"Was one always a spare or did your wife have the exact same taste?"

No, it just kinda worked out that way. I had two classic Minis because the one that I bought used had a LOT of rust. I found a wrecked one and bought it thinking that I'd have spares of almost everything. Well, there were lotsa changes between the classics and little was actuall interchangeable so I wound up rebuilding the wrecked one. I had two Midgets because I fancied myself as a sportscar racer so I bought a used one to go racing in. At the time, I couldn't insure my new one if I raced it, and I had a car loan on it that demanded it be insured. So I bought a second one. I wasn't a good racer so I converted it back to a street car and put it up for sale. It took two years to sell it. I had two Fiats because we actually liked the first one and thought it would be fun and practical to have two if the same chasis cars. I thought I would learn everything about them and save thousands of dollars on repair costs by doing everything myself. I never learned how to prevent rust. I had two Chevettes because I bought one -- a 1.6 Ralley version -- and both my wife and I loved it. After arguing over who got to drive it, we decided to just buy another. We had 2 Honda 600s because we got a deal on them -- we had a Volvo 144 that we needed to trade, but it was worth more than the new Honda, so the dealer offered two with a loan of $1600 for 36 months. We needed two cars so I agreed to the deal. It was a neat little car to drive and I thought it would be fun to have two very small economical vehicles. I brought it home and my wife said NO. Then I told her I had already said yes and that there was a red one waiting for her at the Dealer. She hated me for about 6 months. She had good reason. We have two current Minis because my wife's daughter always wanted one so we went to look at them with her. My wife loved the car and so a used one came home with the daughter and a new one came home with us.

I neglected to mention that we also had 2 Lotus Europas -- both "S" models and bothe five-speeds. One had SUs and the other had Webers. Wonderful cars to drive. Unreliable, but wonderful. I bought one in California and one I "found" in a used car lot in Nashville. It was really ugly having been "stored" in a garage after it quit running and the owner came to grips with how much it cost to fix a Lotus. I bought it for $1200. Between the two of them, I had spares for almost everything and really loved the cars. I got reassigned to an area where I had only two parking spaces and no garage (read LA) and I couldn't afford them anyway, so they became a downpayment on a condo.

Long answer -- but I really did have two of a lot of things.

 

Two funny!

BTW, one way to prevent rust is to move to the southwest...

 

Great story.