CHAPTER 5:

THE PATIENT CANNOT BE SAVED

There are times when people care too much about a car. They have the best of intentions to “restore it someday.” But without proper protection over the years, the car just rots away. Many of these owners aren’t truly neglectful; time just gets away from them. They don’t want to lose their strong connections to the cars. They may neglect the vehicles, but they still want that connection. But when the car is gone, so is the connection.

Many old race cars get pushed out back and forgotten. This 1971 Dodge Dart in Plum Crazy Purple is no different.

This poor 1964 Plymouth Fury sits neglected next to a grouping of Mopars. It has sat so long that trees, not engines, have taken up residence in the engine compartment.

Something you will never see is a Suzuki LJ20. It was basically Suzuki’s knockoff of a Jeep. Few were exported to the US, and even fewer survive today. This one has been sitting a while.

A 1965 Ford Mustang should be roaming the open roads, not sitting in this junkyard. We’re going to have to find a name for the old “tree-through-the-hood” maneuver.

Convertibles always get beat up the worst when sitting, and this 1969 Plymouth Road Runner is no exception. The entire back of the car has completely disintegrated.

If that kind of relationship seems a little mixed-up, you may be right. Other times, car owners who enjoy the envious responses of others are nevertheless frozen into that peculiar immobility that encourages decay. Even though the car gives the collector a sense of worth, it’s allowed to fall into such disrepair that, finally, the machine is only good for parts—if and when the owner decides to sell.

I’ve seen this in my travels more times than I can count. “I’m going to restore it someday” is a line that’s become very familiar to me. Unfortunately, many of the cars in question are well beyond help: Chevelles with rotted-out frames or Mustangs with front ends missing, rusting away into the ground. The owners may think they’re serious about restoration, but don’t think about the dollars and cents required to actually put together a car from a rotted hulk. And sometimes, when they do find out, they realize they can’t manage it, so a car sits even longer.

Military vehicles are made to take a beating and still keep working. This old military vehicle was driven into the yard, but has sat so long that the owner hasn’t been able to get it running in years.

There are some vehicles you don’t see sitting much, and this 1958 DeSoto Sportsman with Hemi power still under the hood is definitely one of them, though it’s rusted pretty badly.

A vintage car is a physical connection to the past. What an incredible gift. It’s the car that you took your wife out on dates with, or drove the day you brought your baby home from the hospital. There is always some sort of connection between the car and meaningful, precious moments. Because of that, many people just can’t let their car go. That’s how you end up with a pile of rust.

Certainly, the owners have the right to let that happen. It’s their property, they can do with it as they please. But the day will come when the car is too far gone to be saved. After that, the car may vanish altogether, and the owner is apt to feel terrible about the loss.

Later in this section, we’ll meet a gentleman with plenty of cool cars. He has an Impala SS convertible, a DeSoto with a first-generation Hemi—but the real kicker is three early C1 Corvettes. One had been in a wreck and was parked in an old box truck. Another was just a busted-up hulk. The third was the nicest of the bunch, red and white, and complete from bumper to bumper. However, because the owner had an emotional attachment to the cars, he wasn’t going to sell. Instead, he let them sit. And while most of a Corvette is fiberglass, the frame surely isn’t, and this complete example had been sitting in the mud so long the metal was coming off in chunks. Modern technology allows a car of this type and in this condition to be restored, but the investment is significant.

People think tarps help keep cars protected, but most of the time they just keep moisture trapped and accelerate deterioration. This 1966 Chevrolet Impala SS Convertible had seen better days before the tarp.

Another poor Hemi-powered DeSoto sits derelict in the yard, with the Hemi still there in the ribcage of the car.

Under a collapsed garage roof sat a 1959 Chevrolet El Camino. The owner said it was a nice car when he put it in the garage, but time got away from him and then the garage collapsed, trapping the beautiful red car underneath.

When you think of a Corvette, you think of this car. This is a 1956 Chevrolet Corvette. The owner had three of similar vintage around his property, but unfortunately this was the nicest one of the bunch. It’s not completely beyond hope, but it will need some serious elbow grease if it’s to be saved.

