A car that you don't drive but you leave it in front of the house. This is a yard car. You leave it in front of the house to make it look like someone is home. Unlike an earlier definition, this car must be believable, that is no flats, no grass growing under it, or other indications that it might not be in use. Wash it. Move it, that is, push it at least ten feet every few days. To friends you don't entirely trust, refer to it as "Bubba's Volvo" and mention Bubba being on probation.
Neighbor: Hey, Jim. I dropped by the other day to borrow your weed eater, which I'll return with the hedge trimmer. That Volvo was here, but nobody answered the door.
Resident: Oh, yeah. That'sBubba's Volvo. He drops by once in a while, especially when he needs to avoid his probation officer.
Neighbor: Lemme get that trimmer for you. (exit neighbor).
Resident (muttering to himself):
Yard cars are a good thing.
Fogey/fogy /fougi/ sl. (early 18C+, orig. Scot) old-fashioned, stuck-in-the mud.
Person with old fashioned ideas which he is unwilling to change: Come to the disco and stop being such an old fogey!
You think me an old fogeyand an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connel’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connel did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. (James Joyce, Ulysses. Penguin Books,1992. p. 38)