Subaru began selling four-wheel-drive-equipped Leone station wagons in the United States as 1975 models, and each passing year after that saw more American car shoppers deciding that they wanted cars—not trucks, cars—with power going to all four wheels. Toyota got into that game with the Tercel 4WD wagon, sold here for the 1983 through 1988 model years, and I’ve found one of those cars in its final parking space in Denver.

The very affordable Tercel first went on sale in the United States as a 1980 model, badged as the Corolla Tercel at first (in order to take advantage of the name recognition for the unrelated Corolla, which had been a strong seller since its American debut in 1966).

The original Tercel had an interesting powertrain layout, with a longitudinally-mounted engine driving the front wheels via a V-drive-style transmission that sent power to a differential assembly mounted below the engine. This resulted in an awkward-looking high hood but also meant that sending power to a rear drive axle was just a matter of adding a rear-facing output shaft to the transmission.

Making a four-wheel-drive Tercel wasn’t difficult with that rig plus a few off-the-shelf parts, and Toyota decided to add a wagon version of the Tercel at the same time. This was the Sprinter Carib, which debuted in Japan as a 1982 model. The Tercel 4WD Wagon (as it was known in North America) hit American Toyota showrooms as a 1983 model.

A front-wheel-drive version of the Tercel Wagon was also available in the United States, though not in Japan; most of the Tercel Wagons I find during my junkyard travels are four-wheel-drive versions.

This car has four-wheel-drive, not all-wheel-drive (as we understand the terms today), which means that the driver had to manually select front-wheel-drive for use on dry pavement. Failure to do so would result in damage to the tires or worse. American Motors began selling the all-wheel-drive Eagle as a 1980 model, with Audi following a year later with its Quattro AWD system, while Toyota didn’t begin selling true AWD cars in the United States until its All-Trac system debuted in the 1988 model year.

The Tercel 4WD Wagon sold very well in snowy regions of North America, despite strong competition from Subaru as well as from the 4WD-equipped wagons offered by Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

This one is a top-of-the-Tercel-range SR5 model with just about every possible option. While the base 1986 Tercel FWD hatchback started at a miserly $5448 ($15,586 in today’s dollars), the MSRP for a 1986 Tercel SR5 4WD wagon was $8898 ($25,456 after inflation).

One of the coolest features of the SR5 version of the ’86 Tercel 4WD Wagon was the six-speed manual transmission, with its “Extra Low” gear. If you’re a Tercel 4WD Wagon enthusiast (many are), this is the transmission you want for your car!

The SR5’s plaid seat upholstery looked great, as an added bonus.

These cars were reasonably capable off-road, though the lack of power made them quite slow on any surface. This is a 1.5-liter 3A-C SOHC straight-four, rated at 62 horsepower and 76 pound-feet (probably more like 55 horsepower at Denver’s elevation).

The curb weight of this car was a wispy 2290 pounds and so it wasn’t nearly as pokey as, say, a Rabbit Diesel, but I’ve owned several 1983-1988 Tercel Wagons and I can say from personal experience that they require a great deal of patience on freeway on-ramps.

I can also say from experience that the Tercel Wagon obliterates every one of its anywhere-near-similarly-priced competitors in the reliability and build-quality departments. This one made it to a pretty good 232,503 miles during its career, and I’ve found a junkyard ’88 with well over 400,000 miles on its odometer.

The air conditioning added $655 to the price tag, or $1874 in today’s dollars. This one has an aftermarket radio, but SR5 4WD Wagon buyers for 1986 got a pretty decent AM/FM radio with four speakers as standard equipment. If you wanted to play cassettes, that was $186 more ($532 now).

The Tercel went to a third generation during the 1988 model year (both the second- and third-generation Tercels were sold in the United States as 1988 models), becoming a cousin of the Japanese-market Starlet and getting an ordinary engine orientation in the process. The 4WD Wagon went away, to be replaced by the Corolla All-Trac Wagon. The 1996 Tercel ended up being the last new car available in the United States with a four-speed manual transmission, by the way.

These cars make fun projects today, though finding rust-free examples can be a challenge.

***

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Most of the 20th-century Italian cars you’ll find in North American car graveyards today will be Fiat 124 Sport Spiders and X1/9s, with the occasional Alfa Romeo 164 thrown in for variety. For the first Italian machine in the Final Parking Space series, however, we’ve got a much rarer find: a genuine Maserati Biturbo Spyder, found in a boneyard located between Denver and Cheyenne.

1989 was an interesting year for the Maserati brand, because that was when the longtime friendship between Maserati owner Alejandro de Tomaso and Chrysler president Lee Iacocca resulted in a collaboration between the two companies that produced a car called, awkwardly, Chrysler’s TC by Maserati.

The TC by Maserati was based on a variation of Chrysler’s company-reviving K platform and assembled in Milan. I’ve documented five discarded TCs during the past decade, and those articles have never failed to spur heated debate over the TC’s genuine Maserati-ness.

In fact, I’ve managed to find even more examples of the Biturbo than the TC during my adventures in junkyard history, and even the most devoted trident-heads must accept those cars as true Maseratis.

The Biturbo was Maserati’s first attempt to build a mass-production car, and it went on sale in the United States as a 1984 model. It was available here through 1990, at various times as a four-door sedan (known as the 425 or 430), a two-door coupe, and as a convertible (known as the Spyder). This car is the first Spyder I’ve found in a car graveyard.

The heart of the Biturbo, and the origin of its name, is a screaming overhead-cam V-6 with twin turbochargers.

Unfortunately, the 1984-1986 Biturbos sold on our side of the Atlantic used a blow-through fuel-delivery system featuring a Weber carburetor inside a pressurized box, with no intercoolers. Forced induction systems with carburetors never did prove very reliable for daily street use, and the carbureted/non-intercooled Biturbo proved to be a legend of costly mechanical misery in the real world.

This car came from the factory with both Weber-Marelli electronic fuel injection and an intercooler, rated at 225 horsepower and 246 pound-feet in U.S.-market configuration. This more modern fuel-delivery rig didn’t solve all of the Biturbo’s reliability problems, but it didn’t hurt.

A three-speed automatic was available in the American Biturbo, but this car has the five-speed manual that its engine deserved.

When everything worked correctly, the 1989 Biturbo was fast and decadent, with nearly as much power as a new 1989 BMW M6 for about ten grand cheaper. The Spyder for that year had an MSRP of $44,995, or about $116,500 in 2024 dollars. Sure, a Peugeot 505 Turbo had an MSRP of $26,335 ($68,186 after inflation) and just 45 fewer horses, but was it Italian? Well, was it?

Soon after the time the first Biturbos hit American roads, I was a broke college student delivering pizzas with my Competition Orange 1968 Mercury Cyclone in Newport Beach, California. At that time and place, bent bankers and their henchmen were busily looting Orange County S&Ls, and the free-flowing cash resulted in Biturbos appearing everywhere for a couple of years. Then, like a switch had been flipped, they disappeared.

This car appears to have been sold all the way across the country from Lincoln Savings & Loan, so it doesn’t benefit from that Late 1980s Robber Baron bad-boy mystique.

If you had one of these cars, you had to display one of these distinctive mobile phone antennas on your ride. A lot of them were fake, though.

This car appears to have been parked for at least a couple of decades, so I believe the 28,280 miles showing on the odometer represent the real final figure.

There’s some rust-through and the harsh High Plains Colorado climate has ruined most of the leather and wood inside. These cars are worth pretty decent money in good condition, but I suspect that it would take $50,000 to turn one like this into a $25,000 car.

Still, it has plenty of good parts available for local Biturbo enthusiasts. I bought the decklid badge for my garage wall, of course.

***

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Chrysler’s Plymouth Division used the Belvedere name from the 1951 through 1970 model years, and the first to get properly exuberant tailfins was the version built for 1955 and 1956. Here’s one of those cars, found at a Denver-area self-service car graveyard recently.

Just as was the case with such Detroit machines as the Chevrolet Malibu and Ford Crown Victoria, the Belvedere name began its automotive career appended to another model name that subsequently disappeared. This was the 1951-1953 Plymouth Cranbrook, the two-door hardtop version of which was designated the Cranbrook Belvedere.

The best-known Belvederes today are the 1962-1970 B-platform midsize cars, which served as the basis for the legendary Plymouth GTX and Road Runner muscle cars. After 1970, the Satellite name—itself a former Belvedere trim-level designation—shoved the Belvedere name aside.

Chrysler’s low-priced Plymouth Division sold cars like mad after World War II ended, but Plymouth’s dowdy late-1940s body designs were hurting sales by the time future-crazed 1954 rolled around; during that year, Buick and Oldsmobile blew by Plymouth in the sales standings. For the 1955 model year, new Plymouths got the Virgil Exner “Forward Look” treatment, fins and all.

Now Plymouths looked just as modern as their Chevy or Ford rivals, and sales increased by more than 240,000 units versus 1954.

Not only that, but 1955 Plymouth shoppers could opt for overhead-valve V-8 power under the hood for the first time—previously, every Plymouth since the brand’s birth had been powered by flathead straight-four or straight-six engines. Chevrolet had introduced an OHV V-8 of some importance for the 1955 model year as well, while Ford’s Y-Block V-8 had debuted the year before that.

Chrysler had been bolting its Hemi V-8 engines into high-end Chrysler-badged models since the 1951 model year, and even the DeSoto and Dodge Divisions eventually received the Hemi treatment. Lowly Plymouth, however, wasn’t about to get such a costly engine (until later on), so a cheap-to-manufacture “semi-Hemi” or “polyspherical” version with a single rocker shaft per cylinder head was devised. That engine family begat the Hy-Fire polyspherical-headed V-8, which used a different block design and eventually led to the LA-series small-block V8s that were built from the middle 1960s and into our current century.

This bubbling stew of related and not-so-related Chrysler V-8 engines gets very confusing in the 1956 model year, when new Plymouths could be purchased with either the semi-Hemi 269-cubic inch V-8 (also known as the 270) and its 180 horsepower or the A-series 276-cubic inch Poly V-8 (generally known as the 277) with 187 horses. This car has the latter type, which may be original or could be a swapped-in later version with more displacement. The A-series Poly V-8 proved to be something of an evolutionary dead end, though it was a successful engine that was installed in plenty of Chrysler machinery through 1967.

The base engine in the 1956 Belvedere remained the good old flathead straight-six, with a displacement of 230 cubic inches and an output of 125 horsepower.

The base transmission was a three-speed column-shifted manual, but this car was heavily optioned and came with the PowerFlite two-speed automatic transmission controlled by Chrysler’s new-for-1956 pushbutton shifter (the shifter, located to the left of the instrument panel, has been removed from this car).

The PowerFlite was a true automatic, unlike the earlier Fluid Drive.

This Motorola AM radio lacks markings for the CONELRAD nuclear-attack frequencies of 640 and 1240 kHz, even though they were required in 1956. Perhaps it’s an overseas-market radio.

The list price for a 1956 Belvedere four-door sedan with 269-cubic inch V-8 started at $2154, or about $25,201 in 2024 dollars. The automatic transmission added $184 to that ($2153 after inflation). A 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan with 265-cubic inch V-8 and Powerglide two-speed automatic had an MSRP of $2356 ($27,564 in today’s money), while the 1956 Ford Fairlane sedan with 272-cubic inch V-8 and Ford-O-Matic three-speed automatic listed at $2409 ($28,184 now).

The Plymouth Division was named for a brand of rope popular with American farmers at the time, but later on the branding changed focus to Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower. During the middle 1950s, Plymouth logos depicted the Wampanoag people humbly presenting gifts to their future conquerors.

This car has very little serious rust for a 68-year-old car that has been sitting outdoors in Colorado for decades, though the interior has been thoroughly nuked by the harsh High Plains climate.

It could be restored, but that might not be an economically sensible choice for a fairly ordinary mid-1950s Plymouth post sedan. The more powerful Fury hardtop coupe gets most of the attention given to ’56 Plymouths these days.

This car’s final parking space is among many other interesting vehicles from the 1930s through 1970s (including the 1952 IHC L-130, 1959 Borgward Isabella Coupé, 1958 Edsel Citation, 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Club Coupe, and 1963 Chrysler Newport that have appeared in this series) at Colorado Auto & Parts, located just south of Denver.

CAP is home to the famous aircraft-radial-powered 1939 Plymouth truck, which was built there by members of the family that has owned the establishment since the 1950s. If you stop by to buy some ’56 Belvedere parts, you’ll see this pickup parked next to the cashier’s counter.

Yes, it runs and drives!

***

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The Type 1 Volkswagen first went on sale in the United States in 1949, and two were sold. After that, VW dealers here did increasingly well with the Type 1—eventually known as der Käfer or the Beetle— with each passing year, with the American Beetle sales pinnacle reached in 1968. These cars have become uncommon in car graveyards in recent years, but I found this fairly solid ’70 in Colorado last winter.

For the 1970 model year, Volkswagen of America offered five models, all built in West Germany: the Beetle, the Karmann Ghia, the Fastback, the Squareback, and the Transporter (which was pitched as the Volkswagen Station Wagon at the time).

The 1970 Beetle was available as a convertible, as a two-door sedan, and as a two-door sedan with sunroof. Today’s FPS car is the latter type, which had a list price of $1929 when new (about $16,001 in 2024 dollars). The non-sunroof sedan cost just $1839 that year ($15,254 after inflation).

The Beetle wasn’t the cheapest new car Americans could buy in 1970, but it was a lot of car for the money. The 1970 Austin America (known as the Austin 1100/1300 in its homeland) had an MSRP of $1815, while American Renault dealers offered a new 10 for a mere $1775. The 1970 Toyota Corolla two-door sedan had an astonishing list price of $1686, which helped it become the second-best-selling import (after the Beetle) in the United States that year, while Mazda offered the $1798 1200 two-door. For the adventurous, there was the motorcycle-engine-powered Honda 600, priced to sell at $1398, and Malcolm Bricklin was eager to sell you a new Subaru 360 for only $1297. How about a 1970 Fiat 850 sedan for $1504? The Ford Pinto and Chevrolet Vega debuted as 1971 models, so the most affordable new American-built 1970 car was the $1879 AMC Gremlin.

The first factory-installed Beetle sunroofs opened up most of the roof with a big sliding fabric cover, but a more modern metal sunroof operated by a crank handle replaced that type for 1964.

The final U.S.-market air-cooled Beetles were sold as 1979 models, which meant that Beetles were very easy to find in American junkyards until fairly deep into the 1990s. You’ll still run across discarded Beetles today, though most of them will be in rough shape and they tend to get picked clean in a hurry.

Volkswagen introduced the Super Beetle, which received a futuristic MacPherson strut front suspension and lengthened snout, as a 1971 model in the United States. Most of the Beetles you’ll find in the boneyards today will be of the Super variety, which makes today’s non-Super an especially good find for the junkyard connoisseur.

I’ve owned a few Beetles over the years, including a genuinely terrifying ’58 Sunroof Sedan with hot-rodded Type 3 engine that I purchased at age 17 for $50 at an Oakland junkyard. It acquired the name “Hubert the Hatred Bug” due to being the least Herbie-like Beetle imaginable. Later, I acquired a 1973 Super Beetle and thought it neither handled nor rode better than the regular Beetle; your opinion of the Super may differ.

The Type 1 Beetle was obsolete very early on, being a 1930s design optimized for ease of manufacture, but it was so cheap to build and simple to maintain that customers were willing to buy it for decade after decade. Beetle production blew past that of the seemingly unbeatable Model T Ford in 1972, when the 15,007,034th example rolled off the line, and the final Vocho was assembled in Mexico in 2003. That means a last-year Beetle will be legal to import to the United States in just four years!

The first water-cooled Volkswagen offered in the United States was the 1974 Dasher, which was really an Audi 80. It was the introduction of the Rabbit a year later (plus increasingly strict safety and emissions standards) that finally doomed the Type 1 Beetle here; Beetle sales dropped from 226,098 in 1974 to 78,412 in 1975 and then fell off an even steeper cliff after that. For the 1978 and 1979 model years, the only new Beetles available here were Super convertibles.

The original engine in this car was a 1585cc boxer-four rated at 57 horsepower, although there’s plenty of debate on the subject of air-cooled VW power numbers to this day. These engines are hilariously easy to swap and were once cheap and plentiful, though, so the chances that we are looking at this car’s original plant aren’t very good.

This is a single-port carbureted engine with a generator, so it could be the original 1600… or maybe it’s the ninth engine to power this car. Generally, junkyard Type 1 engines get grabbed right away these days, but this car had just been placed in the yard when I arrived.

The hateful Automatic Stickshift three-speed transmission was available as an option in the 1970 Beetle, but this car has the regular four-on-the-floor manual.

To get into reverse, you push down on the gearshift and then into the second-gear position (this can be a frustrating process in a VW with worn-out shifter linkage components).

By air-cooled Volkswagen standards, this car isn’t especially rusty. I’m surprised that it ended up at a Pick Your Part yard, to be honest… and now here’s the bad news for you VW fanatics itching to go buy parts from it: I shot these photos last December and the car got crushed months ago. I shoot so many vehicles in their final parking spaces that I can’t write about every one of them while they’re still around.

It even had the original factory Sapphire XI AM radio.

***

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The American Motors Corporation did good business selling small, sensible cars bearing the Rambler brand during the late 1950s through early 1960s. Rambler sales peaked in the 1962 model year, after which competition from new compact and midsize offerings from the Detroit Big Three made life tougher for the not-so-big Kenosha outfit. During the middle 1960s, AMC battled for midsize sales against the likes of the Chevrolet Chevelle and Plymouth Belvedere with its Rambler Classic. Today we’ll admire the first AMC product in this series with a Classic 660 found in a yard located between Denver and Cheyenne.

The Classic began life as a 1961 model during George Romney’s reign at AMC, then got a complete redesign for 1963 and became bigger and more modern-looking. Unfortunately for AMC, Ford introduced the Fairlane as a 1962 model, while Chrysler was right there with brand-new B-Body midsize machinery at the same time. As if that wasn’t enough, GM stepped up with the Chevelle and its A-Body siblings for the 1964 model year.

AMC, by then without Romney (who had gone on to become governor of Michigan), completely redesigned the Classic for 1965 and it looked just as slick as its many rivals. The following year, the Rambler name entered a phase-out period that was completed when the final AMC Ramblers were sold as 1969 models (the last year for Rambler as a separate marque was 1968).

The 1965 Classic was a bit smaller than the Fairlane, Chevelle, and Belvedere, though somewhat bigger than the Commander from soon-to-be-gone Studebaker.

The ’65 Classic offered plenty of value per dollar; the list price for this car would have been $2287 (about $22,894 in 2024 dollars). Its most menacing sales rival was the Chevelle Malibu, which had an MSRP of $2299 ($23,105 in today’s money) with roughly similar equipment.

This car is a 660, which was the mid-priced trim level slotted between the 550 and 770. Rambler shoppers who wanted to pinch a penny until it screamed could get a zero-frills Rambler 550 two-door sedan for just $2142 ($21,443 after inflation), which just barely undercut the cheapest Ford Fairlane Six ($2183) and Chevelle 300 ($2156) two-door sedans. Studebaker would sell you a new Commander two-door for a mere $2125 that year, but found few takers for that deal.

The 1965 Classic’s light weight (curb weight of 2882 pounds for the 660 four-door) made it respectably quick even with a six-cylinder engine. This car was built with an AMC 232-cubic-incher rated at 145 horsepower. If you wanted a genuine factory hot rod Classic for ’65, a 327-cubic-inch V-8 (not related to Chevrolet’s 327) with 270 horses was available.

But back to the straight six: This incredibly successful engine family went on to serve American Motors and then Chrysler all the way through 2006, when the final 4.0-liter versions were bolted into Jeep Wranglers. The 232 was used in new AMC cars through 1979.

Automatic transmissions were very costly during the middle 1960s and the Classic didn’t get a four-on-the-floor manual transmission until 1966, so the thrifty original buyer of this car went with the base three-speed column-shift manual.

At least it has a factory AM radio, a $58.50 option ($586 now).

You had to pay extra to get a heater in the cheapest 1965 Studebakers, but a genuine Weather Eye heater/ventilation system was standard equipment in every 1965 Rambler Classic.

