.
How much longer until we can get rid of these fake accounts?
I don’t think you needed to go into this much detail to justify your purchase. Commuting in a project car can suck for multiple reasons, even if you’re not in L.A. My advice to any gearhead who wants to make a poor life decision and dive into an old car for fun is to make sure you have a reliable normal daily driver as well so you can still get to work when you inevitably get annoyed with the project and just want to shut the garage door on it and not think about it. That’s why I daily drive a Mazda 3 (which at 15 years old is starting to get into “project” territory itself) and save driving my 425HP ’85 Ford LTD for the weekend.
The four door Mustang? Nice choice!
Exactly this. An appliance allows you to get where you need to without killer levels of anxiety. That is my use-case for an automatic Camry, soul-sucking as it is.
I have a Prius, and while big horsepower or fancy luxury features may be far cooler, there is something impressive about a car that:
1) Starts every time,
2) Requires little to keep it on the road,
3) Delivers excellent gas mileage, and
4) While not “fast”, is leagues better than what a “gas saver” car used to be – thinking three cylinder Geo Metros.
Engineering went into this too, and they did a good job.
There’s nothing wrong with having a transportation appliance as your daily driver, and really I think the i3 goes beyond that level in being an interesting and quirky car. I think some sensible mods will help to hold your interest, and you’ll be a lot less likely to trash a really cool vehicle (the Nash, the ‘Stang, the J10).
With zero snark intended, welcome to being an adult. You’ll find that it’s actually nice to have a comfortable, reliable, safe, and rust-free ride that lets you indulge guilt-free in whatever other silliness you want to engage in for your other vehicles. Not having to wrench frantically just to have something to drive is a relief in itself. Restore or electrify the Nash as you wish, get the ‘Stang up to snuff, and turn the J10 into an old-school classic pickup that people will envy.
I got a lot of crap from some people for the 5 years I owned my Volt, but as an Electrical Engineer, I just found the technology fascinating and it was stupidly fun to see how many miles I could squeeze out of a charge and learning when to use the electricity vs. the gas on long trips. The Volt did a great job of letting you just drive it as it was, or letting you choose drive modes and customize things if you wanted to get more involved and squeak out more efficacy. It really made me a much more efficient driver too, even when I drive my gas vehicles. It’s just another type of driving experience and it’s so different from a gas engine. EV’s are also fun to drive, just in different ways. The torque off the line of an EV is just fun, and there’s so little energy penalty for flooring it in city driving (and it’s silent speed). Just be careful with spirited acceleration in that I3, because I hear it will chew through rear tires pretty quickly if you do it all the time.
As the resident of a major metropolitan area with its own traffic issues, I can certainly sympathize. Most days I just want something reliable, comfortable, doesn’t cost a ton of money to keep on the road, and has enough power to merge or pass in a tight spot.
Something “fun”, would be wasted most of the time. Something “rare”, too much risk with half the drivers looking at their phones instead of the road.
Save it for the weekend when I can head out to some back roads (which are often also clogged with others having the same idea) but at least its not 4 lanes of highway with construction zones and other nonsense slowing you down.
“There’s zero lane discipline”
This, this, a thousand times this. Six lanes of cars, all going the same speed, driving close enough nose to tail that you can’t weave them without putting yourself at risk. CA highways suck!
That’s just called driving?
The second part of that kind of explains the first. Lane discipline is for when some people are happy going the speed limit and some people want to go a bit faster or slower. You sort into lanes accordingly and everyone’s happy. In LA traffic, 100% of the people want to go faster than their current speed so the whole concept of a “passing lane” stops making sense.
Sadly, DT hasn’t gone Hollywood – he’s gone *appliance motoring* thanks to the hellscape that is LA. It’s sad to hear that a fun car is only usable on the weekends there.
Atlanta traffic rivals LA for mind-sucking tedium bracketed by wide-eyed terror. Fortunately I live way out of town and don’t commute so my daily drivers are a Corvair, BMW 2002, and NA Miata – all with manual transmission and ridiculously unsafe.
When I need enter The Perimeter (Thunderdome), I buckle into a beater Toyota Tundra.
Drove through Atlanta on a Saturday a couple of weeks ago – or should I say, I parked there. I couldn’t believe how bad the traffic was – 5 or 6 lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. I can’t imagine what it’s like during *rush hour*.
No it doesnt. ATLANTA gets real busy but it usually keeps moving. Sitting for 3 hours in the same spot on the 101 does happen. Add lousy signage where 101 sogns dissappear in favor of GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE SIGNS, its the same damn road.but travelers dont know that. My map said 101 to Eureka. When the sign saud turn right for the GGB i didnt turn. But hey found fishermans wharf and many non english speaking people trying to help me. Really great people they are as nice as anywhere except for the Porshe drivers. But hey 101? Pointing. 101 GGB? HEAD SHAKE. Back on.my way.
David is about to discover the joys of having One Good Car. If you have a reliable, low-fuss car as your daily driver, anything else you buy can be as weird, flaky and temperamental as you like, and you’ll still get around with minimal stress…in your One Good Car. Need to make a run for parts to fix your project car? Just take the One Good car! Don’t want to freak out your passengers by driving the old, weird car in heavy traffic? Drive the One Good Car! In David’s case, the One Good Car is better than most: a stylish German unit that says “I am a person who appreciates technology and a Scandinavian-style interior. Look upon your ordinary Hyundai and despair!”
Yep! I’d say the typical right way to do it is to have the One Good Car first and then buy the weird, flaky, and temperamental one as an extra. Or if you are a couple, always buy your partner the One Good Car first. It makes life easier… less interesting, but easier. Now that I have the means, my wife gets a new leased vehicle every 3 years, and I buy something 3 years old and drive it for about 5-6 years, or buy something new and drive it for 8-9 years. And when I get a car for myself it’s usually something she doesn’t want to drive. My last 3 have been a 5-speed Saturn Astra, a Gen 1 Chevy Volt, and now a RAM 1500. She did like the Volt though, so we are planning for her next car to be an EV or at least a PHEV.
Everything that you pointed out is what I experienced during my last six-week winter stay in southern California. LA freeways, while not the worst I’ve ever experienced as far as traffic jams go, but in a much different way like you describe. There is zero lane discipline and nobody is paying attention. The other things I noticed too were that the freeway lanes seem to be just a tad narrower than the freeways here around Detroit and you can’t go 2 minutes without seeing a ratty old pickup truck full of junk driving dangerously along the freeway.
I did pretty good with my Challenger and managed to avoid a few near misses, but I came to the conclusion that I will buy a car that I don’t care about (VW Passat?), is better on gas, and that I can keep stored somewhere out there that I can use when I stay out there. Maybe even keep it in Vegas and drive it to LA (cheaper storage and flights).
I can deal with the gas prices and I can even deal with the lack of driving skills out there, but I can’t deal with the constant worry of one of my cars that I truly care about getting fucked up out there. It was pretty stressful at times.