Cars that get driven twice a year

The enemy is stillness, not mileage

A car that is driven every day tells you when something is wrong. A car that is driven twice a year tells you nothing until the morning you need it, and then it tells you everything at once: a flat battery, a seized caliper, four flat-spotted tyres and a registration that lapsed in March.

Nothing here is exotic. It is the ordinary list, applied on a calendar instead of on a dashboard warning, because the dashboard is off.

Batteries

The most common reason a stored car will not start, and the easiest to solve.

Use a proper maintenance charger rather than a trickle charger left on indefinitely, one per car, and check that each is actually charging rather than merely plugged in. A charger with a fault light nobody looks at is not a maintenance regime.

Note the battery's age somewhere. A battery that has spent three years on a maintainer is still three years old, and it will fail on a cold morning like any other.

Tyres

Tyres take a set where they touch the ground. On a car that moves monthly this resolves itself; on one that sits for six months it may not.

• Check pressures on a schedule and inflate to the placard figure, or a little above if the car is genuinely being stored.
• Move the car periodically if you can, even a few metres. It is the simplest fix and it also exercises the brakes.
• Note the date codes. Tyres age out regardless of tread, and a collection car frequently wears tyres that look new and are a decade old. That is a safety item, not a cosmetic one.

Fluids, fuel and brakes

• Fuel ages, and modern petrol ages faster than people expect. Decide whether you are storing full to reduce condensation or using a stabiliser, and be consistent about it.
• Brake fluid is hygroscopic and works to a time interval rather than a distance one. A car that has done no miles can still be overdue.
• Coolant and oil change on time as well as on distance. Oil that has sat is not the same oil that went in.
• Brakes seize on cars that do not move, particularly with the parking brake applied in a damp garage. Chocks instead of the handbrake is the usual answer for long storage.

Where they are kept

Dry matters more than warm. A sealed garage with no ventilation and a concrete floor can be worse than a draughty one, because moisture comes up through the slab and condenses on cold metal.

Worth having: a hygrometer you actually look at, covers that breathe, and a plan for rodents that does not involve poison near a car's wiring. Also worth knowing: whether the building's power will survive a week away, since every maintainer in there depends on it.

The paperwork expires whether or not you drive

This is the half that ruins a Friday:

• Registration on each vehicle, and whether any is on a club or limited-use scheme with conditions attached to how and when it may be driven. Those conditions differ by state and by scheme, and they are worth confirming with the issuing authority rather than assuming they carry across a border.
• Insurance, and specifically whether each car is on an agreed value, when that value was last reviewed, and what the policy says about storage, use and who may drive.
• Roadworthy or inspection requirements, where they apply.
• Warranty or service intervals on anything modern enough to have them, which are usually time as well as distance.

Put every one of those dates in the same list, sorted by date rather than by car. Sorted by car, it reads as five tidy short lists and hides the fact that three things fall in the same fortnight.

The "ready by Friday" test

The honest measure of a collection's upkeep is a phone call on Monday asking for a particular car on Friday. Could you answer, today, without walking into the garage:

• When it last ran, and for how long
• The battery's age and whether it is on charge
• Tyre pressures and the date codes
• When it was last serviced, and by whom
• Whether its registration and insurance are current
• Whether anything is outstanding or on order for it

If the answer to most of those lives in one person's head, the collection is one resignation away from being a set of unknowns.

What to hold on file

Per car: identity and VIN, purchase and provenance documents, the service history with who did what, the running log, current registration and insurance with their expiry dates, tyre and battery ages, and the open items. Kept per car and sorted by date across the fleet, it answers both questions people actually ask, which are "is this one ready" and "what is due this month".

See how the operations view works, or read what to hold on file for a residence, which is the same problem with plant instead of cars.