AMC sold more than 200,000 Classics for 1965, and the most popular version was the 660 sedan. I still find Classics regularly in car graveyards, so these cars aren’t particularly rare even today.

This one is just too rough and too common to be worth restoring, but some of its parts should live on in other Ramblers.

Its final parking space has it right next to another affordable American machine that deserved a better fate: A 1979 Dodge Aspen station wagon.

***

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Danny writes:

Sajeev,

Last spring I bought a 2005 Volvo S60 with transmission issues for $550, thinking it would be an easy fix and flip that would provide a little extra spending money for my other car projects. At first, I installed a used transmission from a salvage yard, and the car drove well for a few weeks, then it wouldn’t move at all. The ATF looked like someone mixed chocolate milk into the fluid, so I returned that transmission and got my money back.

I then took the original transmission (Aisin AW55-50) to a rebuilder, who has had it since September. It took ages to source good rebuild parts for decent pricing, and now I’m still waiting for the transmission to be rebuilt, as the shop is backed up with other customer projects. My questions are:

• Do I remain patient while this car takes up space in my garage?
• Will the rebuilt transmission prove trustworthy?
• Should I instead part out this extraordinarily clean (though boring) sedan, cut my losses and get my shop space back?

Sajeev answers:

The one perk of Danny’s situation is that there’s no wrong answer: buying an “extraordinarily clean” car for $550 means you don’t have a lot of money tied up into this investment. Hauling it off to the junkyard would be a net loss, but parting it out and selling the good stuff on eBay/Facebook Marketplace will likely earn you money.

Parting it is the smart move for your checkbook. But that kinda stinks, as most car folks prefer to save a clean car from doom. We enthusiasts are usually aware of a wide array of repair options, but unfortunately they all have pitfalls.

Danny’s experience hits on common problems with both local junkyards and local transmission rebuilders: accessibility to the right part at the right time is almost always a crapshoot. It’s not a big deal if you need a gearbox for a vintage Ford or Chevy, but it gets dicier the further you get away from a C6 or a TH400. I reckon your bad gearbox from the junkyard, and logistical issues with local rebuilders, is far from uncommon. It doesn’t help that this particular transmission from this era of Volvo doesn’t have the best reputation, either.

The superior alternative might be buying a low mileage, used transmission from an online parts aggregator like Car Part, or the publicly traded junkyard juggernaut known as LKQ. LKQ seems to get the best quality/age/mileage stuff for modern automobiles, shelves it in their warehouse, and makes it stupid easy to purchase. I’ve had reasonably good luck with clicking around LKQ’s website (or buying from them on eBay Motors) and just waiting for the stuff to arrive at my door.

Their warranty is pretty decent (especially if you pay a mechanic to install it) and sometimes they deliver the parts straight to your door. That’s what I recommend to Danny, and even though it’ll cost more, paying a shop to install it might be the smartest path given the warranty scenario. That’s the type of servicing that really helps on resale too, which I expect you’d do with this Volvo sometime in the near future.

Let’s step back and list all the choices in this particular automotive conundrum, with their pros and cons laid out for all to behold:

• Local Junkyard: Limited selection, but sometimes you find a diamond in the rough for dirt cheap.
• Local Rebuilder: You’re at the mercy of their level of staffing/customer service, but the convenience can’t be beat.
• Online Junkyard: Parts will generally cost more, but you aren’t limited by local inventory and can spend more for something with less mileage.
• Online Rebuilder: Can have a better quality product and customer service than a local, but it can cost more, and take more time when factoring in a local mechanic’s time for installation.

Odds are I’ve missed a few options in Danny’s sketchy transmission scenario, so I hand it over to you, esteemed members of the Hagerty Community.

Bonus! A Piston Slap Nugget of Wisdom.

Our very own Eddy Eckart brought up a compelling alternative for this particular application. So let’s get right to it:

“The Aisin five-speed autos found in these Volvos can be problematic. Sajeev has good advice above, and I’d add that finding the newest transmission that’s compatible with your car will help, too, as incremental changes were made over the years. Also, manual swaps are also an option, and they’re more reliable than the automatics in those cars. I have a 2001 V70 T5, and though I have been fortunate to make it over 160K miles on my original automatic box, a five-speed manual swap has always been on my radar if the need ever arose. Parts for the swap can be wrangled together for under $1500, and the car will need a tune. I’d be hard pressed to think that taking the automatic to get repaired would be any less.”

Have a question you’d like answered on Piston Slap? Send your queries to pistonslap@hagerty.com—give us as much detail as possible so we can help! Keep in mind this is a weekly column, so if you need an expedited answer, please tell me in your email.

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So far in this series, we’ve seen discarded cars from the United States, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, but no trucks (unless you count a Volkswagen Transporter, which I don’t). We’ll remedy that imbalance today with a serious truck, an IHC L-Series that spent its working years in northern Illinois and now resides in a car graveyard near Denver, Colorado.

The Chicago-based International Harvester Corporation sold its first light trucks in 1907 and continued to build them until the final Scout Terras left the factory as 1980 models. You can still buy new International-badged trucks today, though their parent company is owned by Volkswagen.

This is an L-Series truck, the successor to the prewar KB design. The L-Series was built from the 1950 through 1952 model years and featured a modern, one-piece windshield.

This one appears to have toiled as a tow truck in Spring Valley, Illinois, for its entire career. That’s about 900 miles to the east of its current location in Colorado.

The truck is very weathered, and the 1975 Illinois license plate indicates that it has been sitting outdoors for close to a half-century.

How many stranded cars did this rig pull out of ditches and snowbanks during its career?

All the equipment appears to be genuine 1950s–1970s hardware.

At some point, an Oldsmobile transistor radio of the late CONELRAD era was installed in the dash.

The original engine was a 220-cubic-inch “Silver Diamond” IHC pushrod straight-six rated at 101 brake horsepower, and that may well be the engine still in the truck today (you have to be more of an IHC expert than I am to identify these engines at a glance).

The transmission is a three-on-the-floor manual, with a grind-free synchronized first gear.

This thick steel bumper must have been just the ticket for pushing dead cars, which would have been plentiful in the era of six-volt electrical systems, points ignition, and primitive tire technology.

As the theoretical owner of a 1947 GMC tow truck (which has been sitting in a field just south of Minneapolis since I was five years old), I understand why most of us are reluctant to restore such machines.

***

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Last week, we admired a majestic 1984 Mercedes-Benz S-Class in a Colorado car graveyard, adding to a collection of Final Parking Space machines from (West) Germany that includes BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford-Werke. Plenty of lesser-known German manufacturers have sold cars in the United States, of course, and today we’ve got a discarded example of one of the best-looking cars to come out of Bremen: a Borgward Isabella Coupé, photographed in a self-service yard just south of Denver, Colorado.

Carl Borgward came up in the Bremen car industry, rising through the ranks at Hansa-Lloyd and selling cars badged with his own name starting in 1924. After World War II, he began building Lloyds, Goliaths, and Borgwards, with the Borgward Hansa his first postwar model.

In 1954, the Isabella replaced the Hansa, though Hansa Isabella badging was used for a while.

The Isabella sedan came first, followed by convertible and wagon versions in 1955. The Isabella Coupé appeared in 1957, and production continued in West Germany until the company went (controversially) broke in 1961. Borgward production using the old tooling from the Bremen plant resumed in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1967 and continued through 1970.

The Isabella sold reasonably well in the United States, considering the obscurity of the Borgward brand here. For the 1959 model year, just over 7500 cars were sold out of American Borgward dealerships.

The U.S.-market MSRP for a 1959 Isabella Coupé was $3750, or about $40,388 in 2024 dollars. The base 1959 Porsche 356 coupe listed at $3665 ($39,472 after inflation), while a new 1959 Jaguar XK150 coupe cost $4500 ($48,465 in today’s money).

Meanwhile, GM’s Chevrolet division offered a new 1959 Corvette for just $3,875 ($41,734). The Isabella Coupé faced some serious competition in its price range.

These cars haven’t held their value quite as well as the 356 or Corvette (though nice ones do change hands for real money) and restoration parts are tougher to source, so there are affordable project Isabella Coupés out there for the adventurous. A 24 Hours of Lemons team found this ’59 and raced it several times with the original drivetrain, winning the coveted Index of Effluency award in the process.

Not bad for a race car with 66 horsepower under the hood… 60 years earlier.

The Fistful of Cotter Pins team members were kind enough to give me the MotoMeter dash clock out of their race Borgward. The mechanism is bad but the face still looks good when illuminated in my garage.

The clock in this car has experienced too many decades outdoors in the harsh climate of High Plains Colorado to be worth harvesting for my collection.

The engine in this car is a 1.5-liter overhead-valve straight-four with a distinctive carburetor location atop the valve cover.

The transmission is a four-speed column-shift manual.

The odometer shows 55,215 miles, and that may well be the actual final total.

This car was in the Colorado Auto & Parts “private reserve” yard, off-limits to customers for many years. Then that lot was sold, and many of its former inhabitants were moved to the regular U-Pull section. We’ve seen some of those cars in earlier episodes of this series, including a 1958 Edsel Citation, a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza, and a 1963 Chrysler Newport sedan.

The good news about this car is that CAP will sell you the whole thing, being a non-corporate yard owned by the Corns family since the late 1950s. You’ll be able to check out the famous radial-engine-powered 1939 Plymouth, built on the premises, in the office when you visit.

This car appears to be a bit too rough to be economically viable as a restoration, but there are still plenty of good parts to help fix up nicer Isabellas. Or you could make a race car out of it, which we recommend.

I like to use ancient film cameras to shoot junkyard vehicles, and I took a few photographs of this car (and many others) with a 1920s Ansco Memo.

This double exposure (always a hazard with century-old cameras) came out looking interesting, and the Isabella was an appropriate subject.

***

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For what seemed like generations (but was really just 20 model years), the Ford Motor Company sold a Police Interceptor version of the Crown Victoria sedan. The final Crown Victoria was built in September of 2011, and today’s Final Parking Space subject was built in August of that year. That’s history!

Most sources seem to indicate that the very last Crown Victoria Police Interceptor rolled off the St. Thomas assembly line in August of 2011, so this car is one of the final handful built. Sharp-eyed readers may note that the PI’s characteristic “P71” sequence is lacking from the VIN here, but that’s just because Ford changed the code to “P7B” for the last two model years.

I have spent many years looking in car graveyards and elsewhere for a P7B Crown Vic built during the summer of 2011; prior to now, the newest example I’d found was this 24 Hours of Lemons race car in Colorado with a May 2011 build date.

Last year, I ran across this 2011 P7B in Denver with a January 2011 build date, which seemed impressive at the time. Locating an example of such an important vehicle from the final month of production is the kind of thing we junkyard historians shoot for.

I found this car on Opening Day at LKQ Pick Your Part’s brand-new Denver yard, when all the inventory was at its freshest.

I have a soft spot for the P71/P7B Crown Victoria, because I had one as a daily driver for the second half of the 2000s. In 2004, I bought a 1997 P71 that had been a San Joaquin County (California) parole officer’s unmarked car. No arrestees had ever leaked bodily fluids in the back seat (a problem with ex-police cars driven on patrol for years) and there were no spotlight holes in the A pillars. I put tens of thousands of miles on that car and enjoyed its excellent handling and powerful air conditioning.

It even came with a bunch of evidence Polaroids and urine test kits in the trunk. I wonder what the perp in that red Toyota MR2 did.

This car is the only ex-police car I’ve ever found in a junkyard that still had the pee-proof fiberglass back seat and protective screen in place; normally, police departments remove them to use in their other cars, but the remaining Crown Vic Police Interceptors are nearly gone and whatever agency owned this car must have decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to salvage this stuff before disposing of it.

The push bumper is still here, too.

The electronic odometer means I couldn’t check the final mileage total without powering up the car’s ECU. Most discarded P71s with mechanical odometers that I’ve found have had between 100,000 and 200,000 miles showing, though I have spotted one ’02 P71 that worked as a taxi after its law-enforcement duties were done and racked up better than 400,000 miles during its career.

All of the 1992-2011 Crown Victoria Police Interceptors got the 4.6 Modular SOHC V8 engine under their hoods. This one was rated at 250 horsepower and 297 pound-feet; since the car scaled in at just over two tons, it wasn’t especially quick off the line.

While the P71/P7B wasn’t particularly quick, it was equipped with an extra-heavy-duty cooling system that could keep the engine alive under far more punitive conditions that ordinary civilian cars ever experience. Idling for hours with the A/C blasting in Phoenix in August? No problem!

On top of that, these cars can achieve real-world highway fuel economy approaching 25 miles per gallon.

The cop suspension, cop tires, and cop shocks made the ride a bit firmer than what Grandma got in her floating-on-a-cloud Crown Victoria LX, but they also gave the Police Interceptor impressively nimble handling for a car this size.

This car, along with its Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car siblings, was one of the last built on Ford’s versatile Panther platform. The first Panthers were 1979 models, so Ford certainly got its money’s worth out of that chassis design.

At some point near the end, this car slid into dirt hard enough to embed vegetation and soil between the tire bead and the wheel. Perhaps there was sufficient suspension damage to make its final owner give up on it.

***

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Four months into this series, we have seen three discarded vehicles built in (West) Germany: a 1974 Ford Capri, a 1981 Volkswagen Vanagon, and a 1984 BMW 325e. Conspicuously missing from that lineup is a vehicle made by the manufacturer that built the very first car 136 years ago, so today we’ll take a look at an example of the most legendary of all the Mercedes-Benz S-Classes, a 380 SE recently found in a Denver self-service yard.

This car is a W126, which fits in the S-Class pantheon between the W116 and the W140 and was sold in the United States for the 1980 through 1991 model years. In my opinion, the W126 was the best-built Mercedes-Benz of all time and probably one of the best-built motor vehicles of all time, period (the Toyota Century beats the W126 in that department).

Most W126 models were quite a bit more expensive (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the current S-Classes. This one had an MSRP of $43,030, or about $131,043 in 2024 dollars. If you wanted the king of the W126s in 1984 (the 500 SEC coupe), the list price was $57,100, or $173,892 in today’s money.

Because those prices were so steep and the Deutschmark was so weak against the dollar during the early-to-middle 1980s, tens of thousands of American car shoppers bought W126s in West Germany and imported them via the gray market, saving plenty of money but enraging American Mercedes-Benz dealers (who eventually succeeded in lobbying that loophole closed). This car was imported via legitimate dealership channels, but I’ve found quite a few gray-market Mercedes-Benzes of this era during my junkyard travels, including a 1980 280, a 1980 500 SE, a 1981 380 SEL, and a 1983 500 SEC.

Because these cars held together so well, they still show up regularly in car graveyards around the country. This 380 SE has low miles for a thrown-out W126, but I’ve found a couple of these cars showing better than a half-million miles on their odometers.

This one looks to have had a solid body and nice interior when it arrived here, but even a W126 is going to have the occasional mechanical problem and repairs tend to be costly.

This car had a stack of parking tickets from Longmont, Colorado, under its wipers, though, so it may have been a good runner that got towed away and auctioned off due to unpaid fines.

This being a 380, its engine is a 3.8-liter gasoline-fueled SOHC V-8 rated at 155 horsepower and 196 pound-feet of torque. For 1984, American Mercedes-Benz W126 shoppers could also get a 300 SD powered by a straight-five turbodiesel with 123 horses and 184 lb-ft of torque or a 500 SEL/SEC boasting 184 hp with 247 lb-ft.

Because 1984 S-Classes weighed between 3685 to 3870 pounds—featherweight stuff by the standards of 2024—even the oil-burners were tolerably quick (the current C-Class is hundreds of pounds heavier than this 380 SE, while the ’24 S-Class outweighs it by more than a half-ton).

In Europe, the 1979–84 S-Classes with non-V-8 engines could be purchased with manual transmissions, but all U.S-market W126s came with mandatory four-speed automatics.

This 380 SE will be crushed, but we can hope that many of its parts will live on in other W126s.

***

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We’ve looked at a couple of controversial General Motors classics in this series so far (the Chevrolet Corvair and the Pontiac Fiero) but just a single Ford product that stirs up heated debate among enthusiasts (the Mustang II). Today we’re going to restore GM/Ford balance by taking a look at a discarded example of the most polarizing Ford Motor Company product ever built: the Edsel!

The Edsel brand was created after exhaustive market research and consultation with focus groups, with plenty of futuristic statistical analysis and—more significantly—office politics stirring the pot. Sadly, the car itself didn’t get put in front of consumer focus groups before its unveiling.

The general idea was that Dearborn needed a mid-priced brand to squeeze in between aspirational Mercury and wealth-flaunting Lincoln, in order for Ford to better compete with GM and its “Ladder of Success” model (in which a customer would get a Chevrolet as his first car, then climb the rungs of increasingly prestigious Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac as he became more successful).

After much heated debate, the new brand was named after Henry Ford’s eldest son. Edsel Ford was a creative visionary with good business sense who spent his life butting heads with his stubborn old man and died young while fighting to save the company from Henry the First’s obsession with building ever-cheaper Model Ts forever.

As we all know, the Edsel Division flopped hard. After much pre-launch hype before the “E-Day” launch in September of 1957, the seven Edsel models went on sale as 1958 models. The final Edsels were built as 1960 models.

Sales for the ’58s were solid at first, though the radical styling put off some potential buyers. A bigger problem was the fact that Edsel pricing had the new division competing directly against Mercury, whose Montclair and Monterey shared their platform with the Edsel Corsair and Citation. Meanwhile, the cheaper Edsel Ranger’s price tag was uncomfortably similar to that of the Ford Fairlane 500. To make matters worse, the very cheapest 1958 Lincoln was still priced well above the most expensive Edsel.

Then, wouldn’t you know, the Eisenhower Recession hit new-car sales hard in 1958 and 1959. American car shoppers began paying increasingly strong attention to list prices and fuel economy, and the flashy, thirsty Edsels sat on dealership lots while American Motors cashed in with Rambler sales and Volkswagen of America moved more Beetles than ever before. Even Renault prospered here with the Dauphine for a couple of years.

The Edsel Division got merged into Lincoln-Mercury (there was never any such thing as a “Ford Edsel”) while resources were poured into the compact car that became the 1960 Ford Falcon. Robert McNamara, future architect of the Vietnam War, became president of Ford in 1960, and Edsel zealots enthusiasts often cast him as the villain who killed the Edsel in favor of the Falcon.

Who or what really killed Edsel? It’s hard to get angry about the Falcon, which was a stunning sales success in its own right and whose chassis design underpinned everything from the 1964–73 Mustang to the 1980 Granada. The recession? Changing consumer tastes? Communist agents? In any case, I’m glad that I was able to find this first-year Citation to write about.

Look, it even has a Continental kit! I found this car at Colorado Auto & Parts, just south of Denver. It’s got more than 100 Detroit vehicles from the ’40s through the ’70s in its inventory right now, including another 1958 Edsel Citation.

The engine is a 410-cubic-inch MEL V-8, rated at 345 gross horsepower.

The base transmission was a column-shift three-speed manual, but this car has the optional automatic with pushbutton shifter on the steering wheel hub.

The Citation was at the top of the Edsel pyramid for 1958, so most buyers wouldn’t have tolerated a lowly manual transmission in one.

***

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Pontiac went from being the affordable-yet-stodgy GM division to the youth-centric division with brilliant marketing and engineering under John Z. DeLorean during the 1960s, and enough of that spirit survived into the 1980s to allow for the development of a radical, mid-engined Pontiac two-seater. That car was the Fiero, and I’ve found this loaded ’85 GT in a self-service boneyard just south of Denver.

The Fiero debuted as a 1984 model, the same year as the groundbreaking C4 Corvette. I was in my senior year of high school at the time, and I don’t recall nearly as much excitement among my peers over Pontiac’s new two-seater as for the first Corvette to handle like a true sports car.

Pontiac was denied a two-seat sports car in the 1960s, though Pontiac’s XP-833 Banshee prototype went on to contribute design elements to the C3 Corvette and the Opel GT. By the late 1970s, though, times seemed right for a lightweight, mid-engined sports car from Pontiac that could help GM meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.

During a very lengthy and not-so-well-funded development period, the Fiero ended up being based on a unibody spaceframe onto which plastic body panels were bolted. This resulted in a very sturdy structure and a rustproof body, but the combination weighed hundreds of pounds more than the designers would have preferred.

