A Prunedale man shares his simple love of mundane motor vehicles.

At 16, William Hughes had $100 to buy his first car. As it turned out, he only needed half that.

In 2006, Hughes, now 28, bought the 1973 Mercury Comet from a man who had bought the car for his daughter that year. She passed away five years later and the man kept it in a garage from 1978 until almost 30 years later, when Hughes bought it. He said Hughes could have the car for $50, provided he didn’t customize it whatsoever.

Hughes, a lifelong resident of Prunedale, calls it the “Vomit Comet.” Everything in the car is still original – complete with a working eight-track player and tapes from the ’70s. The only change was the original owner’s daughter had put in a V8 engine.

He has shown the car at the annual Concours d’Lemons during Monterey Car Week, which highlights historically bad or unpopular cars – AMC Pacers, Ford Pintos and other similar flops – but for Hughes, the Comet is just a normal car.

“The first three years of the show, I brought a DeLorean. I didn’t consider my ’70s cars to be lemons until others showed up at the show,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s a car and it drives. I’d rather have a good, working, old car than not.”

Hughes, who works as an assistant interior designer, also owns a 1929 Reo Flying Cloud and a 1945 Jeep from Ford. His 1976 Chevy Impala is a former police car with more than 650,000 miles on it, and is Hughes’ usual daily driver.

“I paid $500 for it and got my money’s worth,” he says.

Also in the arsenal is a 1976 Cadillac Coupe Deville, which was used in the background of 2013’s American Hustle, a film that starred Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper.

“The Mercury is good, but since it’s all original, it falls apart,” Hughes says. “The Cadillac gets 8 miles per gallon, but my wife loves it. If she had all the money in the world and didn’t have to worry about gas, she would want more Cadillacs.”

If Hughes had unlimited money, he would want a mid-’70s Delta 98, or his 1975 Chevy Caprice Classic, which was stolen.

While his cars may be lemons, they are functional.

“Lemon owners enjoy their cars and have driven them to death,” he says. “What makes cars a classic?”

The Concours d’Lemons is different from other Car Week events because it’s free, open to anyone and celebrates fun­ – a counterbalance to high-end auctions and shows just a few miles away.

“People say it brings Car Week down to earth, but when I go the Concours d’Elegance, I hear people say the d’Lemons is a piss-off and they hate it,” Hughes says. “They want it to be gone, because it’s Car Week, not junk week.”

But his junk cars actually get used. “Those [Concours] cars only see sunlight once a year,” Hughes says. “It’s a million-dollar piece of junk. Lemons cars are a 5 or 6 at best, and Concours cars are an 11 – but they’re perfect and people don’t take them out, because they are afraid of becoming a 9.”

CONCOURS D’LEMONS is 8am-1:30pm Saturday, Aug. 25, at Seaside City Hall, 440 Harcourt Ave., Seaside.24hoursoflemons.com/concours-d-lemons.