What have you seen in a junkyard? rare? weird? odd ? etc.

Kevin Channer

True Classic
As an avid junkyard hound for the past 15 yrs, I have seen some things. Most of the searching has been Fiat or Italian car specific, but I enjoyed discovering other rare cars. Perhaps the rarest Fiat was a 125 sedan, (15yrs ago) It was complete and rust free, looked like it was rolled out of garage, lots of dust and cob webs. Sadly I could not save it, the only item I bought was a jack, green grey with a yellow instruction decal in Italian. Among the other cars I have seen: A NSU, Lancia Beta sedan, Mazda 323gtx, Toyota Celica alltrac, Renault Carevelle,VW Thing, Maserati Quattraporte, a mint Fiat 128 3p, Alfa Romeo Guilia, Volvo 242 GT. There many others I probably can't remember. What have you seen?
 
Years ago (back in the late 80's) I saw a black Fiat X1/9 in a junkyard in Virginia Beach, kind of off in the weeds, and went to check it out for parts. When I opened the engine bay I was shocked to see a Lancia twin cam motor in the car. I couldn't believe someone would junk a car after doing all that work. I also couldn't believe someone put a twin cam motor in an X1/9. Of course, nowadays I know such things are not only possible but have been done quite a few times, but back then I didn't know that.
 
I found a '77 X1/9 in a junkyard when I was in school ('85). Green/blueish with a white interior. Some rust but not bad condition at all. I thought the headlight motors might be bad because the headlights were up. When I asked about it, the yard told me the engine was seized. I gave them $50 for the car and $35 to tow it to my "driveway". Eager to fix it (I was without a car at the time) I started tearing the engine apart. I was very surprised to find new parts - bearings, gaskets, seals, etc. Inspection of the parts showed that there was no reason the engine should be locked up. So, I put it all back together. Once it was all back together I bought a battery and installed it. Then I tried to start the car. I turned the key and - nothing. WTF!? I knew it wasn't locked up. So I yanked the starter off only to find the starter solenoid was bad. I pulled it apart, turned the contact bar around and reinstalled it. The engine fired up and the car ran like a top.
BTW the plates on the car read - FROGGY.
 
Years ago (back in the late 80's) I saw a black Fiat X1/9 in a junkyard in Virginia Beach, kind of off in the weeds, and went to check it out for parts. When I opened the engine bay I was shocked to see a Lancia twin cam motor in the car. I couldn't believe someone would junk a car after doing all that work. I also couldn't believe someone put a twin cam motor in an X1/9. Of course, nowadays I know such things are not only possible but have been done quite a few times, but back then I didn't know that.
That brings up an interesting point; why they were junked? most of the cars I mentioned were intact, some recently ran. I am sure there are many reasons. Never the less to a motorhead it is sad.
 
I grew up in the Palm Springs (CA) area back in the 60's, where a lot of Hollywood celebrities had vacation homes. It was common for them to keep vehicles at their desert homes, usually cars deemed appropriate for a person with money to drive around and be seen in (exotics, luxury, Euro sports, etc). Often such cars were left un-driven for years in the dry hot desert climate, resulting in them needing expensive repair work to make them road worthy again. So it was not unusual for people of this category to simply dispose of these vehicles rather than be bothered with the repair work (although there were a couple of local specialty repair shops that made a fortune off them as well). In those days a car that was no longer wanted would be towed away and ended up in the salvage/wrecking yards. Unfortunately these vehicles did not have the value then they do now, and the majority of "locals" in that area were not exactly well-off (nor very bright...self included), so no one wanted to take on these projects. Therefore they were crushed as scrap.

Some examples: A early Lotus Europa. A couple of extremely rare early (pre US import) air-cooled VW's. An unidentified German military vehicle from the WW1 era. A Maserati Bora (remember when they weren't worth anything?). A Mercedes 600 Grosser limo. Several other high-end Mercedes. A few of the big old-school Rolls Royces. A "super fly" pimp mobile (early version Stutz). A couple of unusual Italian exotics that I did not recognize in those days. Pretty much every British car made up until then (some quite new but already worthless). Porsche 356 cabriolet and many other convertibles from just about every foreign manufacturer (topless cars were popular in the hot desert). A couple of "kit cars" that of that era...think models like the Aztec, Bradley, Sterling, and Avenger (I guess not everyone from Hollywood had a lot of disposable cash, but they pretended to). Also things like Vespa's and odd bicycles (European made tandems and three-wheels were common). And other vehicles that don't come to mind at the moment. Funny, I really don't remember a lot of American vehicles in those yards (and that was the heyday of muscle cars); I'm sure they were there, I just didn't care to look at them (still don't).

I think this is the reason I developed such an affinity for early European vehicles. My very first car was a Triumph TR4 with a Surrey top (age 13). That was also the last British car I ever owned. Even though it was only a couple years old it needed a complete restoration, which I did single-handedly in the garage. Still doing that 45 years later.
 
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I gave them $50 for the car and $35 to tow it to my "driveway".