There was no way GM was going to kick loose the funds to develop a new engine just for one low-volume affordable car, and the same ended up being true for the transaxle and suspension.

For its debut year, the only engine available in the Fiero was the 2.5-liter Iron Duke pushrod straight-four, known as the Tech IV when equipped with throttle-body fuel injection (as was the case with the Fiero). It was cheap to build—thanks to sharing much tooling with the Pontiac 301 V-8—and reliable, but it didn’t like to spin and it generated just 92 horsepower and 132 pound-feet of torque. Not exactly ideal for a sporty car, especially one that had to compete against two-seat competition that included the Honda Civic CRX, Toyota MR2, and Ford EXP/Mercury LN7.

For 1985, a 2.8-liter pushrod V-6 became available in the Fiero. It was rated at 130 horsepower and 160 pound-feet, and it resulted in a respectably quick car. This is a GT (or a regular Fiero with GT parts swapped in; the build tag was scraped off), so it came with the V-6 as standard equipment.

The reason that the Tech IV and 2.8 V-6 were the only two Fiero engine choices is a simple one: the transaxle and rear suspension in the Fiero were borrowed from the front of the GM X-body, best known as the platform beneath the Chevrolet Citation, and those are the engines used in the X family. The front suspension for the 1984–87 Fiero came from the Chevrolet Chevette, because it was cheap and available.

For the 1988 model year, the Fiero got a bespoke new suspension that ditched the Citation and Chevette stuff and improved the car’s handling. The change didn’t help sales much, as the American car-buying public remembered the widely publicized engine fires and recalls of the 1984 and 1985 cars. 1988 was the final year for the Fiero.

This one is loaded with expensive options, including the $475 three-speed automatic transmission ($1389 in 2024 dollars) and the $750 air conditioning ($2193 after inflation). The MSRP for the 1985 Fiero GT was $11,795, or $34,481 in today’s money; the entry-level 1985 Fiero started at $8495 ($24,834 now).

The Fiero wasn’t what you’d call a success story for GM, but the good news today is that the Fiero has long been an affordable and versatile enthusiast machine. In my role as wise and dignified Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of Lemons Supreme Court, I’ve seen plenty of Fieros on road-race courses and they can be fast if set up properly and well-driven. In fact, 1984–87 models with ordinary 2.8s get around the track just as well as the 1988s, and they’re reliable once you sort out the X-body axle/hub bugs.

The removable plastic body panels mean that you can convert a Fiero into a “Fierrari” or a “Fieroborghini” if you so choose, and an entire universe of GM engines can be swapped in without too much difficulty.

***

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As the first-generation Mustang got bigger, heavier, and more expensive with each passing year, Lee Iacocca (who became president of Ford in 1970) decreed that a smaller second-generation model would be developed. This car, the Mustang II, first hit showrooms as a 1974 model, which turned out to be absolutely perfect timing after the OPEC oil embargo of October 1973 caused fuel prices to go through the roof. Here’s one of those first-year cars, found in a Denver-area self-service yard recently.

The original Mustang was designed as a sporty-looking commuter based on Ford’s smallest North American–market car of its time, the Falcon. The second-generation Mustang was based on a platform derived from Ford’s smallest North American–market car at that time: the Pinto.

This adaptation made sense from an engineering standpoint, since the Pinto used a modern lightweight design and was set up to use efficient engines from Ford’s European operations. The Mustang II’s chassis differed from the Pinto’s in significant ways—the most important being the wheelbase, which was longer—but the idea of a Mustang that shared ancestry with a tiny economy car originally designed to compete against the likes of the Volkswagen Beetle and Toyota Corolla caused—and still causes—discomfort to some enthusiasts.

None of this really mattered in the American Ford showrooms of 1974, where the Mustang II was an instant success. Sales of the 1974 Mustang were nearly triple those of the 1973 model, and they remained respectable throughout the Mustang II’s production run from 1974 to ’78. Some Mustang II sales may have been cannibalized by Ford’s own Capri, which was badged as a Ford in its European homeland but sold through Mercury dealers (without Mercury badging) in the United States; the Capri was a few hundred pounds lighter and shared the inline-four and V-6 engines used by the Mustang II.

The 1974 Mustang II was available with a choice of two engines: a 2.3-liter, single overhead-cam four-cylinder and a 2.8-liter pushrod V-6, both designed in Europe and both destined for long and successful careers in the global Ford Empire. This car has the 2.3.

This engine was rated at 85 horsepower, while the V-6 made 105 horses. Power numbers were down across the board for new cars sold in the United States when this car was built, due to stricter emissions and fuel-economy standards plus the switch from gross to net power ratings that had been mandated a couple of years earlier. Even so, the 2.3-powered 1974 Mustang II had a better power-to-weight ratio than the 1973 Mustang with the base 250-cubic-inch straight-six engine, and it boasted far superior handling and braking.

A four-speed manual transmission was base equipment in the Mustang II, and that’s the gearbox in this car. A three-speed automatic was available as an option.

1974 was the only model year in which there was no V-8 engine available in the Mustang, which stung. For the 1975 through 1978 model years, a 302-cubic-inch V-8 was available as a Mustang II option.

Another thing that made 1974 unpleasant for owners of Mustang IIs (and owners of all new cars sold in the United States for that model year) was the much-hated seat-belt starter interlock system. If all front-seat occupants (or grocery bags) weren’t wearing their belts, the car wouldn’t start; this sounded sensible in theory, but most Americans refused to wear seat belts at that time and the technology of 1974 made the system maddeningly malfunction-prone.

This car is a Ghia, the most expensive new Mustang II model of 1974. The Ghia package included a padded vinyl roof and a snazzier interior; its MSRP for ’74 was $2866 (about $18,866 in 2024 dollars).

The Ghia name came from Carrozzeria Ghia, an Italian coachbuilder and design house founded in 1916. Ghia was behind such beautiful machines as the Fiat 8V Supersonic, Renault Caravelle, and the Chrysler Turbine. The company ended up in the hands of Alejandro de Tomaso, who sold it to Ford in 1970. After that, Ford used the Ghia name to designate luxury trim levels on its vehicles throughout the world; in the United States, car shoppers could get Granadas and even Fiestas with Ghia badges.

This car has the “Westminster cloth” seat upholstery and shag carpeting that came with the Mustang II Ghia package.

The interior in this one is still in decent enough condition for its age, though junkyard shoppers have purchased the door panels.

The radio is a Philco AM/FM/eight-track stereo unit, likely installed by the dealer but perhaps by an aftermarket shop. It would have been very expensive in 1974, but worth it in order to listen to the Mustang-appropriate hits of that year.

According to the build tag, this car was built at the storied River Rouge plant in Michigan in April of 1974. The paint is Saddle Bronze Metallic, the interior is Tan, and the differential ratio is 3.55:1. Interestingly, the DSO code shows that the car was built for export sale. What stories could it tell of its travels?

The High Plains Colorado sun is murder on vinyl tops, and this one got nuked to oblivion long ago.

For the 1979 model year, the Mustang II was replaced by a third-generation Mustang that lived on the versatile Fox platform. Ford nearly replaced that Mustang with one based on a Mazda-sourced front-wheel-drive platform, but ended up keeping the Fox going through 1993 (or 2004, if you consider the Fox-descended SN95 platform to be a true Fox) and sold its Mazda-based sports coupe as the Probe. For what it’s worth, a stock V-6 Probe will eat up a stock same-year V-8 Fox Mustang on a road-race course; I’ve seen it happen many times in my capacity as Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of Lemons Supreme Court (the Fox Mustang has a pronounced advantage over the Probe on the dragstrip, though).

Worth restoring? You decide! The good news is that this yard will, unusually, sell whole cars. Perhaps someone will rescue this Mustang II from its inevitable date with The Crusher.

***

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The Chevrolet Corvair remains by far the most controversial American car ever made. With nearly two million built for the 1960 through 1969 model years, it’s also reasonably plentiful in American car graveyards to this day. Today’s Final Parking Space machine is a ’63 Corvair Monza two-door, now residing in a family-owned yard just south of the Denver city limits.

By the late 1950s, Volkswagen, Renault and other overseas manufacturers were proving that American car shoppers were willing to buy small cars, while American Motors was cleaning up by selling easy-to-maneuver Ramblers. In response, Ford got into the compact game with the Falcon while Chrysler did the same with the Valiant, both of which featured some engineering innovations but didn’t deviate far from traditional Detroit designs. General Motors, meanwhile, went radical with its design for a new compact for the Chevrolet Division to sell.

The Corvair had an air-cooled flat-six engine in the back, much like the later Porsche 911. This allowed GM to lighten the car by using a transaxle instead of separate transmission and drive axle assemblies, while also eliminating the weight and complexity of a liquid cooling system.

More important, the design permitted the use of a flat floor with no driveshaft tunnel. A bench-seat-equipped Corvair could thus fit six occupants while occupying a very small footprint and boasting a curb weight of about 2300 pounds (hundreds of pounds fewer than a 2024 Nissan Versa). Putting the engine behind the rear wheels also improved traction on snow and ice.

Drawbacks to the design included the difficulty of providing effective passenger heat to an air-cooled car and handling that proved much different than that of the front-engine/rear-wheel-drive cars that most Americans had been piloting since the days of the Ford Model T. Rear-engined cars tend to be prone to oversteering during loss of traction, and the early Corvair’s swing-axle rear suspension (similar to that of the VW Beetle and Mercedes-Benz W120) could cause rear-end jacking in extreme situations.

The 1962 death of comedian Ernie Kovacs in a Corvair crash made headlines, and Chevrolet didn’t help matters by skipping a front anti-sway bar on the early Corvairs (recommending 15 psi of front tire pressure instead). Continuous Corvair suspension improvements were made over the years, with a fully independent rear suspension going into the 1965 and later cars, but the damage to the Corvair’s reputation had been done.

Corvair sales peaked in 1961 and 1962, declined significantly during 1963 through 1965, then fell off a cliff in 1966. Production continued through 1969, but few were paying attention to the Corvair by that point. Ralph Nader gets most of the blame from enthusiasts for the demise of the Corvair, but his “Unsafe at Any Speed” wasn’t published until the end of 1965 and didn’t attract much mainstream attention until the following year. (For a deeper look at whether the Corvair will really kill you, click here -Ed.)

What really killed the Corvair was competition from within the Chevrolet Division itself, taking the form of the Chevy II/Nova compact. That car, which debuted as a 1962 model, wasn’t much bigger than the Corvair and had a traditional water-cooled engine driving the rear wheels (it didn’t hurt that it looked quite a bit like its handsome full-sized Chevrolet brethren). The Corvair barely edged out the Chevy II/Nova in sales for 1962, then fell steadily behind thereafter.

This car is a Corvair 900, also known as a Monza, the top Corvair trim level. The Monza began life in coupe-only form, but it spread to sedans and wagons soon after. GM had envisioned the Corvair sedan as the big seller for the line, but buyers flocked to the coupes and convertibles. Very bad news for Corvair sales arrived at Ford dealerships in 1964 when a certain Falcon-based sporty car hit the scene; every Mustang buyer was a potential Corvair Monza coupe buyer who got away.

From the build tag, we can see that this car was built at Willow Run Assembly in Michigan during the last week of October, 1962, and that the exterior paint was Ermine White. It was equipped with the optional folding rear seats.

It has the base three-speed manual transmission (a two-speed Powerglide was optional, as was a four-speed manual) and the 80-horsepower engine.

The optional AM radio shows the CONELRAD nuclear-attack frequencies at 640 and 1240 kHz. Nineteen-sixty-three was the last year in which these markings were required.

Worth restoring? This one is pretty rough from sitting outdoors in the harsh High Plains Colorado climate for decades, so it makes more economic sense as a parts donor for nicer Corvairs.

***

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The final new MGs sold in the United States were 1980-model-year MGBs, after many decades of Morris Garage machinery winning hearts on our side of the Atlantic. There were new T-Types, MGAs, MGBs, Midgets, Magnettes, 1100s, and other cars roaring out of American MG dealerships, with MGBs and Midgets remaining common sights on our roads deep into the 1980s.

Back in the United Kingdom, though, vehicles bearing the storied octagon badge continued to be built. Today’s Final Parking Space episode documents one of the very last properly British MGs.

The ZT’s first model year was 2001, so these cars won’t be legal to import to the United States until 2026 at the earliest. I still find discarded MGBs and Midgets on a regular basis in the car graveyards of the United States, but the best means of finding UK-market MGs in their Final Parking Spaces would be to travel to Great Britain and hit one of the two American-style scrapyards over there.

So that’s what I did.

Soon after arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport, I arrived at the rental car lot to acquire wheels (an A-Class saloon) and was presented with vivid evidence that the MG brand still exists. Between a Peugeot and a Fiat (both ancient European manufacturers now owned by Amsterdam-based Stellantis) stood a pair of MG ZSes; indeed, you’ll see new MGs on roads all over Western Europe right now. These machines are built in Asia by Nanjing Automobile, though design and engineering work still takes place in England.

You could make the case that even the ZT doesn’t have full British ancestry, since BMW took over the company very early in the car’s development (you’ll want to read the excellent AROnline article for the full story). However, at the time, the Bavarians were more interested in the car that became the New Mini and so stayed mostly hands-off with the Rover 75 and its ZT descendant, pumping money into the project but leaving the Rover Group engineers and designers to create what turned out to be (arguably) the last of the purely British MGs. In fact, the 75 and ZT were meant to replace the Rover 600/800, which were developed jointly with Honda and contained a great deal of Accord/Legend DNA. I say this car earned its proud Union Jack badges, which now live on my garage wall.

MG had endured a rollercoaster of ownership changes since the Morris Garage built its first cars in 1924. The British Motor Corporation took over in 1952 with the merger of Morris Motors with the Austin Motor Company. In 1966, BMC absorbed Jaguar, then merged with Leyland Motors to become the British Leyland Motor Corporation in 1968. The British government took over in 1975 to create British Leyland, which killed the MG brand (in favor of its deadly intra-corporate rival, Triumph) after 1980 but revived it every so often for badge-engineered cars.

British Leyland begat the Rover Group in 1986, with British Aerospace acquiring the MG brand a couple of years later. BMW bought MG in 1994, then sold it to Phoenix Venture Holdings in 2000; this company built MGs as the MG Rover Group through 2005, at which point Nanjing Automobile gathered up the ruins after a disastrous few months. There’s a lot of history in the junkyard!

The ZT is thus one of very few true MGs from the post-1980 period (again, there’s plenty of room for argument about definitions here, and I’m personally biased, as an American who daily-drove a British Racing Green chrome-bumper MGB-GT while in college). While I’d prefer an MG F to a ZT for myself, the ZT was by most accounts a very good saloon that deserved a much better fate than what it got. Production of ZT-derived cars for the Chinese market continued through the middle-2010s.

U-Pull-It UK is owned by Dallas-based Copart, and their two British facilities are in York and Edinburgh. I visited the York yard, about four hours’ drive north of London and very cold in January. Prices are good and the employees are friendly there. I recommend a visit if you’re in the area.

I shot dozens of interesting vehicles at this yard, as well as at more traditional dismantlers (known as breaker’s yards in England), and I will be writing articles about English scrapyard inmates ranging from a Bentley S3 to an Alfa Romeo Brera S in the near future.

The interior of the MG ZT was comfortable in the traditional British style, with generous helpings of high-quality wood and leather. BMW didn’t want the car to compete too directly with its own 3 Series and 5 Series sedans while the ZT’s Rover 75 ancestor was being developed (hence its size between the two), and MG Rover went all-in on non-German interior design for the ZT.

The engine is a 2.5-liter Rover DOHC V-6, rated at 187 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque and giving this car a tested top speed of 140 mph. Versions of this engine came to our side of the Atlantic under the bonnets of Land Rover Freelanders and Kia Sedonas.

The transmission is a five-speed manual, driving the front wheels. A rear-wheel-drive version of the ZT was available as well, made possible by the deep floorpan tunnel, powered by a 4.6-liter Ford Modular V-8.

It began its career driving in Scotland but it will be crushed in England.

U-Pull-It was kind enough to shoot a photo of the gauge cluster with the ignition powered on for their inventory site, so we can see that this car had a mere 97,795 miles at the end. That’s fewer than most of our MGBs have today.

It appears that this car was built a few months before the axe fell on the MG Rover Group. Just 1870 ZTs were built for the 2005 model year, so this car is yet another example of the “historically significant and very rare, yet not worth much” category. You’ll see more of that phenomenon in this series, I feel compelled to warn you.

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When you spend enough time crawling around in car graveyards, as I do, you learn that plenty of seemingly restorable examples of much-sought-after vehicles end up getting discarded and crushed. The Volkswagen Transporter is one of the most vivid examples of this; enthusiasts love them passionately, resale values keep on climbing… and yet here’s another solid Transporter, found in a Denver-area self-service yard. What gives?

This one is a Vanagon, the name Volkswagen used for the third-generation (known as the T3) Transporter in North America. The Vanagon first went on sale here as a 1980 model, replacing the beloved T2.

Volkswagen began selling air-cooled Transporter vans and pickups in the United States in the early 1950s, stubbornly referring to the passenger-van version as a station wagon for many years (to be fair, the Detroit manufacturers took the same approach when marketing their small passenger vans). The first-generation, T1 Transporters were sold in the United States through the 1967 model year, after which the T2 took over here for the 1968 through 1979 model years.

The Vanagon still had its engine in the back, but it was bigger and wore more angular styling than its predecessors. The 1980–82 models were powered by air-cooled engines, just as their 1938 kDf-Wagen ancestor had done, but water-cooled engines began showing up in Vanagons during 1983. This van has a radiator in the front, so it must be an ’83-up Wasserboxer, nein?

Well, VW’s build tag shows a March 1981 date of manufacture, so this van’s (presumable) final owner must have become weary of the original air-cooled mill overheating in Colorado’s hot, thin air and decided to upgrade to a newer, water-cooled rig. The VIN shows that it started out with gasoline power, so at least its original owner didn’t have to tolerate Malaise-Era VW Diesel Misery (actually, the dangerously slow 48-horse Vanagon Diesel was available in the United States for just the 1982 and 1983 model years).

Was the swap ever completed? Engine parts, including a pair of Wasserboxer cylinder heads, are scattered around the rear cargo area but the engine case is missing. Either the project faltered and never drove with water coursing through its veins or the water-cooled engine blew up and didn’t get repaired.

This van isn’t at all rusty and the interior looks to have been decent enough when it arrived here, so how did it meet this fate?

First of all, Front Range Colorado (the part of the state just to the east of the Rocky Mountains) is isolated from America’s other major population centers by the vast distances of the American West. That’s great for automotive enthusiasts who live here (as I do), because the dry climate discourages corrosion and great project vehicles are easy to find at good prices. However, it’s a grueling two- or three-day tow from here to the big cities of the Midwest, and it’s an even more grueling two- or three-day tow over two triple-digit-elevation mountain ranges to the big cities of the West Coast.

A 1961 Transporter in this shape would find an out-of-state rescuer for sure, even if no local air-cooled VW enthusiast had space for it (most of us have all the projects we can handle and then some), but that proved not to be the case for a Transporter two decades newer. Solid Vanagons go to the crusher here on a regular basis, as I’ve shown in the past (and if you think Vanagon Westfalias are immune from the cold steel jaws of the Colorado Crusher, think again).

How about T2 Transporters in Colorado junkyards? They’re a bit harder to find in the boneyards here, but they do show up now and again. I documented a ’78 with the ultra-rare automatic transmission just last summer, plus a ’71 Kombi and a beige-over-brown ’78 with period-correct pinstriping in recent years.

The Vanagon was sold in the United States through the 1991 model year, with the very last T3 Transporters rolling off the assembly line in South Africa in 2002. Volkswagen of America brought over the T4 Transporter as the EuroVan for the 1993 through 2003 model years, but sales numbers here never approached those of the T1-T3 vans. After that, VWoA took a shot at selling Chrysler-built minivans with Routan badges here for the 2009–14 period, with results about as grim as everyone predicted. Now the Volkswagen Van has returned to the United States, powered by electrons and showing design influences from three-quarters of a century of Transporters.