Vintage cars turn up in all sorts of places, but the ones that are beyond help are usually the ones out in the open. Some get to sit under a blue tarp. You would think that a tarp helps preserve the car from the elements. Unfortunately, the tarp traps moisture between the plastic and the car, causing the car to rust out faster. People don’t realize this, and over the years the cars slowly turn to oxide.

Neglect of this sort is less common in the more densely populated cities, where there is far less room to keep a car, and ordinances prevent backyard storage. So you’ll usually see these cars out in the country, where they have room to, well, sit. You can’t drive down a country road without seeing a few old cars and trucks tucked way back on somebody’s property. Why send it to the junkyard when the owner can just leave it on the property? Maybe it can be restored someday.

Near that ’59 El Camino in the same collapsed garage was this old early-’50s MG roadster. Complete stem to stern, this car had seen better days, and a collapsed garage on top of it didn’t help.

Someone loved this car so much they painted CUDA in big letters on the rear quarter panels. Unfortunately they didn’t love it enough to save it from its fate in the junkyard.

I’ve come across many scenes like this in my travels. Earlier in the book I described a 1969 Dodge Super Bee that had been in an accident; somehow, it had been run into a wall. The owner’s family had a farm, so instead of scrapping the car and sending it to the junkyard, the Bee was picked clean of reusable parts and then dumped into the grazing field for the cows to use as a rubbing post! And for the past 20 years that’s been the situation. The cows have enjoyed it, but now the Super Bee is certainly beyond help. And of the parts that remain, few are usable. But if the Bee had been left in a location where the cows couldn’t get to it, it might still be restorable.

Then there is the other side of the coin, divorced from sentiment and even from driving. Back when vintage muscle cars were cheap, people bought loads of them for spare parts. Why not buy a few first-gen Camaros—the parts interchange for the most part. Even just a decade ago, some muscle cars could still be found cheap. When the premeditated scavenging was done and the parts were plucked, the cars were pushed way back on the property to rust away.

Sitting in a pasture, this ‘20s- or ‘30s-era car with wood wheels had probably driven its last mile well over half a century ago. Now it just sits in the weeds and wheat in an Illinois junkyard.

This later model Chevrolet Nova sat neglected at the very back of a property, probably protecting it from scavengers. But being up against a farm field and having wheat take hold around it didn’t help it any.

This poor first-generation Camaro sits in the wheat, revealing hack-job flairs in the back (probably to fit bigger tires). Somewhere along the line it was given up on and pushed into the yard, never to run again.

That sort of thing is certainly common enough, and it can be good news for other collectors. For example, I bought a guy’s collection of E-body parts and shells of vehicles. He used to be heavily involved in the Mopar hobby, but for decades there was little aftermarket support for Challengers and ’Cudas. His solution was to buy as many as he could in order to keep his one or two cars alive.

The rarest one I got my hands on was a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. It had no options, just plain manual steering, manual drum brakes, manual top, slant six, 3-speed manual on the floor. But it was a real ’71 Barracuda ragtop. It had the same body as the $5 million 1971 Hemi ’Cuda convertibles that roll through the big auctions every year. Yet way back when, this one was nothing but a parts car. So it sat outside, next to a lake, for decades. The car rusted away so badly it was in at least three different pieces.

Looking proud, this 1972 Plymouth Sport Satellite sits nose-high all by itself. It’s not a bad project, but would take an extraordinary amount of work to get it out of the yard.

Cool stripes were the norm in the mid-’70s. This 1974 Dodge Dart Sport in blue at one point had a neat stripe that deteriorated over time, leaving its outline in the patina.

This was at one time the least-optioned 1971 Barracuda convertible. It was as basic as you can get—smallest engine, smallest transmission, manual everything. It was a rare car, but sadly rusted beyond repair.

For a person who knows Mopars, the stripe on this car automatically gets your heart racing. Thinking it was a rare 1970 Plymouth AAR ‘Cuda, it turned out to be just a 1970 383 with AAR stripes.

