There is nothing wrong with taking care of a vehicle.
On the other hand if you count the thousands of hours spent washing your vehicles at a fair wage, I feel that I come out much further ahead by not doing all that work.
A good friend is very meticulous about caring for his vehicles. He is always cleaning, polishing, and obsessing over every detail. When he does replace them he gets top dollar but the extra few hundred $$ pales in comparison to the time and labor put into the vehicles.
Like Gdetrailer said, around here vehicles rust and fall apart no matter what you do.