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The Bayerische Motoren Werke company has been building the 3 Series since the E21 was revealed to the world in 1975. Since that time, we’ve seen six more generations of the 3 Series, and the E21’s immediate successor stands as perhaps the most beloved and iconic BMW ever built. That car is the E30, sold in the United States from the 1984 through the 1991 model years. For today’s Final Parking Space, we have an early E30 with six-cylinder engine and manual transmission, found recently in a Denver-area boneyard.

The first E30 model to be sold in North America was the 318i, equipped with the same four-cylinder engine as its 320i predecessor. It arrived on our shores during the later months of 1983 and thus shared showroom space with the 320i for a while. The first six-cylinder E30 sold here was the 325e; this one rolled off the assembly line in April of 1984.

If this is the original engine—Colorado E30 owners tend to be a swap-crazed bunch, so that’s not certain—it’s a 2.7-liter SOHC unit rated at 121 horsepower and 170 pound-feet. The “e” in the car’s designation stands for the Greek letter η (Eta), used by engineers as the symbol to represent efficiency. BMW designed this engine to make plenty of torque, as a way to boost fuel economy. (The gas lines of the 1979 Oil Crisis were still painfully recent memories at the time.)

The 325e was respectably quick off the line thanks to all that torque, but E30 enthusiasts tend to prefer the greater horsepower output of the non-Eta straight-six engines, which first appeared in U.S.-market E30s under the hoods of the 1987 325i and 325iS. As a wise and fair official with the 24 Hours of Lemons race series since 2008, I’ve seen hundreds of E30s going all-out on road courses around the country and can say that the 325e can keep up with the 325i just fine in the real world, though both types frequently suffer from maddening electrical-system problems, particularly those involving engine computers, on the race track.

A dismaying number of E30s were sold in the United States with the optional automatic transmission, which would have been a four-speed slushbox in an ’84 325e, but this car has the base five-speed manual. By the time you read this, the entire powertrain will likely have been yanked from this car by local BMW enthusiasts, who circle Front Range junkyards like vultures, hungry for E30 parts.

There’s a lot of other good stuff here for the junkyard shopper, including wheels, glass, trim, door panels, and body parts. Contrary to the popular belief that even the roughest E30s are worth ten grand, cheap examples are still out there and some still show up at self-service car graveyards. True, discarded E30s are much less commonplace than they were a decade ago (these days, junkyard E46s are a dime-a-dozen and even E36s are still fairly easy to find at your local Ewe Pullet–type establishment), but I still find good ones during my junkyard travels.

The MSRP for this car was $24,565, or about $74,021 in 2023 dollars. If that seems steep, the four-banger 1984 318i listed at just $16,430 ($49,508 in today’s money) and it offered nimbler handling due to being nearly 300 pounds lighter. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz would sell you a new 190E 2.3 with five-on-the-floor and nearly as much power as the 325e for $22,850 ($68,853 now), while brave American car shoppers could buy a new 1984 Alfa Romeo GTV-6 coupe with a screaming 154-horse V-6 for only $19,000 ($57,252 today).

Air conditioning and a trip computer were standard equipment in the 1984 318i and 325e, along with an AM/FM/cassette radio, which has been replaced by a more modern aftermarket Sony unit.

What’s the lesson here? Use genuine BMW parts and don’t give up on your E30 dreams if you’ve always wanted one, because the price of admission may not be as high as you think.

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The Buick Roadmaster name goes back all the way to the 1936 model year, when the Series 80 Roadmaster first hit showrooms. Except for a break during World War II, when the Buick Division built aircraft engines and M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyers, Roadmasters were built from 1936 through 1958. Production resumed for the 1991 through 1996 model years, when Roadmaster sedans and wagons were sold. Perhaps the most majestic of all Roadmasters were the 1949–52 models, long and low with smooth-running straight-eight engines. Here’s one of those cars, which I recently found in a Denver-area self-service car graveyard.

The four VentiPort holes on each front fender mean this is a Roadmaster for sure, since the lowly Supers and Specials got three VentiPorts per side apiece in 1951. Some sources state that the Riviera name was used only for hardtops in ’51, but Buick applied the Riviera designation to all long-wheelbase Roadmasters that year, as well as to higher-end Specials and Supers. The Riviera name would eventually be applied to many Buicks, but it didn’t become a model name in its own right until 1963.

The firewall body tag is long gone, but the first digit of the serial number on the door pillar shows that this car was built at Fairfax Assembly in Kansas City, just 600 miles to the east of this car’s Final Parking Space.

Many American manufacturers installed straight-eight engines in their cars during the 1920s through 1950s, but most of those were flathead designs. Notable exceptions include the wild overhead-cam straight-eights that went into Duesenbergs and, of course, the overhead-valve Buick straight-eight.

This one displaces 320 cubic inches (5.2 liters) and was rated at 152 horsepower. That was respectable for the early 1950s, but the introduction of the groundbreaking Oldsmobile and Cadillac overhead-valve V-8s for the 1949 model year made the Buick Eight seem antiquated to car shoppers, who were then marveling at supersonic rocket planes and the inauguration of a nuclear arms race with the Soviets.

The Buick Division would get its own V-8 engine starting with the 1953 model year, with Chevrolet and Pontiac following with their division-specific pushrod V-8 designs a couple of years later. To be fair to the 1951 Buick, its engine made 17 more horsepower than the Olds 303 Rocket and just eight fewer than Cadillac’s 331. That said, the very first rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded (by Ike Turner) had as its subject matter the 1951 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. How could any inline engine top that?

Despite GM’s spectacular coup with the world’s first truly successful automatic transmission, GM’s Buick Division resisted the Hydra-Matic and ended up with a very smooth but not-so-efficient automatic developed from the powertrain of the M18 Hellcat.

This was the Dynaflow, which sometimes gets called a two-speed but uses its complex torque converter rig to deliver a driving experience more like that of a CVT with two manually selected ranges. This Roadmaster would have been thirsty with its big eight and Dynaflow, but so what? Rolls-Royce didn’t even offer an automatic transmission until 1952, instead using four-on-the-tree manuals to rattle the fillings out of their passengers’ teeth, while Dynaflow-equipped Buicks rolled serene and shift-free.

You would think such a luxurious postwar machine wouldn’t have met this fate, but it spent too many years outdoors in the harsh Colorado High Plains climate to be an economically sensible restoration. Its parts will live on in other Roadmasters.

The adobe-like layers of body filler could be hiding unseen rust, but plenty of usable body and trim parts await junkyard shoppers.

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For various reasons, including legality and corporate secrecy, concept cars are generally destroyed by their automakers after public display. It doesn’t matter whether the concept births a production vehicle—or, as in this case, whether the concept was even a running and driving car. This engine-less Mercedes-built egg, built in 2020 to showcase a new generation of its MBUX infotainment system, should have been eliminated. Somehow, it wasn’t, and now it’s sitting in an Atlanta scrapyard.

Found last month, this suicide-door egg first cropped up on Reddit in April 2023. It does, technically, have four wheels—someone removed the lower “skirt” that originally hid them—but Mercedes never intended the outside to be anything more than the barest shell: The goodness is inside.

Found this weird thing in the local scrapyard
byu/Alodarsc2 innamethatcar

Click through the slideshow, and voila—the sumptuous, screen-decked interior that set the standard for the seventh-gen S-Class, as well as for the all-electric EQ models. Mercedes calls the setup MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User eXperience), while BMW calls its infotainment system iDrive, or Jeep uses “UConnect.” Each is a catch-all term for what an occupant sees and interacts with, including the digital displays, touch-sensitive and otherwise. Now in its third generation—the one which brought Angry Birds to Benz dashboard screens—MBUX was entering its second generation in 2020 when this egg was built to showcase it ahead of the launch of the 2021 S-Class.

MBUX debuted in 2020 with a host of features that we typically associate with laptops and smartphones, including face, voice, and fingerprint recognition, not to mention touch-sensitive displays, gesture recognition, cloud connectivity, and 16 GB of RAM. The second generation was “even more digital and intelligent,” reads the press release, touting upgrades to hardware and software, and emphasizing the system’s ability to work with other vehicle systems (such in-cabin cameras and weight sensors in the seats) and sensor data: “For example, the exit warning function in the S-Class now uses cameras to recognize that an occupant wants to leave the vehicle.”

Born in 2018, the second-generation infotainment system is most obviously recognized by its portrait-oriented touchscreen, an OLED model measuring 12.8 inches from corner to corner. Mercedes planned to install it in a bevy of models and chose the 2021 model year S-Class as the first recipient: A fitting choice, given that the model has long been a company flagship, and thus, the birthplace of its most innovative features.

In the past three years, that touchscreen has trickled downward in the brand’s hierarchy of vehicles and for 2024 appears in its second-smallest SUV, the GLC. Several higher-level, all-electric models—though not the S-Class—have already replaced it with a bigger one, also running the MBUX software: The truly massive Hyperscreen, three displays behind one sheet of glass measuring 56 inches diagonally and stretching nearly A-pillar to A-pillar. Sometime after the egg’s debut in 2020 and its scrapping—as recently as nine months ago, though we can’t be sure—Mercedes fitted the Hyperscreen to the egg. Since pre-production concepts are terrifically expensive to build, and a new design always needs extensive testing, this seems like a logical install.

Other non-screen features from this egg concept appeared in the S-Class, such as the seats, with their plush pillows, and the beautifully machined speaker grilles.

What is the future of this particular concept? In all likelihood, the same as it ever was: The crusher. Mercedes, whose U.S. HQ is in Atlanta, clearly has no use for it, and only the most masochistic of auto-computer geeks would venture to maintain this. That said, if you or your friend plan to swoop in and save this weird German egg, let us know: You’re our kind of weird.

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Please welcome our newest columnist (and junkyard hunter extraordinaire), the great Murilee Martin. He has been writing about cars since starting as a catalog copywriter at Year One in 1995. He became a contributor for Jalopnik in 2007 and has since written for Autoweek, Motor Authority, The Truth About Cars, Autoblog, Car and Driver and others. Murilee has loved going to junkyards since he got his first hooptie car, a $50 Toyota Corona sedan, and he enjoys speculating on the lives led by junkyard vehicles and their owners. His personal fleet at present includes a 1941 Plymouth hill-climb race car, a chopped-and-shaved 1969 Toyota Corona lowrider, a 1996 Subaru Sambar kei van, a 1997 Lexus LS400 Coach Edition, and a 1981 Honda Super Cub. -EW

With the ever-increasing sales success of the Volkswagen Beetle and other small imported cars in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, Ford and General Motors had the deep pockets to develop their own homegrown competitors from scratch: the Pinto and the Vega. Chrysler couldn’t afford to take that route, instead choosing to import and rebadge two cars from its European operations (the Simca 1204 aka Simca 1100 and the Plymouth Cricket aka Hillman Avenger) and one from a Japanese manufacturer (the Dodge Colt aka Mitsubishi Colt Galant). The Colt sold well here, but Chrysler still needed to produce an American-built subcompact designed for our roads. That car ended up being the Dodge Omni and its Plymouth Horizon twin, and I’ve found a well-preserved example of the latter in the same Colorado car graveyard that recently gave us the 1963 Chrysler Newport as the debut of the Final Parking Space series.

Unlike the Pinto and Vega, the Omnirizon (as these cars are commonly known by their aficionados) began life as a European design, with development taking place at Chrysler Europe’s operations in the United Kingdom and France. As was the case with the later front-wheel-drive Ford Escort, the European-market versions differed substantially from their American counterparts while maintaining a strong family resemblance.

So, just as owners of Chrysler/Talbot/Simca Horizons are justified in thinking of their cars as patriotic red-white–and-blue British or French machines, American Omnirizon owners have just as much right to consider their cars genuine red-white-and-blue American machines. Omnirizon production began in Illinois (at Chrysler’s Belvidere Assembly) in December of 1977, with the first cars sold as 1978 models.

Omnirizon sales started out strong, helped along by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and resulting oil shortage, and this simple and affordable car remained in production all the way through the 1990 model year. The Omnirizon was considered something of an obsolete 1970s relic by the late 1980s, but it was so cheap to build that it was able to compete on price with the most affordable imports.

The 1988 Omnrizon had an MSRP of just $5995, which comes to about $15,910 in 2023 dollars. The America trim level began life as the designation for the very cheapest Omnirizons, but by 1988 all of them were Americas. Not many new U.S.-market 1988 cars could undercut that sticker price, though some managed the feat.

The wretched Yugo GV had a hilarious price tag of $4199 ($11,144 today) that year, though the $5295 ($14,052 now) Hyundai Excel was the greater threat to Omnirizon sales. Just squeezing under the Omnirizon’s price (and available in the same dealerships) was the $5899 ($15,655 after inflation) Dodge/Plymouth Colt;  the Toyota Tercel EZ, Ford Festiva and Volkswagen Fox also came with MSRPs that just barely undercut that of the 1988 Omnirizon.

The Omirizon was available only as a five-door hatchback, but its platform begat many other Dodge and Plymouth models sold in North America. These include the 1982-1987 Dodge Charger and the Plymouth Scamp/Dodge Rampage pickups.

This one is an Omnirizon in the literal sense, because it has parts from many Omnis and Horizons. There are both Omni and Horizon badges to be found and the emissions sticker stuck on the underside of the hood comes from a 1989 Omni; the build tag says it’s a 1988 Horizon and therefore that’s what we’re calling it. I’ve found quite a few Omnirizons in Denver-area junkyards in recent years, sometimes in groups of a half-dozen at a time, so I think there must be a local collector unloading a hoard of parts cars.

However, this one has a red tag that suggests it was towed for illegal parking. A search of its VIN shows that it was purchased (presumably by Colorado Auto & Parts) at a nearby auction for $250.

Chrysler bolted a bewildering variety of engines in the American-market Omnirizon over the years, with suppliers including Simca, Volkswagen, and Peugeot. Starting with the 1987 model year, however, every example received the Chrysler 2.2-liter straight-four under its hood. This one is a fuel-injected version rated at 96 horsepower and 122 pound-feet.

For 1988, transmission choices were limited to a five-speed manual and three-speed automatic. This car has the automatic, which added a whopping $1179 ($3,129 after inflation) to the cost.

It doesn’t have the $694 ($1842 now) air conditioner, but it was purchased with the optional $254 ($674 today) AM/FM/cassette radio.

I have local friends who are restoring a 1990 Omni for their 16-year-old (the ’90 came with a driver’s-side airbag, amazingly), and I called them the moment I first laid eyes on this car because the 1988-1990 models are nearly impossible to find in the boneyards nowadays. They grabbed a treasure trove of useful parts that same day and have since incorporated them into their project. It’s good to know that some of this piece of American automotive history will live on in one of its street-driven brethren.

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Please welcome our newest columnist (and junkyard hunter extraordinaire), the great Murilee Martin. He has been writing about cars since starting as a catalog copywriter at Year One in 1995. He became a contributor for Jalopnik in 2007 and has since written for Autoweek, Motor Authority, The Truth About Cars, Autoblog, Car and Driver and others. Murilee has loved going to junkyards since he got his first hooptie car, a $50 Toyota Corona sedan, and he enjoys speculating on the lives led by junkyard vehicles and their owners. His personal fleet at present includes a 1941 Plymouth hill-climb race car, a chopped-and-shaved 1969 Toyota Corona lowrider, a 1996 Subaru Sambar kei van, a 1997 Lexus LS400 Coach Edition and a 1981 Honda Super Cub. -EW

Now that I’ve documented more than 2600 vehicles in car graveyards around the country, I know which discarded cars to check for odometers showing intergalactic final readings: Mercedes-Benz diesels, 1980s Honda Accords and brick-shaped Volvos. Today’s Final Parking Space machine is one of the latter type: a sensible Swedish sedan that traveled the equivalent of 15.7 trips around Earth’s equator during its career.

Because some Volvo experts might be annoyed that I’m not using the same designation that Volvo assigned this car when it was new, please be aware that the true model name of this car was “DL Sedan.” That’s because United States-market members of the Volvo 200 Series cars (which included the six-cylinder 260s as well as four-cylinder 240s) were just badged as their trim levels here for the 1980 through 1985 model years; after that, they were badged with “240” followed by the trim level. Because it’s helpful to have a model name that indicates both the number of doors and the number of cylinders, most people today use the original naming system with the middle digit indicating number of engine cylinders and the third digit representing the number of doors.

Now, let’s talk about odometers! Very few vehicle manufacturers used six-digit odometers on their U.S.-market products prior to the middle 1980s, and most Detroit manufacturers kept five-digit units in their vehicles until fairly deep into the 1990s (with notable exceptions). Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, however, felt sufficiently optimistic about the longevity of their cars to go to six-digit odometers during the 1960s, while Toyota and Honda took the jump in the early 1980s. That means that I’m certain to have walked right by many American-made cars and trucks (especially trucks) in junkyards that had, say, 492,533 miles rather than the 92,533 miles displayed on their odometers. Keep that in mind before you blow a brain gasket over the shortage of Detroit Iron in the Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Standings.

So, those standings as of the time of this writing, after nearly 17 years of writing about junkyard cars:

1. 1990 Volvo 240 DL, 631,999 miles
2. 1988 Honda Accord LXi, 626,476 miles
3. 1987 Mercedes-Benz 190E, 601,173 miles
4. 1996 Toyota Camry Wagon, 583,624 miles
5. 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, 572,139 miles
6. 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300SD, 525,971 miles
7. 1988 Honda Accord DX, 513,519 miles
8. 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon, 493,549 miles
9. 1990 Nissan Sentra, 440,299 miles
10. 1991 Honda Accord, 435,417 miles

As you can see, today’s Volvo doesn’t come close to reaching the Top Ten (it’s 23rd overall at the moment, between a 393K-mile Mazda RX-7 and a 389K-mile Toyota Avalon), but some consolation for fans of Swedish steel must come from the fact that a 244 is the current Numero Uno. Today’s FPS entry is the fourth-best-traveled Volvo I’ve found in a wrecking yard, if you must know.

I couldn’t decipher this car’s odometer when I first found it, however, because there was an object blocking most of the digits. I could see it began with 3, but I had to know the true figure.

I never visit a junkyard without my trusty lightweight toolkit, naturally, so I got to work removing and disassembling this car’s instrument cluster (don’t worry, I put it back together again in case a later junkyard shopper wanted to buy it).

It turned out that a piece of the label affixed by VDO during the manufacture of the cluster (in November of 1984) had suffered adhesive failure and slipped in front of the odometer. This car was in a San Francisco Bay Area yard, so we can assume that California’s hot, dry summer weather was out of spec for the label glue VDO used.

The 240 is the most iconic and best-known Volvo, period, and it was available in the United States from the 1975 through 1993 model years. It proved so popular that it stayed in production long past its intended successor, the 740.

The 240’s ancestry goes much further back than 1975, though. From the A-pillar rearward, it’s essentially a Volvo 140, a 1960s design that itself carries some DNA from the 1944 Volvo PV444. The 240 uses a suspension design very similar to that of Ford’s Fox-body Mustang and is about the same size and weight, so its performance is notably Fox-like when given a Ford Windsor V-8 swap (as I’ve done).

Why do so many Volvo 240s seem to hold together so well? Much of the credit goes to good design, solid build quality and Volvo’s “don’t change what works” philosophy of the 1940s-1980s. Equal credit should go to Volvo 240 owners, many of whom were (and are) willing to keep their beloved cars in daily service for 30+ years. I still find a dozen or so 240s in Colorado and California car graveyards every year.

While the first-year 240 came with a pushrod engine right out of the 140 and the 262/264 got the PRV V-6, the overwhelming majority of 200-Series Volvos got a single-overhead-cam straight-four, in either naturally-aspirated or turbocharged form (there were Volkswagen-sourced diesel engines as well, though very few 240s so equipped were sold on this side of the Atlantic). This car has a 2.3-liter rated at 114 horsepower and 136 pound-feet. A turbocharged version was available with 162 horses and 175 pound-feet for 1985.

This car is a base-trim-level sedan (the 242 two-door had been discontinued the year before) with automatic transmission, so its MSRP was $13,335 (about $38,811 in 2023 dollars). Since it lasted for more than three times as many miles as most other mid-1980s cars, we can say that was money well spent.

Why did it end up here? The hood damage appears to have been inflicted by Pick-n-Pull employees bypassing a sticky hood latch in the quickest way possible, and the interior appears to have been in decent condition when the car entered the junkyard ecosystem. Perhaps its final owner traded it in on a new car and its scary odometer reading rendered it unsalable, or maybe it developed a problem too expensive for even a Volvo devotee to pay.

