Car snobbery

It dawned on me recently that my car is probably the oldest and shittest looking car when I park in any of the work sites. Sometimes this really bothers me and I wonder why I'm always resigned to driving crappy cars, especially if I end up parked next to something nice (the answer is my near retardation with finances). But then I remember that there's no point having a nice car because it would lose shitloads of value the instant I drove it up the track and it got scratched and covered in mud.

On the other hand, I've found it's quite a relief not giving a sod about scratches or dents. So long as it drives well, and the panels are approximately the right shape and the doors and windows open and close properly, I've decided it doesn't matter too much what it looks like. Especially as I've discovered the AX must have been in a crash once as the bumper, bonnet, offside wing, door and headlights are from a white older model and have been resprayed in an almost but not quite right shade of red.

I was thinking that if I ever did modify a car, it would be more fun to keep it looking shed-like but upgrade the mechanicals so it drove and handled really well, like a stealth thing. I think people do this already and call them 'sleepers'.