As I mentioned in Part 1 this series, the Big Island of Hawaii is a relatively closed system of cars. The primary source of autos is in the form of new cars that are shipped to the island (either to dealerships or as rentals). Given that it costs upwards of a thousand dollars to ship a car between the mainland and Hawaii, it doesn’t make financial sense for most individuals (or dealerships) to ship a used car to or from the islands. As a result, almost the entire population of used cars for sale on the Big Island are those that were originally sold on the island as a new car.
Since it is only cost-effective to ship new cars in, but not used cars out, simple math says that the Big Island should be drowning in older cars. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Most cars seem to disappear from the road by the time they are about 15 to 20 years old. To solve this riddle, I decided to do some asking around with some local junkyards.
Junkyards in Hawaii are very different from those we encounter on the mainland. For starters, there are no pick-and-pull junkyards. Everything is dismantled by the recycler, for two main reasons: Space (land is very expensive, and it is more space efficient to vertically stack dismantled parts than entire vehicles) and pollution (being located by the ocean, they are very concerned about stray fluids (oil, brake fluid, coolant) making their way into the ocean).
Local junkyards are very selective in what vehicles they will take for dismantling, both for the space reasons mentioned above, and because they only take in what they think they can resell. There is no point dismantling and storing parts for a 15+ year-old car, only to have the parts sit around unsold essentially forever because there is virtually no demand. For this reason, dismantlers in Hawaii typically only deal with cars ten years old or less. Cars that are older get sent to the shredder, with the remains being sent back to other countries as raw material to make new cars. The circle of life.
1996 Toyota Corolla, defying the odds after 22 years.
What this means is that any car still on the road older than about 15 years is essentially living on borrowed time. Even a minor repair at this age (like a broken window or shattered headlight assembly) can be terminal. There are no replacement or recycled parts available on the island for cars of this age, and the cost of having parts shipped from the continental US will likely cost more than the car is worth (not to mention that the car will be out of commission for several weeks waiting for said parts to arrive from the mainland). Just like on the mainland, cars of this age are owned by people of the bottom economic bracket. These people have little time or money to do what it takes to keep a car of this age going in this environment, nor can they wait several weeks for parts while their only way to get to work is laid up. So if anything goes wrong, it is off to the shredder.
Any car that has survived 25 years or more is basically a unicorn, having been fortunate enough to avoid any major mechanical maladies, or having been owned by an extremely dedicated owner.
There does exist a third possible fate for old cars, beyond shredding and dismantling, since both these options require a clear title to the car. If circumstances has left you with a broken down car with a misplaced title (or perhaps a title named to a long departed ex, or for a car that has a lien on it), you really have only one remaining option to dispose of your broken down car: Abandonment.
The back roads of the Big Island are littered with cars like the one in the hero picture of this article. Cars that by and large would be easily repairable on the mainland. Or at least presumably were before being picked over by scavengers and spray painted with graffiti.
Abandoned vehicles are easily recognized by the missing plates and the letters AV emblazoned across their windshield or sides in tape or paint. Many also have a notice applied to them by the Hawaii Police Department, one that almost always goes unheeded.
Ford Panthers like this abandoned Crown Victoria are prized on the mainland for their durability, size, and ample supply of replacement parts. Ironically, the situation is quite reversed here on the Big Island, which is why this decent looking Crown Vic is in its current dire straits. These Panther platform cars were likely never big sellers here even when new, due to their size and non-Asian origin.
This abandoned Ford Escort wagon last turned a wheel in 2015, according to mandatory registration sticker that all vehicles in Hawaii must carry. It appears to be completely intact, and would likely be easily repaired and still running on the mainland. However, here in Hawaii it is likely easier to find a snowboard than parts for a 25-year old Escort.
W220 Mercedes-Benz are expensive cars to keep running anywhere, but especially so in Hawaii. A broken air suspension whose parts and labor will likely exceed the value of the car means that this 2001 S430 has moved under its own power for the last time.
Lastly, we have this 1997 Honda Accord, which at 19-years old is a veritable senior citizen in Hawaii. Again, other than the missing wheels, it seems to be remarkably intact, and could probably be put back on the road under better circumstances.
If you think the automotive landscape in Hawaii is pretty bleak, proceed to part 3 for the unexpected happy ending.
A friend of mine from here in the frozen North moved to Honolulu about five years ago. When he moved, he elected to ship his 2003 Camry, since from everything he saw decent used cars are pricey and hard to come by there.
I wonder what became of it now. He got rid of it a couple years ago for a new Acura.
For a limited time only, a 4th option!
Hmmm. One wonders if that SN-95 was parked there by an unfortunate coincidence, or if it was something a bit more intentional…
Gee, I thought New Orleans was the only city with plenty of abandoned cars. We get lots of hipsters and transients who decide NOLA is not their cup of tea and leave the car parked on the street (with registration still listed with the prior owner) . Eventually, the city will impound and the car is eventually sold at auction or scrapped.
