Car friendly retirement area (warm)

[carguy4sp]

Hey guys I will be retiring in a couple of years and have started to search areas for car friendly city.

I live in Florida now and they are very restrictive about working on your own car at home, if you spit they will cite you. They go around lifting car covers on your vehicles to see if they are tagged in my own driveway. Man that’s bad....

So when we retire we would like to move to a more rural setting with maybe 3 to 5 acres where we can work on our cars and not be bothered by nosey people or public officials.

We would also like to move to an area that has a lot going on as far as car shows and swap meets and maybe a flea market or two.

I am a car show Judge so I would like to stay active in that area.

We are Ford people thru and thru but we still enjoy looking at everyone’s hard work no matter whar they drive.

We will be traveling to Moultrie Ga swap meet in Nov and look around that area to see if it is a car town or not...

Any ideas or a direction to start looking would be great.

Thanks
Rod and Alicia

[cffisher]

If your in Florida YOU wouldn't like Michigan but I'm on 5 acres my shop is 70' long I have several cars out side without plates. no one says anything as long as its not an unsitely mess. If you have a 6' fence around an area and they can't see in they don't care whats inside.Personaly I love it here winter gives me time to build. Loots of car shows in nice weather. I used to live in Chicago and judged lots of shows there. Since I'm here I just enjoy them. Good luck in your search.

[HOTRODPAINT]

How far do you want to go? Are you going to have family or friends left in Florida, that you want to see occasionally?

Central or southern Arizona is nice. It sounds hot, but when the humidity is low, the temps feel cooler than they would be there. We also don't have hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, volcanos, or even poison ivy or alligators. :-)

If you want lots of sunshine and plenty of car activities, we've got 'em. Anything you can think of. You are also within driving range of LasVegas and southern California.

Oh yeah... and the cars aren't rusted out!!!!

[old ford]

Rod, I live in Northwest Arkansas in the heart of the ozarks. The country here is beautiful. The home prices are not inflated, the taxes are within reason, i'm within 20 miles of 3 beautiful lakes and Branson, Mo. Winters are not bad. I moved here from central Kansas, (a 60 year resident of there) and climate is much better. I have 2 street rods and there are car shows almost every weekend in the spring, summer, and fall months. No hassle if you want to work on your ride at home. If you like beautiful country, good old southern boys, and no hurricanes we got it.

[IC2]

We will be moving to Virginia if we can find a home that, first of all, makes my wife happy and secondly, I don't have to "restore" since after doing the last three, I'm burned out from too many 2x4's and sheet rock. What we have found in the Roanoke area are homes on 3 to 18 acres for about what we own on a wee bit less then one acre and taxes 1/3 of what I'm paying now. The summer is at least one month earlier and ends ~2 months later - and one home we looked at had a very nice '37 coupe in the second garage/workshop

[Bruce lee]

You don't need a realtor, you need a time machine that goes back in time.

[hotrodstude]

ga. is ok but if you go to the rural areas the natives are not very nice down right hostal.

[Itoldyouso]

While I admit Ft Myers isn't exactly Heaven when it comes to car related stuff, it isn't horrible either. We are getting more and more car events (Billetproof, Garlits shows, etc.) and there are a bunch of local goings on every week somewhere (Merchants Crossing, Main Street Ft Myers Beach, Perkins, Mels Diner, etc) I don't personally go to many of the local events because I got burned out on sitting on a lawn chair for 8 hours a long time ago, but I do make the long distance shows pretty often.

If your other reason for wanting to move is the code enforcement thing, I do understand that. We owned a home in Cape Coral for years and the Code Enforcement Nazis were unbelievable. All you could legally do in your own garage was to change spark plugs and oil. But I even see the reasoning for that now that I am older. No one wants to live next to someone who is building a car in their driveway, it just isn't considerate.

There are enough empty shops in commercial areas here now reasonably priced so that you can legally work on your cars to your hearts content. We have done exactly that for the past 12 years and can be grinding and hammering away at 4 am with no one to complain. It isn't cheap, but it sure would be cheaper than uprooting your entire life and moving across country.

We have lived in Pennsylvania, California, North Carolina, and now Florida, and I can attest than no place is perfect.........they all have their pluses and minuses. You just have to adjust your life and make the best of the good.

Don

[Daffy427]

I'm one county north of Fort Myers and we have a ton of car shows and cruises year round here. I manage the local junkyard so I have storage for the ugly stuff. Like Don says it's kinda hard to build a car in your driveway if you want to live somewhere nice. I'd never go back up north though. 90 days of nice weather is not enough for me in a year..lol

[HOSS429]

bama .. tenn .. mississippi .. all of us are still 50 years in the past .. come on up

[MelloYello]

Austin and San Antonio are really nice cities. Very friendly and lots of Car People. Austin has managed to stay pretty prosperous in spite of the crap in D.C.

[Matt167]

We will be moving to Virginia if we can find a home that, first of all, makes my wife happy and secondly, I don't have to "restore" since after doing the last three, I'm burned out from too many 2x4's and sheet rock. What we have found in the Roanoke area are homes on 3 to 18 acres for about what we own on a wee bit less then one acre and taxes 1/3 of what I'm paying now. The summer is at least one month earlier and ends ~2 months later - and one home we looked at had a very nice '37 coupe in the second garage/workshop

that's where I would like to move.. I have Family in Christiansburg

[djv8ga]

+1 for central Az. LOTS of cool Gearheads in the Prescott area and real estate is a bargain right now.

[techinspector1]

If you ever came out to AZ and spent any time at all, you wouldn't want to leave. Maricopa (Phoenix) and Pima (Tucson) counties have vehicle emissions inspections and will hassle you just like anywhere else. No other counties in the State have inspections and will leave you alone. Best all around weather and conditions are probably around Fort Huachuka (Sierra Vista), 60 miles southeast of Tucson. If I wanted to relocate within AZ, that's where I'd go. Brand new world-class 1/4 mile drag strip in Tucson (Southwest International Raceway). I like the Prescott area also, but it gets a little snow in the winter. Too cold for me.

Like HOTRODPAINT said, no tornados, no hurricanes, no floods, no earthquakes, no mosquitoes, no sweat bees, no snow, no sleet, no freezing rain, no blizzards, no volcanos, no poison ivy and no alligators.

[Cape Cod Bob]

I would love to move to Tenn if the wife would stay here!