***

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The post Final Parking Space: 1985 Volvo 244 with nearly 400K miles appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Please welcome our newest columnist (and junkyard hunter extraordinaire), the great Murilee Martin. He has been writing about cars since starting as a catalog copywriter at Year One in 1995. He became a contributor for Jalopnik in 2007 and has since written for Autoweek, Motor Authority, The Truth About Cars, Autoblog, Car and Driver and others. Murilee has loved going to junkyards since he got his first hooptie car, a $50 Toyota Corona sedan, and he enjoys speculating on the lives led by junkyard vehicles and their owners. His personal fleet at present includes a 1941 Plymouth hill-climb race car, a chopped-and-shaved 1969 Toyota Corona lowrider, a 1996 Subaru Sambar kei van, a 1997 Lexus LS400 Coach Edition and a 1981 Honda Super Cub. -EW

Welcome to this, the first installment of the “Final Parking Space” series! My car graveyard travels take me all over the country as I explore salvage yards and explore the history of forgotten vehicles. Today’s FPS car, however, resides in my home state of Colorado—at a venerable family-owned yard just south of the Denver city limits. It’s a fine example of affordable full-size Detroit luxury from the early 1960s: a 1963 Chrysler Newport sedan.

Chrysler first started using the Newport name on hardtop models during the 1950s, then made the Newport a model name in its own right starting with the 1961 model year.

From that year until Chrysler axed the Newport in 1978, it was the cheapest full-sized Chrysler model available. For 1963, it occupied a spot on the big Chrysler prestige ziggurat below the 300 and the New Yorker.

The MSRP for this car started at $2964, or about $29,937 in 2023 dollars. The Chrysler 300 sedan listed at $3765 ($38,028 after inflation) that year, while the mighty New Yorker sedan cost $3981 ($40,210 now). That made the Newport a steal when looked at in car-per-dollar terms; the decidedly proletariat 1963 Chevrolet Impala sedan with V-8 engine started at $2768 ($27,958 in today’s money).

The Newport post sedan was by far the best-selling Chrysler-badged car of 1963, with 49,067 sold that year. The New Yorker sedan came in second place, with a mere 14,884 rolling out of showrooms.

Under the hood, we find a genuine Chrysler big-block V-8 engine: a two-barrel 361 rated at 265 horsepower. This is a B engine, a member of the family introduced in 1958 and the ancestor of the legendary RB engines that included the 383, 413, 426 (no, not the 426 Hemi) and 440. If you bought the 300 for ’63, you got a 383 with 305 horses, while the New Yorker came with a 413 and an impressive 340 hp. The King of Chrysler Power in 1963 was the rare 300J coupe, which had a twin-four-barrel-equipped 413 that made 390 horsepower. Keep in mind that these are gross, not net ratings, and that there was a certain amount of exaggeration in the automotive marketing world back then.

The transmission here is a three-speed automatic with Chrysler’s distinctive push-button shifter on the dash. The base transmission in the 1963 Newport was a three-speed column-shift manual, however, so the original buyer of this car paid extra for luxurious two-pedal driving.

The factory AM radio has the CONELRAD nuclear-attack-alert frequencies of 640 and 1240 kHz marked with Civil Defense triangles on the dash. Car radios sold in the United States were required to have these markings after 1963, at which time it was presumed that the speed of Soviet ICBMs would render such a system irrelevant.

It’s not terribly rusty and the interior could be revived without too much trouble. So why is it here? Sadly, non-hardtop Detroit sedans of the 1946-1970 period just aren’t worth enough for almost anybody to justify a serious restoration of a car in this condition.

A good message to keep in mind.

***

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The post Final Parking Space: 1963 Chrysler Newport 4-Door Sedan appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Welcome to the latest installment of Project Valentino, a series dedicated to the decades-long story of senior editor Sajeev Mehta and the machine that got him into cars: the 1983 Lincoln Continental Valentino designer series. Join us as Sajeev restores this Ford enigma to its original glory and then some! —Ed. 

I’m still junkyarding my way toward completion of this car. In our last installment, we visited an Albuquerque “breaker’s yard,” as the Brits say. The goal was to salvage any worthwhile remains from a bullet-riddled 1983 Lincoln Continental. In the weeks after, my restoration shop sent a pointed request: Project Valentino is missing more parts, this time around the hood latch.

So I hatched a plan, one that included pulling my dad away from his cloistered world of long bike rides and luncheons with fellow retirees.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Take a look at this core-support parts diagram. We needed the metal brackets that connect the front fascia to the radiator core support. Those brackets also provide a place for the secondary hood catch—the one that retains the hood if the primary latch fails—to clamp onto the car’s body. Except . . . when I took a quick peek at the factory shop manual, to see what I was up against, the brackets weren’t pictured. And the rest of the drawing was kind of wrong.

The hood lock support (16717 in the drawing) shown is a different design. The auxiliary hood catch (16892) pictured doesn’t even exist on Project Valentino. Given that diagram and my experience with 1970s Fords, I reckon the Fox-body Continental, my era of Continental, was originally intended to use carryover parts from older Ford models like the Torino and Fairmont.

The Fox Continental is indeed a weird transitional car, mixing flagship elements of the past with forward-looking, top-shelf engineering. No matter: The 1982 Continental junker that we discussed in December remains un-crushed at my local high-turnover junkyard. And when it comes to parts breakdowns, I have at my disposal something better than a Ford shop manual.

Another ’83 Continental.

Don’t you just hate it when your favorite TV show adds a new family member to boost ratings? Much like Andy Keaton (Family Ties, NBC, 1982–9) or Chrissy Seaver (Growing Pains, ABC, 1985–92), this second ’83 joined the Mehta fleet for specific purpose: It serves as something like a time capsule of my family’s automotive history.

This car has come in handy as a reference point for assembling Project Valentino. But its single-tone brown paint and dark brown velour interior give a different vibe. And since we already have a Fox Continental in Valentino, this Lincoln needed a nickname: Foxy Brown. 

While I usually hate naming cars—every other antique we own is easily remembered by its factory name alone—motoring around in Foxy Brown has been fun. The car is mostly a time capsule to Detroit flagship design in the tail of the Malaise Era. Save a few upgrades for longevity (low-watt LED interior bulbs) and fun (a rear sway bar borrowed from my brother’s 5.0-liter Fox Mustang), it’s stock. But Foxy has truly been a burden on my sanity.

Foxy Brown’s existence is one of the (many) reasons why Project Valentino moves at a snail’s pace. Save those aforementioned touches, it’s all-original, with 60,000 miles and 40 years of maintenance-free operation under its belt. So when I fix or inspect something, I often get sidetracked by horrors like that miserable negative battery cable shown above. Who in their right mind thought that splice was a good idea?

We’re getting off-topic. I called Dad and made a request: Get Foxy Brown out of the garage and pick me up for a little fun at the junkyard. He’s been curious, all these years, as to what on earth I’ve been doing with our 1980s Fords, and he made a formal request a while back, asking to join me one day at the junkyard. That, as he so eloquently put it, is when he finally became my spanner boy.

Upon our arrival, I popped open Foxy Brown’s hood to verify the parts I needed. I showed them to Dad so he could understand my thought process.

We both knew what we were supposed to see, so I just about lost it when I saw the junker: Just as with that early-1982-build Tripminder computer with jeweled buttons, the junkyard hood latch was completely different from the one on Foxy. Still, the mounting points looked the same, and the design looked superior, so I decided to proceed.

In decades of junkyard foraging, this is the first time I’ve had my photo taken. I’m glad Dad made it happen. Photography has been his hobby since he immigrated to the United States in the 1960s, and that hobby really took off after he got his PhD, when he bought a Beseler RE Topcon Super. We still own that battleship of a camera, but as I whizzed off bolts and unclipped clippings, his smartphone was the weapon of choice.

I examined Ford’s engineering and the thoughtful touches present in that 1982 Continental assembly—notably how the latch cable used a wound wire ending in an elegant loop. (Many newer designs simply terminate the wire in a clumsy metal stud.) I was as enamored as any man can be for a hood latch: I clearly needed the entire assembly for Project Valentino, from the metal brackets up front to the release lever under the dash.

And then there’s Dad, who grabbed a vent register for Project Valentino’s refreshed dashboard. While I probably have a decent replacement kicking around in my attic, this was one of those get-it-while-you’re-here moments. Plus, it let my father enjoy his initial foray into junkyarding with a lightweight task before wandering around the yard.

Wander he did, then, and he soaked it all in. He especially got a kick out of seeing a retired Chrysler 300C like the one he owned in 2005. (Time comes for all of us.) I collected everything I needed, and then gave Dad a call to join me at the cashier.

The drive home was a delight, as the two of us got some quality time away from the house. Free from the pull of TV and the internet, Dad surprised me with an admission: He’s not the fan of classic cars he once was. His stress levels, he said, had spiked while driving Foxy Brown in manic interstate traffic. I don’t blame him. Houston’s I-10 is the free-for-all made famous in the one more lane bro meme, and a stock ’83 Continental can be a bit overwhelming in a sea of modern cars brodozers.

The Lincoln’s skinny whitewalls, I noted, are the biggest part of the Fox Continental’s unique performance experience. Dad agreed, and the conversation sent him down memory lane: His first car, a Canadian Vauxhall Viva, was terrifying on winter roads, as it wandered with the Chinook winds and was tossed around by big trucks. And he learned the hard lesson of oversteer one year when summertime hit, as he was forced to make an emergency maneuver at highway speed on bias-ply tires and drum brakes.

Dad and the car each survived that moment, but his next big purchase, a 1970 Mercury Montego, left him cold. It wasn’t terribly sure-footed at highway speeds in winter weather, either. When he began talking about his 1975 Mercury Montego MX, however, his tone went from retrospective scorn to pure delight.

At 5.8 liters, that Montego’s engine was the largest Dad had owned. The car possessed power front disc brakes and an interior trimmed far better than anything he’d experienced. With that car, he said, he had finally “made it.” I asserted that the Mercury’s body-on-frame design, its coil-sprung rear suspension, and its radial tires were why it shined on the highway.

All of which reminded me of Mercury’s advertisements of the era, and how Dad fit right into the marketing plan. Granted, he’s a pharmacologist, not the astro-whatever from the ad above, but he could have starred in that TV spot. He completely embodied the message behind the car, and he even enjoyed the vulgar Saturday Night Live parody the Montego inspired. My brother and I still talk about how, in the days before the Montego was sold to make room for an ’81 Monte Carlo, the three of us went for a final farewell ride.

When Dad mashed the Montego’s throttle, that low-compression 351 bellowed a righteous call to low-end torque. The transmission did a three-to-one downshift, the car’s nose lifted gently, and the Montego made majestic forward progress.

At that point, Dad turned to his young and highly impressionable children, announcing passionately, “See? This is why you get a V-8!”

Nice job, Dad—one singular adoration for a Ford small-block, and you “ruined” your children for life. But he wasn’t wrong. The oddly rough V-6 in that Monte Carlo gave depressing fuel economy, a consumption not unrelated to the car’s frequent need for full-throttle operation. Dad had buyer’s remorse, as the Chevrolet salesperson had lied to him over the phone to get him back in the dealership. The guy said the Monte Carlo had a V-8, and Dad was suckered sweet-talked into buying it. I don’t think he was ever the same.

Fast forward to 1986, as Dad’s sour memories made him insist on counting every plug wire on the distributor of a pre-owned Valentino before even considering a purchase. He wasn’t going to take the Lincoln-Mercury salesman’s word. My nine-year-old self counted the wires on the distributor cap after him and said, “No, it has nine cylinders, Daddy!”

Back to modern times: Leaving the junkyard in Foxy Brown, Dad dropped me off at the restoration shop holding Project Valentino, then made his way back home.

I began the process of fitting, cleaning, painting and installing the hood latch assembly. The test-fit was surprisingly confusing and stressful until I remembered that the witness marks on the hood latch—the telltale signs of its previous alignment—didn’t apply to the Valentino. After that, the restoration shop was kind enough to let me use their bench-mounted wire wheel for cleaning the rust off, and a lick of paint sealed the deal.

Cable installation was even easier than removal, as Project Valentino is currently missing the vast majority of its firewall grommets. (Sigh, one more thing to address.) But the 1982-only hood latch sure looks better, not least because of its bolt-on modesty panel, now finished in semi-gloss black.

If words don’t really explain the benefit, perhaps a video will:

The other car shown is my 1988 Mercury Cougar, another Fox-body Ford. The hood latches on most newer Fox Fords make a sloppy double-clunk sound, a noise worthy of a Dick Wolf TV drama. Project Valentino’s latch gives a solid, reassuring thud. There’s also a smoother, more linear action to the latch’s release.

I thought I knew everything about these cars, but here I am, admitting how there’s always more to learn. And while I had originally planned on simply giving Project Valentino a functional hood, this turned out to be another OEM-plus-style upgrade.

I can rest easy knowing the car’s pristine aluminum hood (yes, really) will never smack into that new-old-stock $600 windscreen. But Dad and I weren’t done yet, as he did a little foraging while I wrenched on that junker Continental.

Dad found one of Lincoln’s Signature Series C-pillar script emblems, so I now have a pair for my collection. The urge to up-badge Foxy Brown closer to its big-brother Valentino was strong. That urge became overwhelming when I noticed that these Continental badges earned their signature (sorry) gold hue through solid-brass construction. And brass responds remarkably well to a heavy clean and a light polish.

In other words, both Lincolns, our project car and Foxy Brown, got something from this junkyard experience. Project Valentino only grows sweeter as it nears completion. But the road I’m traveling is no longer paved with good intentions and a fat checkbook. I no longer need the help of a restoration shop, which is convenient, because that shop would absolutely like to move on to easier and more profitable projects.

At the moment, Project Valentino has no interior. The car is missing the model’s unique side tape stripe, and it sports an electrical system with more gremlins than a shopping-mall water feature. The closer we get to that light at the end of the tunnel, the more trains we have to dodge. But at least that hood assembly let Dad and I make a big dent in the list.

Or prevented a big dent, if you know what I mean.

***

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Matthew Anderson is an American engineer who relocated to Germany a few years ago for work. He suffers from a baffling obsession with unexceptional cars from Australia and the Eastern Bloc. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions, especially now that his move back to the Carolinas (with a shipping container housing a Moskvich, among other nonsense, in tow) has been such a tragicomic delight. To welcome him home to the U.S., we’ve decided to bless him with a dedicated column called “Against All Oddities.”–Eric Weiner

My time on the road, driving across Europe in a strange 1990s camper van after quitting my job in Germany, was interesting to say the least. Hell, in the last installment of “HtQWDYJaREiaNS,” I accidentally became the local mechanic in a small Albanian mountain village. But as my wife and I inched deep into Southern Spain, our trip started to heat up. I don’t mean that in the figurative sense, or because this story involves me zipping off to investigate a positively excellent junkyard. I mean it literally; summer in this part of the world is beautiful, scorching, breathtaking, positively roasting, relaxing, also definitely hot.

So.

Hot.

At 112 degrees American Fahrenheit and not a whisper of technologically conditioned air, I baked into an ever-browner salt lick with every waking day inside the Hobby 600 camper. Still, I prefer this slow melting to unexpected mechanical catastrophe. Have I double-fisted a tuna sandwich and a ratchet while sitting on a bench at a rest area? Tensioned a belt in front of Roman ruins? Naturally, but I would classify all of that as good times. Far from torture.

That situation changed as we climbed mountains in temperatures around 110 degrees. After spending three miles in fourth gear at full boost, the gradient increased and our speeds fell. I took an especially long gander at all lamps and gauges. The austere instrumentation in this van consists of a single trusty ol’ coolant temp gauge (usually never gets over the middle) and an oil pressure lamp whose flicker quickly fades on startup. That had been sufficient, seeing as missing needles for oil pressure, oil temperature, boost, etc. would only produce anxiety. I did notice that a previous owner had self-tappered a volt meter into the place where a digital clock wasn’t. The small, warped needle swung wildly from 11 to 15V, mostly in the morning. Its flickering backlighting did little to build rapport with me. Was it the charging system or the gauge? I preferred blissful ignorance.

Pegging at 11 volts up a mountain pass would be abnormal. I looked to my not-so trustworthy companion, the unlit charge warning lamp, which said nothing of the situation. I backed off the throttle, and after a few minutes of lower boost driving the voltage returned to its “normal” area. Hmm …

A few days later, on the Andalusian coast, the opposite phenomena occurred. The charge light cried foul while the volt meter read pegged at 15V. Sigh. I pulled over at a rest area in the middle of nowhere. My multimeter quickly verified that the charge lamp was indeed a dirty, dirty liar. Who can you trust, if not a simple diode and a lightbulb?

At the campsite that night, I dug out the wiring diagrams and tried to make sense of it all while voraciously hydrating my body. Given that the cab wiring is all Fiat (well documented) and the body wiring is all Hobby (utter black box), I was disturbed to find that the relay for the fridge gas ignitor and some other obscure voltage supply were directly spliced in to the charge lamp circuit. My options were, A) Take out the fridge to get to the relay or B) Source a new-to-me alternator and hope the problem went away. I want what’s behind door number 2, Bob!

According to both Google Translate and Google Maps, Desguaces means “junkyard” in Spanish. Busted cars from Northern Europe are regularly exported, and Spain is a common landing zone for a half-decade stopover before a car either dies or lives another life in nearby Morocco or other parts of North Africa. A consequence of this migration pattern is that Spain has really well stocked self-service pick-a-part yards.

As if I needed any additional motivation to get out and explore junkyards, our campsite in Spain was not really a winner. I was keen to spend time away from there. My evidence, your honor: on one side of our plot was a grandmother with a side hustle subleasing about 20 reserved campsites. On our other side was very drunk and recently incarcerated Catalonian fellow (he was thrilled to be a free man), his pit bull, and his stripper girlfriend. Everywhere else, people were watching the Spanish version of American Idol.

My wife said that she needed some time to strip what’s called a “gel coat” off her nails and then redo it. Having some experience with refinishing boats, I assumed this would take time. The spare parts were calling my name.

The junkyard was located about 6 miles away, as the filthy pigeon flies. Call them first? With my rusty high-school Spanish? No way without visible gesticulation. This was obviously a job for my Chinese-made, stick-welded folding clown bicycle. My phone told me the temperature was about 93 degrees and the route to the yard was mostly flat and on country lanes. I spent the next ten minutes thinning down my tool collection to something portable and ratchet-strapping my orange marine box to the back of my bike. In my backpack went some water and spare storage room for souvenirs.

Google said I was projected to arrive about 45 minutes before closing. A tight window, but possible for me to remove an alternator if negotiations went smoothly. Riding through the Spanish orange groves and abandoned farmsteads, I managed to become lost several times before my tires crunched into the driveway of the five-acre scrap yard.

Cars were piled three-high around the perimeter of the facility, many already stripped of their most salable bits for easier access on a warehouse shelf. I walked into the lobby where I was immediately hit with oscillating fans on full blast and a curt “Hola. Dime.” Translation: “Hello. Tell me,” as in, what do you want, clown-bike-man?

(The following exchange was conducted in Spanish, unless otherwise noted.)

Gloria the Counter Lady: Dime.

Matt Anderson (in horrible Spanish): Uhhh. Hello. I am sorry for my bad Spanish. I am searching for an alternator for an old Ducato.

Guy behind the glass in the next room: Where are you from? Are you Russian or Ukrainian or Romanian?

MA: I am an American from the United States of America.

GBG: (in English): Cool, man.

MA: (in English): Do you speak English?

Gloria: He doesn’t speak English. He just knows those two words: “Cool, man.” Do you have a part number?

MA: Uhhh. No. I am sorry.

Gloria: Do you have a picture, or can you get one?

MA: (Thinks better of asking wife to lift hood with “gel coat” nails.) I can find a Google picture.

Gloria: Please, sit down and try to find something.

MA: (Searches for ten minutes)

Gloria: Did you find something yet?

MA: Yes, please moment. I have now a number of part.

Gloria: Dime.

MA: (hands phone to Gloria)

Gloria: No, sorry. We do not have it.

GBG #2: What year is Ducato?!

