My car is a piece of junk, and I mean that with my whole heart. It leaks something I have not identified yet. There is a rattle that shows up around forty miles an hour and vanishes the second I bring it to anyone who might diagnose it. The interior has a smell that is either nostalgia or a slow oil fire. I would not trade it for anything with a warranty.
When I restarted the YouTube channel, I called it Pursuit of Something. The car people saw the other name hiding inside it before I said a word. POS. Every project car is a POS. In this world that is not an insult, it is a badge. It is what you call the machine you love too much to be reasonable about.
I think the POS is one of the most honest things a person can own. It does not pretend. It cannot pretend. A new car hides its flaws behind software and a dealership that will make the noise go away for a fee. A project car hands you the flaws directly and asks what you are going to do about them. That is a relationship, not a transaction.
People assume the goal is to finish. Get the car perfect, park it, take the photo, move on. But I have never met anyone who actually finished. The ones who love it always find one more thing. Not because the car demands it, but because the doing is the point. The finished car was never the reward. The Saturday in the garage was.
There was a version of me that measured those Saturdays like a project plan. Goal, timeline, a clean shirt and a beer by sunset. Most Saturdays did not go like that. I would fix one thing and find two more, and close the garage door feeling further behind than when I opened it. It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand that the garage is not a project plan. It is a room where the world stops asking you to be useful for a few hours.
Some of my favorite moments with cars have nothing to do with mine. Standing on a street in Tokyo watching an old Porsche idle past a coffee shop. A neighbor who wanders over not to help but to lean on the fender and talk about nothing. The guy at the parts counter who knows your name. The cars are the excuse. The people are the reason.
The POS Club is not really about cars. It is about the permission to love something that is not finished. Your car. Your business. Your work. Yourself. All of it a little rough, a little unresolved, a little embarrassing under good light, and worth showing up for anyway.
So if your project has a rattle you cannot find and a smell you cannot place and a to-do list that never gets shorter, you are already a member. Welcome. Mine leaks too.