I guess I "grew up" on the tail end of the days you could buy cars for prices like that. Just yesterday I found the last known photo of a Lancia Beta Coupe I bought for $75, went home to get a battery, came back & drove home. In fact, a friend & I had gone in on it, so we each had $37.50 invested. We took turns driving it & fixing/improving little stuff on in for I suppose about a year...never titled/registered it, used a plate from another car & didn't have insurance either. Ah, to be young & dumb in a diff time.
 
Yes it is a lot different today, a couple of years ago I found a 85 Mazda 323GTX in a local Pick a part. Some may not be familiar with this car but it was a limited edition model made to satisfy Mazda rally car homologation. Twin cam turbo charged AWD,5spd hatchback, thankfully this one was intact, just arrived. I made a spur of the moment decision to show my 18yr old son how to flip a "project" car. $1,000 later the car was mine. I had it towed, and bought a key from the Mazda dealer, and a set of used tires and passenger side door from pick a part. It did not run and diagnosis was unknown so I listed it as is and sold it $1,800, via craigslist to a buyer in Montana. The net profit was not much, a few hundred, but I had the satisfaction of see the car saved from the crusher, and my son who helped me got to see a little bit of the process of "wheeling and dealing."
 
In my local Junkyard (Grimms) they use to have some many strange cars. They had over 10 124 spiders, 6 X1/9s and 20 Yugos. They also had a perfect rolling chassis primed of a 124 spider but they want $1,200. This got crushed instead of selling to me for $500.
They also had an Austin America, a couple LeCars and other French cars.
Unfortunately these are gone to the big scrap yard in the sky. I did get 12 Iron cross wheel, All the good light covers and badges from the spiders years ago and spread them around DCFiats members over the years.
 
It's not rare but it certainly is weird and odd. Almost all of the owners and worker bees of junkyards. I typically enjoy relating to people and speaking with them but I often have difficulty relating to these guys and gals. I guess they get a bit crustified by the general public wanting their stuff for cheap also seeing a constant flow of auto and motorcycle metal come and go would generally inure one to the "specialness" of some cars. So much so, that they seem to take some joy out of crushing neat stuff that another desires. I find them as intriguing and baffling as some of the cars that pique my interest.
 
Late last summer I was alerted to a '76 Lancia Scorpion in a Portland, Oregon salvage yard. I drove the 100 miles north & harvested some bits from it for my '77, but it was too far gone to save. I think the strangest salvage yard finds I've found here on the west coast of the US were a Sunbeam Imp, a Citroen Traction Avante, and a Renault Daffine.

Like many of us, I love an old school salvage yard. Back in college (10 years ago) I used to go to an old school one on the ghetto side of town. I'd start by climbing into a very crusty school bus that had been converted into a hippie bus at some point. It was overgrown with blackberry vines & years of filth, but it was a great spot to sit & smoke refer until the decay inside the bus became too surreal to handle. Then the search began.

I used to find stuff that I knew was special, but the guy who had just bought the yard didn't understand. Stuff like a '70's twin cam Mercedes V6 motor, Z-car parts, Fiat 124 BC Coupe front bumper, '67 850 Spider headlight assemblies, motorbike stuff... We'd agree on a price, and I would add an average of 25% to that price and set that amount as my Reserve on the eBay auction I'd make with the pics I'd take of the parts.

When I got the money from the eBay auction, I'd go pick up the parts & get them to their new owners. Not a bad way for a poor university student to spend an afternoon : ) I did the same thing at an old school independent parts dealer near town. They had a massive new/old stock of Ansa & Monza exhausts but they couldn't say what exhausts went to which cars. They were too old school to cross-reference the part numbers with google searches, but I was cool like that. I'd take pics of the exhausts out in the isle of the store, & post them on eBay with much reward.

Having since finished college, I make my living in the secure psychiatric setting of my local hospital. Gotta say I miss the days of getting stoned in the bus before wandering around picking through piles of ore to find the gold & making an honest $100 because I knew what I was looking at. Simpler times...
 
Old school junk yards are the best, but hard to find these days. I used to enjoy exploring them with a buddy. We would make a day of it, it was lots of fun. One of the cars that I remember well was a Ford Retractable. Cool car. I was also stunned to find a '70 Dodge Challenger R/T S/E, 440 4 bbl, auto (Plumb Crazy) basket case. It was a car that I had an opportunity to buy as a basket case after the PO started a resto and gave up. I passed (no money), he must have just had it hauled away. If only...
 
They're harder to find around here often due to environmental regulations too - but for good reason. In the late 1980's, the one I loved going to is in a flood plain in a highly productive river valley. So much motor oil and other fluids all over the ground. They never even laid down crushed rock - just parked or forklifted them somewhere in this big field. In the summer, the grass would grow so tall around the cars you often couldn't find them.

I loved going to the "import section" where I learned a lot about import cars there. I saw my first Citroen DS there with the crazy air suspension, my first Honda CVCC (that was baffling for a long time), old SAABs with the V4 engine.
 
Thanks for the heads up about the one in Portland, Chad! I stopped there after going up to visit budgetzagato/Gregory for some rustfree doors. I harvested the flying buttress sail panels, axles, rear brakes, rubber trim, interior lights, some exterior metal trim, hood latch mechanisms, and trunk carpet. Wish I had the time to preserve more bits from it. It was a fairly nice yard but the guys at the front counter were pretty mercenary with the pricing.
 
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