You spend a lot of money on them, so take care of luxury cars
Congratulations on your luxury vehicle ownership! It might be your first one, stepping up in the world, or it may be just the most recent acquisition of several that you currently own. Either way, owning luxury cars is an exciting proposition but it doesn’t come without hazards.
Let’s face it, if you drive a high-end vehicle like Land Rover, Porsche, Ferrari, or Lamborghini (among many others) you’re going to draw attention when you drive your car in the regular situations. Unless you’re driving in Dubai or on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, a luxury car brand is going to be the focus of many stares.
So don’t you want it to look pristine? Don’t you want it to work at its peak performance? Here are five ways to best care for your luxury car, for your sake and the sake of others.
Protect Your Vehicle’s Condition
What this doesn’t mean is being the pompous jerk who takes up three parking spots so nobody parks their vehicle close enough to ding it. That doesn’t protect your car – people go out of their way to scratch or ding ‘those guys’. What that means is to be mindful of what the environment does to your car.
The UV rays from the sun can and will cause extensive damage to your car whether it is a $1,000 Toyota clunker or a $500,000 Lamborghini supercar. It beats down on your paint, your exterior trim, your tires, and your interior components and degrades them. If you’ve seen cracking on dash or door panels, that’s from exposure to the sun’s UV rays. Same with faded paint, whitish-looking plastic exterior panels, and weather cracks on tires.
Park your vehicle in a garage wherever possible, out of the direct sunlight. Use a car cover if your car is going to be sitting for any length of time longer than a few days. This will protect your car’s exterior finish and interior plastics from degrading due to the sun’s powerful effects. Just don’t be the guy who uses a car cover when they head into the office for a few hours. Nobody likes that guy.
Perform Your Scheduled Oil Change
This sounds like one of the most basic, useless tips, but in fact is an area luxury car owners fall down regularly. Luxury car manufacturers use top quality components and fluids so your vehicle won’t need to be maintained as often. For example, fully-synthetic oil is used in many Porsche models including the 911 GT3 and only needs to be changed every 2 years or 15,000 miles.
The problem is that more often than not luxury cars are driven far less than the average vehicle. If you only drive 5,000 miles per year, you may think you can get away with changing your engine oil every third year. Don’t fall into this temptation!
Your engine oil degrades whether you drive the car or not. Moisture forms in the crankcase. You need to get the contaminants out of your engine so they don’t cause lasting damage. Err on the side of caution and get your oil change (expensive as it may be) performed at or before your service interval.
