Life, The Human Condition And Ways To Shelter Your Car

So what are the options when it comes sheltering your car - and no, this is not a trick question. Obviously these essentially include a secure masonry garage, a purpose built carport, a temporary or portable shelter, and leaving it exposed to the elements. So what are the pros and cons of each approach?

Well clearly cost is a factor, but all is not as simple might at first appear. If you park your car alfresco then it will be subject to whatever the weather and the local wildlife can throw at it. This is likely to result in faded paintwork due to the sun and varying amounts of dust, tree pollen, ash, bird crap and whatever else falls out of the sky in your neighbourhood.

A car that doesn't look so good isn't going to be worth so much either which means there is an economic cost associated with parking outdoors without shelter. Also there is an indirect "personal" cost if you actually value driving around in a smart looking car. In order to keep up appearances you're going to have to change your car more often and get less than you otherwise might each time, which is not exactly the most cost effective strategy for car ownership.

On the other hand, you could construct some form of shelter, assuming that the reason you park outside is one of necessity rather than choice. Now the trade off that needs to be assessed is between the cost of building the shelter, savings on the depreciation in the value of your car and how much you value your possessions. Because the fact is that a car is not just a means of transport, but acts as a form of personal statement about its owner.

People use the car you drive as shorthand to pigeon-hole you just as surely as they use the clothes you wear. You might not like to think they do, but they do and if you're honest so do you. Sure, you may place less emphasis on choice of vehicle and form impressions based on people’s finger nails or their shoes or their use of eye-contact, but we all engage in this one way or another. Its part of human DNA, so enough with the high-minded denial - it shouldn't matter how someone "appears", but the fact is that it does.

So back to building the shelter... Ultimately, the real financial differential (i.e. the one your accountant can write down for depreciation of assets) between a car with great paint for its age and one that's seen better days is not that great. A car is after all worth rather more than the state of its paint job. So investing in any kind of shelter is more likely to end up costing more than it saves (by protecting your car).

But as we have already noted, that's not the whole story. If it's important that you project a particular image (sales people, business owners, and company executives for example) than showing up in a battered jalopy could be seen as a somewhat career limiting and actually damage your potential earnings quite significantly.

Also, if the thought of changing your car every couple of years, and in the interim spending your weekends cleaning and polishing, makes you wince then just maybe buying a shelter might turn out to be something of an investment. Just because an accountant can't put a price on how much you would really rather not spend Sunday at the carwash, doesn't mean it doesn't have real value to you.

So let's examine the real costs of different forms of car shelter. These of course include the underlying economic costs which are always much more interesting than the more obvious purchase, installation and maintenance costs. On the subject of which, we may as well get those out of the way first.

At the lower end of the scale comes the portable (or temporary) carport. These are typically little more than a lightweight metal frame that supports a material canopy - a glorified tent or gazebo if you like. Fairly cheap, very easy and quick to erect but not exactly robust or made to last. Further along we have fixed carports of varying kinds, many of which are designed as kits for self-assembly. Here the choice is between wood, which costs more but looks extremely attractive, and cheaper metal versions that can border on downright ugly. Either way, the protection offered is very good and they will last many years. Finally there is the purpose built garage that offers the most in terms of physical security but is also the most expensive option.

So which protects your car best? Interestingly, the additional security that a garage affords is largely irrelevant these days. Virtually all modern cars have such effective built-in security that car thieves invariably break in to the house first in order to steal the keys. When it comes to shelter from the elements then you will get better protection from frost inside a garage, but on the other hand, parking a wet car indoors will increase the likelihood of rust developing - you're better off allowing a natural breeze to get at it. All forms of car shelter will provide shade from the sun and keep airborne pollutants off.

From which we can conclude that there's not much to choose between the various options as regards the level of shelter on offer. So what other factors are there to consider? Well many folk enjoy the convenience of being able to access their vehicle directly from inside their home, which is something only an integrated garage or a carport attached to the house can provide. But in the end the decision very often comes down to good old appearance (again).

There's no getting away from it - as a species we're deeply superficial on so many levels. No one wants to spend good money on providing shelter for a car (the direct payback from which is dubious in the extreme) and at the same time wreck the visual aesthetics of their property and thereby also it's financial value. On the other hand it's amazing how many people try to persuade themselves, and anyone who asks, that the reason they built an attractive looking wood carport or tacked on a garage (and then spent even more installing nice wooden garage doors to match the house) was to shelter the car.

Horse feathers! Protecting the car was simply a smoke screen; the perfect excuse to do what they really wanted to do - enhance their home. I have a new-ish neighbour who bought a reasonably large house across the street that had no place to park a car (other than the drive). His first move was to erect a temporary car shelter over his beloved Aston Martin (it was after all parked under a tree). It worked absolutely fine - the car was always in great condition. But it didn't take him long to understand that having a "tent" on his drive didn't suit the image he preferred to project, so before long some men showed up, cleared a few trees and built a nice double garage to perfectly complement the house.

The neighbour still parks his car on the drive but continues to insist that he built the garage to shelter his beautiful car. What can I say? But we all get up to this type of deception in some form - pretending to ourselves and everyone else that the reasons we do things are logical, plausible and reasonable. Like installing a nice wood carport because, well duh, quite clearly we need somewhere to "shelter" the car, obviously! Anything but admit the real reason - that we simply want our home to look nicer and feel ever so slightly superior (or close the inferiority gap) to our neighbours.