MA: It is from year 9 3 but from 8 1 to 9 3 all is same. The engine is two point five (five accidentally said as “funf,” as in German).

GBG #2: Outside, ask Thomas.

MA: Ok, goodbye everyone!

(Runs out like idiot)

Thomas: Dime.

MA: I am searching for an alternator for a Ducato. It is old.

Thomas: Come.

MA: (follows) I like old cars.

Thomas: (very long pause) OK.

Thomas took me into a warehouse with shelves full of lots of things, including (thank god) alternators. The V-belt pulley on all of them was an easy criterion filter, telling me that nothing here in this stash of multi-ribs would work. But then, the fresh white paint marker of the heap on the ground read “IVECO”. My eyes focused on a very dingy V-belt Magnetti Marelli alternator on the plywood floor, laying there as if it were just recently pulled and awaiting stock-in. Was that why it wasn’t yet in Gloria’s system?

Finding an alternator on the floor was a massive relief in terms of overall success of the mission. But a sick little part of me was crushed that I did not get to explore the yard and at least put to use my handy orange tool box.

Sensing that I was here for more than just questionable Italian charging devices and stilted conversation, Thomas turned me loose in the yard until closing time. And what a twenty minutes it was!

The opening act was a failed restoration of a Rolls Royce Silver Spirit, after which came the intermission: a spectacularly preserved Renault R6. And then the showstopper—an Indian Tata Telco Sport! This place had it all! I snagged a badge off the Tata to add to my fridge magnet collection.

More or less retracing my steps, and making sure to also repeat the part where I got lost, I arrived back at the campsite after a brief stop for some paella supplies. My wife’s nails were nearly dry. I had dinner supplies, plus alternator that we may or may not need, and I even got some Spanish language practice. Vacation is such fun!

The post How to quit worrying, ditch your job, and ramble Europe in a ’90s spacevan: Part 4 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Modern enthusiasts have it great. Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace—all of these databases provide instant access to new and used parts for your car. It wasn’t always so simple. Those of us restoring a collector car are keenly aware that at some point in the future (if it hasn’t happened already) parts availability will dry up like Lake Mead. When the waters start receding, it can take a lot of work and money to track down parts you may one day need. At that point, a dedicated parts car starts to look like a seriously appealing option. In one fell swoop you can have your very own supply, all bought and paid for, to pick from as you wish.

I consider myself an authority in these matters as a confessed hoarder of several parts/project cars, all crammed into every possible space I can find. A friend of mine has 2 lifts in his suburban 2.5 car garage and has compacted seven cars (four of which are operable and accessible) and five motorcycles into it. Many cars (particularly sports cars) can be stripped and the shells rolled over on their side with proper padding and/or bracing. Since these cars are generally less than 4 feet high, you can sardine them three-wide this way in a 12-foot-wide, single-bay garage. And, with some clever use of 4×4 posts, another layer of three cars can go on top and still fit under your ceiling! A body shell also can be hung on a wall with the right engineering, as, ahem, “wall art.”

All that said, one should invite a parts car into the fold only with full awareness of the implications. So, let’s take them apart, piece by piece.

The parts predicament, explained

A little background, first. Dealers and auto parts stores are, let’s be clear, in business to make money. Only parts that dealers expect to sell will remain in stock, according to the rules of what are called “inventory turns,” or, how often a particular part moves off of the shelf. Motor oil at your favorite auto parts purveyor has a turn value of 8 to 20 times per year. When that number falls below 2, the shelf space becomes too precious, and parts are moved to “behind the counter”—a dark and mysterious place known only to logo-shirted workers. Then, worse yet, part numbers are relegated to the “warehouse” or “distribution center.” If these places sound lifeless, it’s because they’re the elephant burial grounds of part numbers; once there, the inventory turn will soon get so low that the part number is put on life support. Eventually it disappears altogether, assigned the scarlet letters “NLA” (No Longer Available) with nary a whimper.

Likewise, when your car’s model is introduced, the manufacturer makes replacement parts readily available. If you drive your new Whatsit 3000 on a vacation and need an oil change a few months later, you expect the dealer to have an oil filter in stock, and they will, even if it’s an Alfa Romeo or Mini dealer four zip codes away. Fast forward a few years into your car model’s life, and tons of parts will remain available, both from the dealers and from the aftermarket. Somewhere about 15 years out, the landscape changes. Parts start to be considered “special order,” at an independent parts counter. One by one, part numbers are dropped off of the list until you are left to your own devices. Eventually, even the manufacturers will run out of parts on your list. Now, the problem falls into the hands of the enthusiast community.

Shopping online

Somewhere along the way, a collector of your particular car has hoarded and stashed parts for a rainy day. If they want to offload some of this booty, it will appear listed online for you to stare at for long stretches of time, wondering if it’s legit. Generally, the chances we take in this arena work out pretty well. I had the great fortune of purchasing a fender online for one of my classic motorcycles, and it arrived in perfect condition, with the bonus of wearing the correct factory color. The part was priced fairly and represented honestly. Makes you feel like the human race has something going for it.

In many cases, these online listings stem from a parts car that the seller is slowly dissolving into the community, one piece at a time. This commerce (enabled by the internet) has, in my estimation, made all of our restoration jobs easier.

Joys of the junkyard

In the old days, these transactions happened in person, at a junkyard. I have spent many a pleasurable Saturday afternoon shopping at such establishments for 6mm bolts and nuts with 10mm hex heads and impervious yellow zinc plating. (Pro tip: hound the Japanese car aisle for these.) Back when Pull-a-Part, do-it-yourself junkyards came into play fifteen years ago, you would actually see desirable cars strewn about the gravel lots. Fastback Mustangs from the right years, MGBs, Midgets, lots of XJS’s, a BMW 318is—all were showing up at my local Pull-a-Part for slow disassembly by enthusiasts like you and me. It was a public operating theater for the cost-conscious DIYer.

About five years ago, maybe, I noticed the stream of interesting cars at junkyards had dried to a trickle. Everyone’s backyards had been plucked clean, leaving us with junkyards full of gray twelve-year-old Accords and Camrys. If a wellspring of free flowing parts for your car endures, it’s almost definitely a more modern machine. If you’re out of luck, it might be time to bring the junkyard to your yard. As in, buy a parts car.

Buying a parts car

Occasionally you’ll see a dilapidated car, perhaps one with body damage, listed outright as a parts car. Other times it’s thrown in as baggage as part of another transaction:“I’ll accept your lowball offer on my ’67 Torino, but you have to take the awful other one with you, or it’s no deal!” (I picked up two old Triumphs this way and immediately sold the worse one due to lack of space.)

Other parts cars earn their status by virtue of demotion. One of my son’s Porsche 914s suffered this fate. When each of my sons turned 12 or so, I hunted down a broken sports car for them to restore (with my help, or not) so they’d have a car when they turned 16. With the 914 in question, we purchased a slightly rusty, very dead red ’75 model (in 914-speak this means the doors will still close as proof the chassis has not yet collapsed in the middle). We pulled the engine and set about transforming it into a hot rod powerplant. While scouring for parts at a local race shop we found a less dead 914, painted blue. Red 914 was immediately relegated to sad parts car status, and blue car became the not-so-shiny new penny. Fickle is the affection of the desperate.

The red 914 slowly, willingly gave up its parts like Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” until we sold its hapless carcass to a doctor in Tennessee. After all, our red car was a less-rusty 914 shell than what he already had.

So, you got one! Now what?

It must be said: Parts cars come with baggage. For starters, they take up room. If your restoration project has already claimed the family garage, adding an identical (but more dead) example of the same car is tough to explain to those outside our hobby. Parking the poor thing in the the driveway or chucking it into the side yard will, at minimum, earn you sidelong glances. Homeowner’s associations, should you be burdened with such a governing body, are particularly, uh, enthusiastic when it comes to visibly decrepit machinery. Before you drag a parts car home, have a plan for a safe place to put it.

A little creativity doesn’t hurt. Take that lift you always wanted for your garage, which offers the promise of “parts car up high, good car below.” Perhaps you can get permission for outside storage but with the caveat of a deadline, as in “You can store that hunk of crap there for the summer but by Halloween it has to be gone!” In this case I would suggest starting the disassembly process right away. Ziploc bags, hanging tags, and Sharpies are your most important tools for storing and labeling small items. It is quite possible to remove, tag, bag, and store almost a complete car in the rafters of a garage (or a home attic); it is not guaranteed that you will remember which unmarked caliper belongs to the driver’s or passenger side brake when you need it.  Fenders, engines, transmissions, and axles don’t apply here, but however much you are tempted, do not leave these exposed to the elements. Even under a tarp in the backyard. Aside from the resentment such a move will brew with your fellow tenants (read: spouse), the parts themselves will deteriorate into an unusable state in about two seasons. Find a place to store them where it is dry and out of the way. Peace will prevail come the day you revisit your patient stockpile.

The other issue with parts cars is one of quality componentry. A caliper that has been sitting out in the weather for a decade is possibly an even worse bet than the leaky one you are trying to replace. Again, in today’s world you might be better off finding a part from eBay or similar. That route can be its own brand of crap shoot, since there exist various grades of crappy parts, trying to make something that is less crappy than the crap you started with. In any case, aim to get as close to factory spec as possible; you don’t want to be stranded because of something stupid, like a blown radiator cap rated for the wrong pressure. The buck stops with you.

How does one know when to err on the side of repair, rather than replace? Hard parts, made from metal, are generally restorable and only are scrap-heap fodder in the worst of cases (cracked, pitted, etc.). Plastic and upholstery parts, however, do not age as well, and sometimes what’s left from the parts car is no better. Occasionally it’s even worse; a parts car is always neglected in favor of the recipient car, which means degradation can happen even faster than on a car that is regularly driven. Nothing is more frustrating than digging out a part on your donor car, only to find it’s useless. Why did I buy this pile of garbage in the first place, you will scream at the heavens.

Be realistic, be practical

We car restorers, by nature, are an optimistic bunch. Sure we can fix that, we say to ourselves. Of course having a parts car is a good idea … No one will mind if I get another project car—it’s who I am, for goodness sake. As comforting as a parts car may be, one has to take care and keep perspective. Some cars lend themselves to hoarding, for whatever reason. I have met dozens of men with a flock of Corvairs. MG Midgets/Sprites invoke the same instinct (maybe because they’re small?). Watch a few episodes of Barn Find Hunter and you will see lots of folks who seem to find safety in numbers. At a certain point, too many cars makes life harder, not easier. Everyone’s threshold here is different.

Have fun, enjoy it

If you have the land for it, a parts car can bring a lot of happiness. You can even be magnanimous about it by spinning up a very satisfying hobby business, helping like-minded owners of the marque by selling them parts online for easy beer money. If, however, you happen to be hawkeye-focused on a singular restoration project, and space is an issue, letting others store your “parts cars” remotely may make more sense. Whether this will cost you rental fees or simply goodwill with friends depends entirely on your situation.

Just remember to honor your parts cars for their sacrifice, and make sure to take extra-good care of the car you’re keeping alive. Best to gather up good karma before passing through the gates of the big junkyard in the sky.

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Sometimes parts cars just make the most sense for a project. I’ve certainly had a few winners over the years.

In 1969, for example, I found a completely stripped 1968 Pontiac Firebird sitting in the parking lot of a local bank. The owner had bought the six-month-old pony car with a lot of help from the bank. It was originally fitted with the six-cylinder over-head-cam engine, but the guy immediately gutted the interior and pulled the engine, transmission, and rear end with plans to build a drag car. After he sold off the major components, he defaulted on the loan and the bank repossessed the Firebird. My dad knew the bank president and approached him to negotiate buying the car for a few hundred dollars.

I soon had a nice-looking hulk of a car that couldn’t even roll. That’s when I heard about a body shop nearby with a 1967 Pontiac GTO that had been hit hard and totaled. The best part was that it had a low-mile 400-cubic-inch V-8. I bought the wrecked GTO and stripped it before I had the carcass towed away. I kept the strong engine, four-speed transmission, and rear axle, as well as a bunch of other really good bits and pieces. It took a few weeks to install the new drivetrain, but we got it running and sounding fantastic thanks to a pair of Cherry Bomb mufflers. It also looked fantastic, with big rear tires and smaller fronts in the best drag-racing tradition. To keep those big rear tires in touch with the pavement, we fitted traction bars. I never did bother to install carpets, insulation, or a headliner, which meant it was really loud inside.

I probably shouldn’t admit it, but I used that fast Pontiac to drag-race at night. The stakes were usually $50, and I won most of the time. The car that consistently beat the Firebird didn’t look like much: It was a former State of Connecticut four-door Dodge Dart painted primer gray. The guy had stuffed a 426 Hemi into it, though, and that car just ran away from what I thought was an unbeatable Pontiac.

When I rebuilt the wrecked VW Super Beetle I drove from my parents’ house in Connecticut to college in Idaho, we found a similar Beetle at Camerota auto recyclers in Massachusetts. It had a good nose, fenders, bumper, and lighting. It even had the same silver-blue color as the Beetle I had. We bought the whole car so that we could remove the front clip at home without damaging it. Once we had it stripped, we were able to use the components to assemble one good car. And using the parts car meant we paid less for parts than if we had bought them individually.

Dragging away a parts car wasn’t always the answer, of course. In fact, most times it was more fun to spend a day wandering through a scrap yard with my dad looking for something specific. We usually went to Pandolfe’s Auto Parts or to Corona’s in Hartford, which was the size of two city blocks and was run by the Corona brothers. The best way to tell them apart was by the cigar one of them always had in his mouth. Everybody knew each other, and when we’d pull in the lot, they’d come out to greet Dad with something like, “ Whaddyaneed today, Bob?” Despite the size of the yard, one or the other of the brothers would know where everything was. If Dad said he needed a nose for a ’69 Pontiac, the reply was immediate: “Go to row 16.”

My father would go look and pick out the nose he wanted, then we’d go back and pull the part. If a car was hit in the front, we’d buy a full nose or a 3/4 nose (with only one fender). We’d bring our own tools and go and take it off the car. If the junkyard guys removed the part, they would tend to scratch or damage it. We took great care and would wrap it in blankets so it wouldn’t get battered in transit.

Whether we bought the entire car for parts or just the parts we needed, we always chose used over new. They usually fit better, they always cost less, and sometimes they were even the right color.

The post Carini: Parts cars have been good to me appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In a former life I was an MBA-corporate type working for one of the largest automotive retailers in the world. But I commuted to work in an MBA-inappropriate Ford Ranger, and used it to collect the corporate office’s aluminum cans on a regular basis. I did it as a favor to everyone tired of walking around bags of trash (that the cleaning crew wouldn’t touch), but I soon found a local metal scrapyard that paid me for my efforts. Every trip with a Ranger full of office aluminum netted me a free lunch, or a few gallons of gas. While that job is in my rearview, I still make a tidy profit collecting unwanted metal junk that’d otherwise wind up in a landfill.

But this particular trip was special, as it wasn’t about beer cans littering the road, coat hangers, or used oil filters. That’s because I raided my own vault of forgotten dreams, my cache of misplaced aspirations, and the forgotten spoils of automotive restorations past. I took a walk down memory lane that netted me a decent chunk of change at the end of the journey. Won’t you join me on this walk?

Loading the truck started innocently enough, with metal shipping rails from a four-post hydraulic lift ordered on Alibaba. It was part of a group purchase among friends, and I somehow got sucked into the drama behind it. While the lifts eventually turned out fine for the end users, the local port tacked on some rather questionable charges. Charges that you have to pay in order to get that “bargain” of a service lift. Not being an expert in import/export matters at the port, I discourage anyone from buying large items directly from a foreign manufacturer on an E-commerce site. I’ll spend the extra coin to buy them from local vendors in the future, but no matter, good riddance to this bad memory.

Then came the cadre of metal bits kept on a misguided notion that they’d eventually serve a purpose. Take the pair of mismatched Weld wheels, for example. No seriously, take them! I tried and failed to sell them on Facebook Marketplace for a price higher than scrap, but their different sizes meant they needed to be a set of four to be worth buying. Well, fair enough.

Then there was the stuff I acquired through someone’s C4 Corvette purchase. While I kept the fancy flywheel, stock exhaust system, and a few other bits that came with the car, items like a box of mystery bolts, wheel spacers, Bilstein shock covers(?), a used clutch and pressure plate, spare tire hardware and suspension bushings were never gonna find their way into my cache of Ford parts. Since this is a lightweight Corvette and not your average Chevy, the spare tire brackets are aluminum, so you get more for them when you remove the not-aluminum hardware. That was totally worth the two minutes of effort to make a few cents more profit.

I don’t know where these bits came from, suggesting they will always be useless in my possession. The Koni remote reservoir shock bodies likely came from a 1983 Aston Martin Lagonda that had its dampers rebuilt by Koni. If I remember the story correctly, Koni USA had to ship them to a shop in Europe, as they had never seen these parts before. No matter, that Lagonda now has new bits of Koni orange, so these shall become scrap metal. But what about the engine computer and that billet aluminum license plate holder?

I suspect they came from this car. (If so, they were lucky to spend time in such a wicked machine.) While I tried to sell both bits for quarters, dimes, nickels, and finally pennies on the dollar on eBay, nobody was interested. Oh well, off to the scrapper they go!

This collection of Ford parts is the end result of a big push last summer to get my cars running better and to provide functional air conditioning for its occupants. The third photo shows how far power steering pumps have improved from 1986 to 2006 (even if both are antiques in today’s world of electric power steering), while the last three photos are the A/C compressors from my 1972 and ’79 Mark Series cars. While their dimensions are the same, I was blown away at the extra weight of the 1972 pump (red label, D2VA part number) compared to the 1979 unit. I was in no mood to weigh them to know the specifics, but one pump is roughly 10 pounds, while the other is closer to 20 pounds. Yes, really. 

I’ve held the belief that the late 1970s was an underrated time of mind-blowing improvements in vehicle technology, a feat only marred by the fact their performance and styling was unappealing relative to vehicles produced earlier in the decade. Aggregate facts are usually what lazy historians care about, but after writing Hagerty’s Buyer’s Guide on the C3 Corvette, I fully drank my own Malaise-Era Kool Aid. Perhaps now, with these A/C compressors in tow, I’ve spiked the Kool Aid: there’s no doubt we (i.e. Detroit automakers) did amazing work that became a springboard to future vehicle advancements.

I really tried to save this vintage audio from the scrapper. (Ditto my beloved PlayStation 3 behind it.) But when you lack the code to unlock an Eclipse head unit, and when the dealer support (to unlock it) dried up years ago, you must send it to the scrapper. Perhaps “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” is also an acceptable solution, as the 8-disc CD changer and “Eclipse Commander” navigation system are now useless. This was high-tech audio equipment (circa 2005) for the automotive aftermarket, but the past is the past, and Google Maps is pretty amazing. Scrapping this Eclipse hardware was a shame, considering I had all the CD-ROMs to make the Commander’s turn-by-turn navigation system functional. At least in theory.

Found in my failed restoration projects and dead rice cookers (how did I wind up with three rice cookers, anyway?) was the rusty speaker grille from my junkyard Lincoln Continental adventure. That was a fun memory to recall, though it reminds me how much work is left on that vehicle.

When retrieving parts from my attic for a project involving a Hagerty reader (more on that below), I also dug out this mid-century TV antenna. Sure, it’s clearly lived past its expiration date, but I still imagine it sitting proudly on my roof, transmitting shows like Bewitched or the moon landing while the folks living in my home enjoyed their Swanson TV dinners or three-martini lunches. I wonder why it was left in the attic and not scrapped decades ago?

No matter, since the antenna was a smidge longer than my 6-foot truck bed, cutting it up with my angle grinder was both a logical and entertaining solution. I generally dislike destroying stuff, but it was fun to cut through aluminum like a hot knife through butter.

I originally went into my attic for a late-model Mustang GT muffler, which you see on my Ranger’s tailgate. While it may no longer serve its purpose for the Mustang’s owner, it’s kinda perfect for Ford Ranger owners looking for a little more rumble without making a big deal about it. And since I got two in the deal, I was looking for a home for the other. Luckily I befriended Hagerty reader FatBabyDriver at a local track day last year. Turns out he has a son who just got his license and has a 2008 Ranger in dark blue. (Nice work, Dad, although I assure you I had no influence in the matter.)