Cruising down the road, this Plum Crazy Purple 1970 Dodge Challenger must have been a real looker instead of the rusted hulk it is now.

Sadly, the 1971 Barracuda convertible could not be saved. But other great cars are still out there, waiting to be found and preserved.

Rusting away in someone’s yard is sad, but a premature end is even sadder. This 1979 Dodge Li’l Red Express truck ended up getting rolled at a good clip and is now just a parts donor.

Most people don’t even know what a Jeep FC is, but they were made for many years. This Jeep FC (Forward Control) looks to have at one point been a boom truck or tow truck.

Being reclaimed by the forest is no way for a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner to die, but here this shell of a car in Plum Crazy Purple sits as it slowly rots into the ground.

In 1971 the Dodge Super Bee moved over onto the Dodge Charger lineup for one year before being dropped. This is a basic 1971 Dodge Charger Super Bee sitting deep in a forest.

I’ve got a soft spot for Dodge RamChargers as I had an amazing 1993 unit, but like this ’78 RamCharger, it rusted away nearly to the point of beyond help. This one, with the original removable top, is well beyond anyone’s help.

Surrounded by leaves and trees for decades is not good for a vehicle. This 1970 Plymouth Barracuda had leaves covering it for who knows how long, allowing the moisture to eat away at the body.

HILLS OF MISSOURI

When you have friends around the country, many doors will open for you. Missouri friends said that when I had a spare day, they would show me a Mopar junkyard I would not believe. I took the bait, and arranged to make the trip on New Year’s weekend.

I drive my 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T everywhere, and it’s great fun except that the final leg of my journey into Missouri farmland was along a snow-covered dirt road. The Challenger made it—barely. Once there, my friends and I walked with the owner for hours. I realized very quickly that my car was, by far, the newest vehicle in the place. Our group went up and down every row, determined to see everything. We would finish with one area, then walk over a hill, and find another field full of cars. We would step into a forest and discover 50 more cars. It was non-stop!

The owner had been drag racing since the cars in his yard were new. Over the years, he had driven against the biggest names in the sport. He showed us his shop, where he had lined the walls with career memorabilia—and these walls were very long and at least 20 feet tall!

Rare 426 Hemi intakes sat in a corner. Nearby were the remains of a race car. Far above our heads, the original Chrysler Pentastar flag from one of the now-closed St. Louis assembly plants hung from the rafters. You could look up, down, and sideways for hours and still miss things.

When we finally stepped from the shop, the owner asked me to look to my left; he said he had to move “a few cars” before a party he was throwing. Well, the “few” turned out to be rows of project cars lined up in a farm field.

Good stuff grows in Missouri.

EPIC JUNKYARD

As I write this, I am 30 years old. I was born well after the original muscle car era. I love these great cars, but there never was a time (especially in Chicago) when I could stroll into a junkyard and find a row of Challengers or Chevelles. Recently, though, I located a yard that blows just about every other one right out of the water. The place has a collection of rare and desirable classic muscle that I had never seen in such numbers.

For me, it started with a story I struggled to believe, a story about row upon row of cool and rare cars sitting derelict in a junkyard. I pieced together some clues and was finally able to track down a name and a location. When I phoned, the owner invited me to look at what he had.

He was a nice guy who had inherited the yard from his father. Early on, the yard gathered “worthless” cars and piled them out back. The present owner didn’t sell the cars, he just put them away. And so they’ve sat, in an open field, for decades.

The yard has a little bit of everything. A 1946 Lincoln Continental convertible was impressive. I found a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T 440-6 with a shaker hood still attached and a tree growing through it. The Challenger sat on top of a ’69 Dodge Charger R/T. Rare cars were everywhere. I saw two GTO Judges, two 396 SS Novas with engines, and a 1970 AAR ’Cuda! I walked for hours, documenting everything. The experience was exhilarating.

I checked every section of forest, every bush, because there were things so deep in the weeds you had to dig to see them. In my experience, for rarity and quantity, this yard was unique.

Ask questions, meet people, look around. You could be pleasantly surprised.