The main difference, of course, is that I spent maybe $700 total on those 4 bikes, and they take up just 20 square feet of storage space. Also, they don't depreciate and they deteriorate very little. And maintenance costs around $40 per year.
Hey, do it right, you can spend $700 on a couple cars too! ;) Storage space is a bit more, but at that price range, the cars appreciate based on repairs and fuel in the tank.
In the 2003-2008 era:
$100 for a 1988 Subaru DL, bad clutch cable, serious oil leak from the valve cover, bad alternator diodes, a few other things.
$150 for a 1992 Daihatsu Charade, on the "Junk yard offered me $125, beat it and it's yours!" price.
$200 for a 1988 Cavalier, gutted interior. I proceeded to add a 2' plywood spoiler and piss off all the ricers in town, who broke said wing every few months.
$350 for a 1987 Subaru GL wagon, with low range, from the junk yard. Fuel pump was shot (pulsation damper failed and it pumped fuel overboard), rear brakes were comically out of adjustment and leaking, various other issues.
And then I had some other cars that cost more, starting in the $2000 range, but cheap cars can be had very, very cheap...
I don't quite understand. Why do you have five cars. If they all work, wouldn't just keeping one car be sufficient?
"Work," for a car in that general price range, is a sliding scale of, "Can I make it to work with what's currently wrong on it?" Small coolant leak? Probably, but you might not want to drive it in case it gets worse, and the line takes a few hours to replace. Or the CV joint is clacking really badly, and you don't want to stress it. Or the heater baffles aren't working right, and the radiator is leaking a bit...
I don't see a need for 5, but when I had a fleet of cheap vehicles, "keeping one working at modern reliability levels" would have cost a good bit more than having a few options. Though there were certainly nights of, "Ok... go by the parts store on the way home from work, get parts, spend the evening and into the night working on vehicles to have something to drive to work tomorrow." I won't say it was the most fun, but I really didn't mind it, and it wasn't like I could afford shop fees.
I was in grad school before I was able to afford to take a car to a shop on my own dime. It was roughly 0F out, and one of my wheel bearings had gone from "This should be done soon" to "This needs to be done now, and you probably shouldn't drive on it" over the course of a week or so. I wasn't looking forward to working on the car outside (didn't have a garage at that point), and after realizing that I could get a shop to do both sides for a few hundred,
and that I actually had the money for that, I wrote a very easy check for someone else to do the work. I would have needed to take the front suspension apart, then drag the parts into a shop anyway for them to press the bearing races out, and put it back - not hard, other than driving the CV out. But I ran a non-zero risk of thermal damage to my hands doing it outside.
Yet I have much greater flexibility than I'd have with one new or late model car.
Yup. I use to joke, "I don't make car payments - I make parts payments. But if I can't make parts payments this month, I just walk, and they don't take the car back either." I generally found it was around 6 months and $500 in parts to bring a "new-to-me" cheap car up to my standards, but after that, they usually calmed down and stopped demanding parts.