Clearly the Mustang muffler belonged in FatBabyDriver’s possession. Both Father and Son arrived within an hour of my scrap loading/memory lane adventure, so I gave them a “Ranger care package” packed with OEM+ modifications for the little blue truck. With any luck it will help our newly-minted motorist become a full-on enthusiast in the coming years. This might not be the last we see of this Ranger on Hagerty, but if you’re impatient, just check out the truck’s Instagram account.

The next morning was a typical example of an atypical Houston winter: a sudden rush of cold, windy air with a distinctly swampy dew point and scattered showers thrown into the mix. But I feared no foul weather, as everything fit under my tonneau cover. Upon arrival, a two-man crew assisted me in unloading my semi-precious cargo in a matter of seconds.

To say I was provided professional service is an understatement. The gentlemen asked for my cash transaction card and began assessing my bounty of junk metal. One dude had a magnetic pickup tool on his belt, ensuring my claims of aluminum parts was legit. Upon grabbing the C4 Corvette’s pressure plate, they realized unloading this was a task better suited to their dumpster-on-a-forklift, parked not too far away. The forklift made quite the racket, but to my joy, it ensured all the scrap metal quickly left my possession. The aluminum then went onto the scales. They hollered to someone watching the action in a nearby office. The copper wire then hit the scales, then brass heater cores, both with bellowing commands to the office. Five minutes later I was back in the truck, feeling motivated to do a low-class riff on the cash/watch/steering wheel brag post made famous by rich millennials around the world on Instagram.

 

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With less than 50 likes, I’m never gonna impress like those guys with fancy cars and big-dog watch collections. Which never was the point, as recycling metal, getting paid in $2 bills (this particular establishment’s claim to fame), and making my scrap pile disappear was the end goal. Job done, and I learned a thing or two about old cars in the process. That was the most delicious icing on this particularly scrappy cake.

The post When a trip down memory lane ends at the scrapyard appeared first on Hagerty Media.

To all my fellow classic luxury car enthusiasts, I feel your pain. We avoid the usual smattering of classic American trucks or muscle cars, where catalogs and vendors aplenty offer every restoration part needed. It must be hard to get soft bits for a 1976 Cadillac Seville these days, and I can’t even fathom how much it’d cost to restore an Exner-era Imperial. Do parts for most prewar Packards even exist anymore? Such is the plight of owning a vehicle with unobtainium, and I’m gonna do my best to get what I need before it’s too late.

The writing’s been on the wall for years, and finding parts for my meticulously, lovingly restored 1989 Lincoln Continental is quickly headed down the path well-known to owners of vintage Packards and Plymouths. One of these arrives in Houston’s high-turnover lots every three-ish years, so I check my email and Facebook notifications (yes, really) for new arrivals. It feels even more important now, considering what happened the day before I found this particular junker Continental.

These Ford Taurus–based, V-6-powered Continentals were a popular and critical hit in the first two years of production. Though demand exceeded supply in 1988, and despite Car and Driver honoring it on the 1989 10 Best List, the early un-asbestos gaskets for its aluminum heads, janky transmissions, and air suspensions that were only good for 10 to 15 years ensured the 1988 through ’94 Continental’s reputation for poor durability.

Long story short, these suckers are thin on the ground now. So what happened when I found this, uh, beautiful example curated at a nearby junkyard on Facebook?

Facebook notifications are great, but going to the website to see a photo wasn’t terribly fruitful. This Continental was likely left to rot outside for years, and what on earth is going on with the passenger side headlight? No matter, the 1990 Continental shared many parts with my 1989, and if it had a blue interior I could be in unobtainium car-part heaven. Who knows, maybe it has the velour seats I love so much!

Going to the junkyard has an anticipatory, spiritual notion about it. I pack my tools, a snack or two, and load a wheelbarrow into my Ford Ranger for the big day. But upon arrival—and aside from enjoying the Continental’s wedge styling influences on the Panther chassis next to it—a closer inspection of this example left me disappointed. And puzzled, as the sheer extent of front-end hackery was a bad sign.

The inside—where I was hoping for clean, unobtainium plastics—was worse, as this Continental was the long-term home for rodents that left hantavirus containers everywhere the eye could see. Roofing tiles with a decaying dreamcatcher rested in the back, and questionable wiring upgrades had me dumbfounded. Who needs a 120-volt plug on their turn signal? It wasn’t much better under the hood, but that’s irrelevant thanks to an abundance of parts available elsewhere for the sistership Taurus.

No matter, I got a few pieces I needed for my Continental. While I’ve sorted most everything on this car, restorations are never under the owner’s full control. To wit, my body shop (which did a fantastic job overall) painted the sideview mirror assemblies in body color, instead of painting colored inserts inside a black housing. They look great—maybe even better than factory. But that’s not original, and if I can do up a pair of junkyard mirrors to match I’d be thrilled with both. Better do it while I can, while the parts still exist. That said, the junkyard Continental’s passenger side mirror was too far gone. The driver’s side unit cleaned up well in my shop sink and will live to see another day.

This car also had an exterior door handle from my restoration wish list. My passenger front-door handle’s springs lost its sprung after the paint job, but this car offered a rear passenger door handle with good return springs. Plus I now have a spare assembly if I ever need it. (No, Lincoln nerds, these handles are not interchangeable with those of other 1990s Lincolns. Learned that the hard way.)

Maybe I’m just turning into an old man, but let’s discuss the joys of bringing an electric ratchet wrench to the junkyard. It totally amps up the fun and cuts down on the stressful labor. Too bad it can’t help me (or anyone else) from breaking fragile Ford plastics never designed to accommodate my needs. Case in point: I broke the tabs on my dashboard’s speaker grilles when installing aftermarket tweeters. I found an NOS example on eBay, but the passenger side grille was still loosely resting on the Continental’s dash.

These grilles were unique to 1988 through ’91 cars, which makes this find even more important. Did I break one of the clips when prying it off the dash, or was it already like that? Who knows, but at least I kept the “sun load sensor” from breaking off the assembly, and now my speaker grille has 25 percent more clipping power.

The junkyard grille was shockingly dirty and rusty, but it was an easy swap from rusty metal to my original mesh (that got a fresh lick of paint during the restoration). And at $6.99 for the part, I consider it a victory of sorts. While not on my list, this Continental still had its original battery tie-down. It’s easily sourced via the aftermarket, but I can’t say no to a part that’s right in my face, right when I need it.

My tap-and-die set cleaned up the threads a bit, but it’s probably too far gone. Oh well, at least I have another reason to visit a junkyard again. Outdoor journeys are mini-vacations for someone like me, a Lincoln dork with a compromised immune system living in pandemic times … so you won’t see me complaining.

Speaking of Lincoln dorkiness, I grabbed the one-year-only passenger airbag emblem from this 1990 Continental. And it gave me a giddly little thrill, because this is an emblem for the passenger airbag, not the driver’s. Behold it’s decorative glory on the left-hand side of the passenger airbag in the image below. (Sorry, photography inside that biohazard-laden junkyard Continental wasn’t happening.)

So here’s the deal with the airbag emblem. The 1989 Continental was the first American car with standard dual airbags, and we as a society knew little about this safety feature back then. It didn’t have this airbag emblem; rather, it sported the now-familiar “SRS” letters stamped in it. (SRS is short for Supplemental Restraint System.) Lincoln-Mercury made A Cushion of Safety brochure to reassure owners of this new technology, explain the need for it, and illustrate how to safely operate your vehicle with these things stuffed in your cabin. Who needs an airbag emblem when a brochure explains why SRS airbags are cool, right?

Perhaps owners didn’t appreciate the explanation. And perhaps they didn’t want to explain why the letters “SRS” were stamped in dash right in front of the passenger’s line of sight. Enter 1990, when the “LINCOLN” airbag emblem covered that lettering, ensuring that passengers never questioned the notion of a supplemental restraint system. 

If ignorance is bliss, perhaps 1990 was the year of the blissful Continental. I’ve never seen airbag emblems on 1991+ Continentals, so finding one for my collection made this junkyard journey worth the effort. Looking through the lens of automotive history, the emblem’s short lifespan was probably due to the fact that a push-in hunk of plastic (no adhesive) on an original, high-velocity airbag could wind up ejecting itself from the dashboard. I bet NHTSA had words with FoMoCo for this revision to its Lincoln Continental.

Or not, as this is mostly conjecture on my part. But the stories these V-6 Continentals possess have yet to be told, unlike the umpteenth million story you’ve heard about Mustangs, muscle cars, Corvettes, Porsches, and whatnot. A trip to the junkyard for my cars is part memory lane, part interesting insight into the historical preservation of automotive unobtainium, and a little parts acquisition thrown in for justification. I may never know why the last owner added that power cord to the turn signal stalk, but hey, some mysteries are better left unsolved.

There’s merit in saving automotive rarities and oddities and memorializing them for future generations. Cars like the 1988 through ’94 Lincoln Continental inspired future vehicles (i.e. look at the airbag part numbers for Fox-body Mustangs) and lived a life worth mentioning. And if we don’t collectively share these stories, who will?

The post On the Verge of Unobtainium: A mad junkyard dash to save endangered parts appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It seems like everyone agrees that cheap, off-the-shelf donor parts for projects are a good idea. So in the giving spirit of the season, here are three more parts we suggest scouring from junkyards and dusty corners of the internet. (Check out Part 1 of this story here.)

I think of these parts as OEM-supplied Lego bricks for a build. These companies have spent the money and time to engineer durable performance solutions for all kinds of demands in a vehicle, not to mention the tooling and inventory to support millions of cars on the road. The good news for you? Deals can be found on certain trick parts.

And while I’m focusing on universal components here today, I want to draw attention to builds like this one: a Pontiac G8 GT that belongs to my neighbor. This build features bolted-on front calipers and rotors from a CTS-V, rear CTS-V calipers with a Chevy SS-sedan rotor, and a beefier and shorter-ratio Camaro differential. All of it is capped with CTS-V wheels (which later had Pontiac emblems in the center caps to seal the look). This kind of piecemeal approach to go shopping within an OEM’s catalog of parts can lead someone to go on all kinds of tangents with different applications. Let us know in the comments which parts-swapping secret recipes you’ve tried on your own project.

Cadillac Brembos

GM utilizes commoditized parts like I use Frank’s Red Hot; once a supplier’s component is bought, it’ll end up on just about everything. In the case of Brembo’s fixed four- and six-piston brake calipers, the General has bolted a set to dang-near every performance product it has sold for the past decade. With such high volume comes a wealth of replacement parts, making what was once an exotic, expensive braking setup incredibly affordable.

Brembos aren’t inherently special, but they are fairly rigid thanks to their fixed caliper design. In this setup, the body of the caliper stays affixed to the suspension with only the brake pads floating and moving, instead of a traditional floating caliper which lets half of the caliper slide along pins. In theory, this helps provide better pedal feedback, and the brake pads can be swapped without removing the caliper.

The result is a stout, powerful, and easy to adapt performance caliper for anywhere from $100 to $150 a corner. Cadillac-Brembo calipers are so common that I found them first while searching for Subaru brake upgrades. The price for the STi’s aluminum Brembos had skyrocketed right as these GM-sourced Brembos hit the market, and a handful of sites popped offering conversion brackets to adapt them. Another option are GM’s other six-piston calipers, originating from the Corvette and Camaro. Prices for these components are similarly reasonable thanks to their mass production, but the CTS-V and ATS-V brakes continue to be a favorite among gearheads.

Mercedes power steering pump

In our last installment we discussed the benefits of a particular electric power steering column, but such a part may not work for everybody. It isn’t always easy to find a manual steering box or rack, as converting a powered unit to manual can sometimes be less than ideal, and the motor possibly sticking out from the column like a growth may not flatter some dashboards.

The latter condition was the reason why Bad Obsession Motorsport’s turbocharged 4WD Austin Mini, the maniacal “Project Binky”, opted for a Mercedes W168 electric power steering pump using the subframe and steering components of a Toyota Celica GTS. The Mini didn’t just lack space under the dash, however; the accessory drive of the Celica GTS’ chunkier 2.0-liter turbo-four didn’t fit into Binky’s narrow chassis, and an electrically driven pump made the best use of the minimal free space available under the hood. It holds its own reservoir on top, too, and takes essentially three wires to hook up: a 60-amp fused power, similarly capable ground, and a 12v ignition source. Long live Project Binky!

Air pump for horsepower

One lesser-known horsepower tricks is to put the crankcase under vacuum. No matter how fresh and tight a motor is, there will always be blow-by through the piston rings, and this phenomenon only increases with higher horsepower levels as more cylinder pressure is created. The situation is especially noticeable with forced-induction engines, in which the added air volume puts more load on the rings under compression. Blow-by doesn’t just contaminate the oil; it can also begin to pressurize the crankcase—the inside of the engine block—which contributes to oil consumption back through the rings when the piston is on the intake stroke. This spells trouble in the form of detonation and can contribute to meaningful oil consumption, whether it’s in the context of the longer cycles of racing or even street driving.

Blow-by also contributes to windage issues, which creates its own set of problems for horsepower production and oiling system efficiency. To compensate, OEMs try to at least vent that positive crankcase pressure through the Positive Crankcase Ventilation, or PCV, system. Few setups, however, have any form of vacuum to promote PCV flow.

Most crankcase vacuum pumps to promote PCV flow start at a couple hundred bucks, or they’re pulley-driven and would likely require need some one-off mount to fit your project’s accessory drive. The AC Delco 12568324 emissions air pump is commonly found in early 2000s Ford Focuses and late 1990s to early 2000s GM cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs. Because of the sheer mass of vehicles sold there’s usually a healthy supply of these pumps in junkyards, and in the worst case they can be found as low as $75 online. They work well as a low-buck crankcase vacuum pump, plumbed in series with a two-port catch can in between the pump and engine. These pumps are normally used to push air into the exhaust manifolds to essentially lean out the mixture before the exhaust gas flows into the catalytic converter, which helps reduce the warm-up time for the catalyst inside during a cold start. And all that’s needed to run it is 12v power and ground.

The post 3 more high-tech junkyard donor parts for your project appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Known within the gearhead braintrust are a handful of off-the-shelf parts from production vehicles which serve as fantastic solutions for project cars. Examples include the mythical Ford Taurus fans, GM weather pack connectors and relays, rag joint-eliminating Jeep steering shafts, and the dozens of other well-known pieces. As cars have advanced over the past few years, especially with the move towards CAN-Bus integrated modules that can operate independently of their donor vehicle, an entirely new menu of indispensable OEM solutions has trickled down into junkyards and online suppliers. OEM-sourced parts tend to be well-engineered by suppliers who bank their revenue on providing reliable, long-life components for manufacturers, which brings down the cost of these mass-produced pieces for gearheads while also bolstering their durability. And unlike some aftermarket versions of these parts, these OEM pieces are occasionally available (affordably so) at your local parts store, making for practical road-side repairs.

Toyota EPS

Traditional power steering systems use hydraulic pressure to assist in turning the wheels via an engine-driven pump. Churning 1000 psi of power-assist draws on the engine’s total output, circulates a highly flammable fluid around a hot engine bay under great pressure, and requires several heavy components to complete the hydraulic circuit. Electric Power Steering (EPS) came about as a method to increase fuel economy by eliminating the typical hydraulic power steering pump for a beer-can-sized electric motor. EPS systems come in several variants, some of which only replace the engine-driven pump with an electric one while still retaining a hydraulic system as the source of power assist. The advantages here are considerable. EPS can free up room in an engine bay given the lack of need for a power steering pump, eliminate horsepower loss at the crank (as the system is only drawing when the steering system is loaded up, still creating less load via the alternator on the accessory drive than a hydraulic pump), and it remove a source of chaotic fluid fires. More info on the wiring and donor vehicles can be found here.

The system we’re keen on is the Toyota unit found in the company’s various compact cars over the past few decades. It houses the aforementioned beer-can-sized motor that drives the steering column directly through a worm gear, eliminating the need for any hydraulic power assist systems. The idea here is that the factory steering column is replaced by the Toyota EPS unit, while the steering box or rack itself is either swapped or converted to manual steering. There are a handful of donors for these EPS systems by various OEM systems; the GM unit found in the Delta-platform compacts (such as the Saturn Ion, Chevy Cobalt) is a popular one, but what separates the Toyota EPS is that it’ll operate with no modifications and nothing other than what you pull off the donor. That’s in contrast to the GM units requiring a signal generator, which can be found online but adds to the cost of the swap.

Pierburg  CWA400/200 electric water pump

Electric water pumps arrived out of a similar quest for more efficient powertrains, divorcing their source of drive from the accessory belt. This change didn’t simply free up a bit of power and fuel economy, but gave powertrain boffins a way to slow down coolant flow when needed, which helps maintain ideal coolant temps in a broader range of conditions. For hot rodders, though, it represented a high-quality Lego brick that can easily repackage most cooling systems. It removed a load of bulk from the front of the engine, making room for superchargers and turbos of all sizes, and of course, drag racers will never be mad about a few extra horsepower.

The CWA400 and CWA200 are modular water pumps that need little more than an ECU-supplied PWM power source, which sets the pump’s rpm and can be provided by almost any aftermarket ECU. These are great for intercooler pumps too, and AN fittings aren’t too difficult to adapt to the inlet and outlet of the Pierburg pump. The key advantage (besides cost and OEM-grade quality) over the aftermarket electric water pumps that have been around forever is that these Pierburg units can be sourced through common storefronts, making replacements easy to find compared to catalog-ordered speed parts. Wiring connectors can be found here, and more info (including flow rate info) on the pumps is available here.

Bosch iBoost electric power brakes

Electronic power brakes hit the scene through more dramatic means. With the recent advent of EVs, without an internal combustion engine to act as the source of vacuum to provided power assist to factory brakes, such powertrains needed their own power brake solutions that no longer relied on vacuum to actuate. Of course, they have applications for traditional hot-rodders and project car wonks. Gnarly cams, custom-boosted applications, diesel swaps—each of these situations renders traditional vacuum-booster-assisted brakes either tricky or flat-out useless.

Tesla sourced iBooster electric power braking from Bosch simply because, well, it didn’t make sense to use an electric vacuum pump to pull on a typical booster. Skipping middleman and simply using an electric motor to provide the mechanical assist was far more sensible. Thankfully, the system can be easily retrofitted to a project, without any programming, using only three to four wires from the chassis for power, ground, and a switched ignition signal. The iBoost can be also be sourced from several other vehicles, avoiding the Tesla Tax that consumers often suffer through marketplaces such as eBay.  Information on wiring plumbing the iBoost, and buying the appropriate connectors if you can’t get the pigtail with your donor brake booster, can be found here, here, and here.

C5 Corvette fuel regulator and filter

These are killer for EFI swaps because they solve a few issues in a compact package. In an EFI swap you’ll typically need to convert the fuel system to use a high-pressure fuel pump, which needs a regulator and return loop somewhere to bleed off excess fluid. The C5 fuel filter is a two-in-one unit that houses a 58-psi regulator with a return fitting, with only a single outlet running up to the fuel rail in a dead-head configuration. This simplifies the fuel circuit up to your fuel rails or throttle body injection unit, and it saves a bunch of space and cost by bringing the filter and regulator into a compact, commoditized unit. You can find kits with AN fitting adapters that slide over the GM quick-disconnects for well under a Benjamin, too.

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Keeping a vintage car on the road often means staying vigilant with maintenance for all of its mechanical components, plus taking scrupulous care of the delicate trim. A junkyard is often the best place to prowl for bits and baubles that are no longer available from the factory, but there are lots of other parts on other cars that are worth keeping an eye out for as well. So, if your well-stocked junkyard tool kit has allowed you to nab your target parts with time to spare during your next junkyard visit, consider poking around under hoods and in trunks. Here are six such useful items that could well save you some trouble with your next project upgrade.

Battery cables

If you’ve added electronic accessories and have upgraded your alternator for the extra power draw, consider upgrading the wiring and fuses to handle the extra current. Many BMWs from the early 2000s feature a trunk-mounted battery and use a robust cable to run to both the starter and alternator. This one, from an early 2000s 3-series, uses heavy-gauge wire and a 250-amp fuse, plenty for most off-road builds—even those that include a winch and extra lights.

Hardware

Mounting a Hi-Lift jack under your rear seat? Securing a gear rack or cargo net in the back of your SUV? Consider looking in trunks for screw-in anchors and in spare tire wells for thumbscrews that are used to secure space-saver spares. These can be picked up for pennies and save valuable fabrication time.

Fuse panels, relays, and mounts

’97–’01 Jeep Cherokees have an ample fuse panel with micro-fuses, maxi-fuses, and plenty of relays. Strangely enough, none of the Jeep’s factory relays were used for the headlights. Keep your eyes open for the fuse panels in the trunks of BMWs and Mercedes as well. This small power distribution block and maxi-fuse holder is from a Saab 9-3.

Lots of ‘90s GM vehicles use weather pack relays that are nicely sealed against dust and water. We’ve seen lots of neat brackets to mount small groups of relays as well, and they can be found in surprising places. The waterproof relays can usually be purchased new for just a few bucks, but the brackets to mount them can tidy up installs.

Another item to help clean up underhood accessory wiring is a common ground, or common power block. Throttle-body injection GMT 400 trucks have this beefy terminal mounted on the firewall with five lugs. Plenty for several accessories.

Hose clamps

Norma hose clamps can be found under the hood of lots of European cars from the ‘90s. The worm-drive clamps are tough and feature rolled edges to prevent damaging hoses.

Electric fans

Another favorite among off-roaders, electric fans can help low-speed cooling on rock-crawlers and free up horsepower by ditching archaic mechanical fans. Minivans and other front-wheel-drive cars are often a good source for strong, low-profile fans. Jeep builders have been touting the fans found in the Ford Taurus and ’94–’04 Ford Mustang, but identical fans can be found in plenty of other vehicles, including ‘90s Volvos.

Forced induction

Ambitious project car builders seeking boost on a budget can find both turbochargers and superchargers in ready supply at the junkyard. Diesel trucks are one source, and plenty of Saabs used a Mitsubishi turbo. Perhaps the most well-known junkyard boost remedy is the Magnuson M90 supercharger used on both Ford and GM 3.8-liter V-6s. Find them in Thunderbird Super Coupes and just about every top trim level GM FWD sedan from the late ‘90s to as late as 2009, including the Pontiac Grand Prix and Bonneville, Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Impala, Buick Park Avenue and Regal, and Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight.

Happy junking!

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Whether you call it a junkyard, wrecking yard, or salvage yard, your local purveyor of you-pull-it used parts can be a great resource for much-needed bits to keep your car on the road. I’ve scored parts for my daily driver at a fraction of the dealer cost and picked parts from later-model cars that have improved my classic. A trip to the yard can often be rewarding, but without the right tools it can be a knuckle-busting experience that leaves you more frustrated than victorious.

Some veteran yard dogs go light, carrying only the tools they know they’ll need for a particular job. They are disciplined and wise. I am neither. I don’t want to go back to my truck if I see a part I want and don’t have the right tool. It would mean a long walk and I’d have to stand in line to get back in the yard. Instead I use a five-gallon bucket with a bucket organizer to hold all my tools and tote it with a hand truck. Like a boss.

Once fasteners come out of the donor car, they go in the bucket. Once the part is out, it either goes in the bottom of the bucket or on the bottom of the dolly, with the bucket on top. Tools are heavy, cast iron parts are often heavier, so I’m thankful for the dolly when making my way back to the parking lot. I can even a haul a 25-pound load of tools around without much effort.

I’m far from an expert junkyard crawler, but here’s what’s in my ready-to-scrounge tool kit. Over the years it’s served me just fine.

Sockets, ratchets, and wrenches (oh my!)

A basic SAE and metric socket set is a must-have, plus wrenches to hold the bolt on the other side or for spots where your sockets aren’t deep enough. Even if you think you know the proper sizes for your application, perhaps a newer or older version uses a different size fastener. I’ve got mostly ¼, ⅜, and ½-inch-drive sockets that cover the gamut from tiny interior and electronic studs all the way to beefy suspension components.

Extensions

You may know all the tools you need to pull the part on your vehicle, but in a junkyard the same part may be found on a completely different vehicle. Having some flexibility (u-joints help) in accessing difficult fasteners can mean the difference between leaving with your parts and going home empty handed.

Breaker bar

Torque is your friend.

Hammer and pry bar

So is brute force. Tech tip: any wrench is an impact wrench if you hit it with a hammer. [Editor’s Note: While sometimes effective, this is not always the safest approach. Use at your own risk.]

Electric impact gun

Sometimes there’s no easy way to get a long breaker bar into a tight spot to exert some torque on a fastener, that’s when an electric impact shines.

Penetrating fluid

Typically, penetrating fluid takes a while to do its job, it’s still worth a shot to help unstick frozen bolts.

Screw/Nutdrivers

Knowing your target can help narrow how much you carry in. Going for ’80s or ’90s GM parts? Might want to bring a few Torx drivers. An assortment of bits and a ratcheting driver can help you have the tool you need without a lot of bulk.

Locking Pliers

True, they are not gentle on bolt heads, but if a fastener is already rounded off they can be a godsend. You can worry about a new fastener later.

Needle-Nose Pliers

Perfect for pulling cotter pins, and delicate work where your larger pliers would mangle things.

Adjustable Pliers

For mangling things. Spring tension hose clamps are no match for these babies.

Diagonal Cutter & Hacksaw

It’s often easier to just cut fuel lines or wires and deal with the fittings later, so cutting tools can save a lot of time. If you really need to cut something substantial, a cordless reciprocating saw is the way to go, although I’ve never needed one. Yet.

Gloves

Some wrecking yards have hand wash stations near the exit. Others don’t, so either way it’s better to avoid grime in the first place. Gloves also handle abrasion better than your skin. A few pairs of nitrile gloves and a set of reusable mechanics gloves should always be at the ready.

Bottle of water/hand cleaner

It can be brutal to try to wrench outside in the summer heat, so having some drinking water handy is a life saver. Whatever you don’t drink can be used to clean up, too. With the help of some liquid hand cleaner you can avoid tracking gunk into your ride.

A small tarp

Sometimes you’ve got to crawl on your back under a car, and sometimes it’s a bit muddy. Floor mats or carpet from a nearby vehicle might be available for the task, but a tarp is cheap, compact, and if it’s always in your tool bucket it’s one less thing to scrounge for. A certain discount tool store often has coupons for a free small tarp in their flyers.

Safety glasses

Especially when climbing under vehicles where grit can fall in your face.

Penlight

A small, LED light can help you find the locations of fasteners in awkward places. Headlamps work too, but sometimes it’s tough to crane your neck at odd angles.

Specialty tools

With all of those general-purpose tools in the kit there are a few things I leave out unless I truly know I’ll need them, like a flywheel puller or ball joint puller. For knowing when to pack those, I rely on. . .

Research

When planning on pulling parts from a car or truck, particularly one you’ve never worked on before, check for videos on repairing or removing that part. You might find you need a tool you don’t have or a technique that can save time and headache. Auto parts suppliers are also handy in finding which vehicles also use the whatzit you happen to be after.

Anything you swear by that I left off my list? Feel free to let me know in the Hagerty Forums. I welcome all of your junkyard wisdom.  

The post Must-haves for your junkyard tool kit appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you own a daily-driven vintage car from the Big Three, it’s hard to argue against swapping in a Coyote, LS/LT, or Hemi crate V-8. It’s hard to argue against the modern power and drivability of a late-model, fuel-injected engine. Still, there’s just something about seeing a carburetor or two, maybe even three, under the hood of a vintage car, with an engine that looks like it belongs there. Building an engine from the block up is also a rewarding experience and lends its own sense of pride. You’ll be looking for reasons to pop your hood and show off a power plant that looks like it came from the factory, even if it’s packing far more performance.

So where do you start? If don’t mind getting dirty, rebuildable small-blocks are still plentiful in salvage yards and can be found in trucks, vans, and SUVs that are now about 15–20 years old.

These small-blocks are the last vestiges of the muscle car era and benefited from improved manufacturing that led to a more consistent finished product. There was less core shift, bores and decks were more accurately machined, and improved bearings and rings—in conjunction with fuel injection that didn’t wash cylinders down with excess fuel—all teamed up to make longer-lasting engines that hardly show any wear after decades of service and don’t require much machine work to clean up for a rebuild.

In short, just about everything that was done to modernize these engines to make them viable more than 40 years after their introduction also make them worthwhile engines to consider for your project or daily driver.

Ford small-block V-8

Where: Ford Explorer/Mercury Mountaineer had 5.0-liter pushrod power from 1996–2001.

Why: Late 5.0-liter V-8s used cast-iron GT40 and GT40P heads, both good castings for a street car. When combined with headers, a cam, valve springs, and a decent intake, either of those heads can support more than 300 horsepower. Of course, the aftermarket for Ford small-blocks is booming, so there’s an opportunity to add a new set of cylinder heads, a stroker crank…

Identification: If it’s a V-8 in a 1996–2001 Explorer, that’s the 5.0-liter you want. Ford helpfully cast the displacement right on top of the intake manifold. GT40 heads were used until mid-1997, afterwards switching to GT40P. Pull a valve cover and look for either “GT” or “GT40P” cast into the head.

The catch: GT40P heads use a different spark plug placement that can make header fitment difficult. American Muscle has a lot of good information on these heads, as well as aftermarket alternatives. Ford also changed parts quite often on Ford small-blocks, making parts interchange difficult. You won’t be blazing new ground though; the answers are out there.

Chevy small-block V-8

Where: 1996–2000 Chevrolet/GMC Trucks and SUVs, 1996–2002 GM vans.

Why: At its core, the L31 Vortec 5.7-liter is the same Chevy 350 we all know and love. It was installed in hundreds of thousands of Chevy and GMC trucks built on the GMT-400 platform that were gradually replaced beginning in 1999. The SUV versions of the platform carried on one more year until they too received the Gen III V-8, while vans used the Vortec 5.7-liter even longer. The L31 5.7-liter Vortec engine uses the best factory heads ever installed on a Gen-1 Chevy small-block and are capable of producing more than 400 hp in the right hands. They use a one-piece rear main seal for fewer drips on your driveway, and the blocks used in 3/4- and 1-ton trucks often came with four-bolt main bearing caps, which may come in handy if high rpms and lots of power is in the cards for your build.

Identification: The engine displacement is cast on the driver’s side rear of the block, so you can avoid the L30 305-cubic-inch engines and their small bores.

The catch: Vortec heads are drilled with intake manifold bolt holes at a different angle than traditional Gen-1 small-blocks, meaning your Z/28’s high-rise dual plane won’t bolt on. Further, as with all Chevy small-blocks built starting in 1986, Vortec heads use centerbolt valve covers that would ruin your vintage engine disguise unless you run adapters for traditional valve covers. Thankfully, Chevrolet Performance, Edelbrock, Jegs, and numerous other manufacturers offers carbureted intake manifolds that bolt to Vortec heads because they’ve become the go-to parts for budget performance. Because it’s still a Gen-1 small-block, dozens of companies offer cast iron and aluminum heads if the Vortec’s flow numbers aren’t enough, and Chevrolet Performance offers affordable Vortec heads drilled for both perimeter valve covers and early style manifolds that can also handle more valve lift than factory Vortec heads. Finally, Vortec engines have a mechanical fuel pump boss, but it’s not drilled. Your machine shop can handle that if you’d rather not switch to an electric fuel pump.

Mopar Magnum V-8

Where: The 360-cu-in Magnum V-8s can be found most readily in full-size Dodge vans and trucks from 1993–2004, but keep an eye out for the midsize Dakota and Durango as well.

Why: Magnum small-blocks are similar to the earlier LA V-8 family, swapping the LA’s shaft-mounted rockers for stud-mounted rockers and a unique intake bolt pattern. Their heads outflow muscle era small-blocks and make for a potent street engine.

Identification: A top-fed, cast-aluminum “beer keg” intake is a sure sign of a Magnum engine, but to discern a 360 from a 318, look for a stamping corresponding to either of those displacements at the driver’s side rear of the block. Alternatively, if you can find the donor vehicle’s VIN, the eighth digit will be a Z for the 360-cu-in 5.9-liter and Y for the 318-cu-in 5.2-liter.

The catch: Like the Vortec, muscle-car-era intakes won’t bolt to factory Magnum heads. Also, LA heads won’t work on Magnum blocks, as the Magnum’s oiling system isn’t compatible with shaft rockers. The good news is that EngineQuest offers heads that pave the way for great street power and allow LA-style intakes to bolt right on. If you have found a good set of factory Magnum heads, Mopar makes carbureted intake manifolds that will still look the part. Magnum cylinder heads use an eight-bolt valve cover as opposed to the four-bolt covers of the LA; Mopar Performance offers finned aluminum valve covers that look the part. Unfortunately, mechanical fuel pumps are a no-go with a Magnum.

The post Junkyard engines that look right in your vintage car appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If there’s one takeaway from journalism class, it’s this: Never bury the lede. OK, there’s also this: When you have a great story, you (the writer) can only mess it up, so ride those quotes and stay out of the way. And this is pretty doggone important too: If your momma tells you she loves you, get confirmation.

That last bit of advice is an amusing way to say, “Always check your sources.” But it’s also a good reminder that we should never assume anything. For instance, don’t presume that the only thing you can find in a garbage can is garbage. Sometimes there’s gold in there. We recently asked our Facebook audience, “What’s the craziest car you’ve found in a junkyard?” And after reading Bill Cunningham’s answer, we decided to: A) Lead with it; B) Let him tell it in his own words; and C) Include photos that confirm his story.

“While walking through a junkyard in Illinois (looking for a rear bumper for my Toyota 4Runner), I walked past an Audi with a license plate frame from the Porsche-Audi dealership I worked for while in college,” Bill wrote. “I walked up and looked at the plates, and I realized I had driven that car at one time, as it was a former customer’s car back in Minnesota (I was younger and my brain kept weird reference stuff like that on file).

“When I looked behind that Audi, a Guards Red 1984 Porsche 944 was looking right at me. I checked the odometer—fewer than 23,000 miles—and yes, from all indications they were original miles; it still had the original Pirelli tires. It was apparently owned by a Porsche fan who let his son take it out, and he promptly side swiped something.

“I told the guy who ran the yard that I wanted the Porsche, but there were some paperwork hurdles I had to deal with first. So I went to the Illinois Secretary of State’s office in Springfield, and apparently I share a name with a lawmaker or some other well-placed individual, because when I gave my name to the woman up front, I was immediately sent into Secretary of State George Ryan’s office. He chuckled when a 23-year-old kid walked in. After some polite conversation (in which I told him about the 1983 Toyota Celica GTS that I’d rebuilt and still owned), he called the salvage yard himself and asked them to figure out how to sell me the car. The owner of the yard called me later and asked, ‘Who in the heck are you? Please don’t have the Secretary of State call me again. We prefer to keep a low profile.’ (George Ryan eventually went to federal prison on corruption charges, by the way.)

“A week later, the yard delivered the Porsche on a flatbed. I rebuilt the mechanicals and had a body shop go through it. I ordered many parts directly from Germany, which took a few months to arrive, but I finally got the 944 back on the road. Wonderful car. I drove it for the next two college semesters, then I sold it to pay for the last year of school. I still miss that car, although I know the guy who owns it.”

Bill’s wasn’t the only story, just the most in-depth. Others chose brevity.

Tom Hornberger (“Cop car”), Todd Welsh (“Opel GT and 1961 Dodge Lancer”), and Andy Hopper (“Series 1 Datsun 240Z”) shared but a dozen words between them. Certainly they could have spared a few more. And we were left wondering if John King has a giant collection or perhaps drives a Duesenberg, since he nonchalantly offered this little teaser without further explanation: “An Edsel wagon and a Tucker.” A Tucker? Come on, John, don’t leave us hanging!

Richard Pastecchi didn’t write a single word, but he posted a photo that was worth a thousand, as the old saying goes. Richard’s pic showed the forgotten hulks of four Little Tikes cars, rotting away (if plastic indeed rots) in the backyard of some nostalgic father whose kids now drive the real thing. Tom Long also posted a photo showing the 1950s Opel Rekord he discovered in a junkyard. That’s Tom right there, smiling and waving. Perhaps he’s hailing a cab, since it doesn’t look like there’s an engine in that thing and, well, it’s snowing.

Michael T. Cunningham provided a photo showing a stack of junk cars and this description: “At Desert Valley Auto Parts in Arizona… The black Oldsmobile on top is a 1962 Jetfire.” How cool is that? We just wrote about the rare Jetfire. Guess we now know where one of them ended up.

Alan Joksch made an amazing discovery about 15 years ago when he found two vehicles that he previously owned—a 1975 Celica GT and 1979 F150 4×4—parked side by side in a junkyard. And Scott Campbell found a Big Bad Blue-painted 1969 AMC AMX with 390 engine and Go Pack performance upgrade.

We’ll let the rest of you tell your own story.

Joyce Epperson: “My husband went for Mustang parts and came home with a rusty, dented, stripped shell of an original pink 1966 Mustang. If she wasn’t pink, she’d be soup cans now. But he restored her for me.”

Darrell Palmer: “Went to a junkyard looking for a windshield and front bumper for my ’52 Chevy and saw a truck loaded with cars going to be recycled. On top was a 1959 or ’60 Corvette. At that time it was an old car not a classic, and back in the early ’70s restoring it would not have been financially sensible.”

Kevin Hines: “Datsun Fairlady Z. It was right-hand drive, purple with white interior. I bought it.” (Whew, good call.)

Austin Moerike: “I don’t remember the name of the model, but last year I came across a Renault that was converted to rear engine, rear drive. It’s the same car they used in group B rally. It struck me as odd and pretty dang cool since I live in the middle of western Canada and they don’t do much rally racing here.” Juan Ignacio Caino’s reply: “Could have been a Renault 5 turbo. If so, go strike your (blank) with a hammer.”

Kevin Fenwick: “I worked in a wrecking yard in the mid-to-late 1980s here in Australia, and I remember some of the ’60s and ’70s classics and muscle cars that were lying around, all restorable with today’s technology. Now where did I put that time machine?”

Abraham Valadez: “Two Monte Carlos—one an Intimidator Edition, the other an orange Limited Edition with Taz (Tasmanian Devil) decal under the quarter panel, and checkers.”

The last word goes to Dan Kelsey, who shared what may be the best junkyard success story of all. Dan found “an all-original 1969 Mercury Cyclone Cale Yarborough 428 Cobra Jet wearing its original paint and wheels! It was all there and had no rust—it was just covered with dust and sitting on flat tires. One of only 41 ever made!”

Oh, crap. Did we just bury the lede?

The post Look what I found! Your junkyard treasures, from Porsches to Tuckers to race cars appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When I bought my 1987 BMW, I knew replacement parts would not be cheap. Considering the age of the car and its European origin, even the smallest parts can command a hefty price. So when I needed to replace my front trim and other components, I looked not to BMW or a retail parts supplier but to the junkyard – the cheapest way to buy OEM.

The junkyard is a simple concept. Cars that are wrecked or past their useful life are sold for scrap and left to sit on a lot where anyone can pull parts at a greatly reduced price. The savings, however, can be offset by a lack of convenience – which is why it is important to follow these tips to save time and get the parts you want the first time.

• Bring the Right Tools: Junkyards will not supply small tools like wrenches and screw drivers. Make sure you bring the correct-sized wrenches, as no amount of positioning or twisting will make an imperial socket turn a metric head. Some parts might also require specialized tools to remove, so make sure to bring those along as well.
• Call Ahead: Save yourself a wasted trip by confirming that the junkyard has the car and the part you want. Many yards keep an electronic record of what has been bought from what car. While some parts may not be listed in the yard’s computer, a quick phone call could let you know if someone else already pulled the part you need.
• Bring a Shop Manual: While small trim pieces and some parts are intuitive to remove, it is a good idea to have the book along as insurance against damaging the part you are trying to reach. A shop manual will also list what tools are required, so you can plan your trip accordingly. 
• Haggle: At most junkyards, the price is negotiable. Save a few bucks by talking down the part you just pulled. Be prepared to point out damage or wear and tear to justify a lower price.

Junkyard “parts safaris” are a great way to keep your classic on the road and still have some money left over for gas. Happy pulling!

The post How To: Tips for making the most of a visit to the junkyard appeared first on Hagerty Media.