That reminds me of the story my father used to tell about his first car in probably the early 1950s – it was a Dodge sedan from the mid 30s. He took the engine apart and put it back together. The presence of leftover parts probably explained why it would not run. He somehow got it to a No Parking zone and left it there. It soon vanished. He probably never got to registering it, so who knows what happened from there.
I had sort of assumed that old cars were more common, due to it being less expensive to ship parts in than whole cars. But you have ably explained that the Hawaiian ecosystem (both natural and otherwise) do not support old iron there. But even here I would be tempted to abandon a Windstar.
Is it really that much more expensive to have low cost new or used parts ordered from the internet shipped to Hawaii? Seems with the high cost of new or used vehicles it would be worthwhile keeping older cars on the road, at least until a major drivetrain component failure made it pointless to repair.
A rent a wreck rental car (if Hawaii has these) or a second car could be a backup while waiting for parts.
Well, there’s no Interstate or train track that goes from CA to Honolulu!
There is, however, an “Interstate” highway in Honolulu, to the amusement of many tourists —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_H-1
You’re seriously proposing licensing, insuring, parking, and maintaining two cars as an option?
I can totally see this, shipping from Hawaii is terribly expensive (as are most things when you’re there!)
I know because my favorite granola is only available for really special occasions. Shipping is way more than the cost of the actual goods 🙁
http://anaholagranola.com/shipping-anahola-granola-to-canada/
It costs $86.15 to ship 24 granola bars?!
Yes! Those are darn expensive granola bars!
It might be more cost effective to take that Windstar van, fill it up with granola bars and ship that?
What about Guam ? We drove a Toyopet there when my dad was in the USAF. This was in the late ’60’s.
Since it is only cost-effective to ship new cars in, but not used cars out, simple math says that the Big Island should be drowning in older cars
I’m struggling to grasp the “simple math” for this assertion. How is this different from the mainland? We don’t “ship out” our used cars either, right? We “ship in” new cars from the factories, and then the cars age in use. The average of a car in the US is 11.6 years. But we’re not exactly “drowning in older cars”, right? Well, maybe in Eugene.
But why would simple math suggest Hawaii should be drowning in older cars?
Also, cars like that Escort, Honda and Mercedes are being scrapped here in huge numbers, which explains why they are becoming quite rare on the roads here. Sure, one could fix them up, but obviously it’s not economic to do so here either. Which explains why one doesn’t see them on the road very often anymore.
I don’t really see how the situation regarding scrapping/abandoning older cars is much/any different in Hawaii than on the mainland. There’s a point where it just makes more sense to dump a car.
I think the difference is in the parts availability as land here is cheaper (in most places) to run a junkyard. For that Escort, Panther, Windstar, or Honda I could go to the local U-Pull-It place and there would be multiple examples I could pull parts from cheaply – maybe not for that Mercedes,. I don’t know about that one. In Hawaii, my only real option is to order a part from the mainland, pay shipping, and wait. That’s going to change the math for older cars.
I suppose the other option is cruise the back roads and hope to find what I need.
“I suppose the other option is cruise the back roads and hope to find what I need.”
This used to happen a lot on Maui when I was over there a lot in the 1980’s. Word of mouth was how you located a car to strip parts you needed. I never saw a formal dismantling yard back then.
I’m not too sure about the “simple math” assertion either, but, FWIW, the US does ship about a million used cars per year out of the continental US to developing countries.
Interesting tidbit, but makes sense entirely. I guess I’ve just never thought about it.
It must be a geographical thing, as abandoned cars in Massachusetts are virtually nonexistent. Abandoned cars always get one of those police notices posted and are usually gone within the next couple of days, either claimed or most likely impounded.
There are some current or former Hawaiian vehicles here in Portland, Oregon. That inspection sticker on the rear bumper sure sticks out when looking around Craigslist or driving around town. They usually look weather beaten more so than native Oregon vehicles. I thought about buying an 04 or so Sienna from Hawaii that was in Beaverton, however, the price was a bit high and the exterior sure look tired.
I remember hiking and camping somewhere in rural Montana a long time ago, in the fall of 2008. I want to say it was about 35 miles northwest of Helena. I saw a early-2000’s Volvo XC70 abandoned in a clearing. It was abandoned for sure because we camped not too far from where it sat and it hadn’t moved in the week we were there. Besides, the car was covered in dust as if it had been sitting for a while and the rearmost window on the passenger side was broken out.
I thought it was strange that a car that couldn’t be more than 7 years old was just abandoned, and not just any 7-year-old car, but a Volvo, which could still sell well above $10,000 used at the time. And who knows it could have been only a year old since they stopped making those in 2008. It wasn’t wrecked either, the only damage seemed to be the rearmost passenger window which was busted out. It would be “less” strange if it were a much older car, like the usual 1940’s cars you see rusting away in the forest, since you can more or less expect those to pop up from time to time. Seeing a newer car dumped for good miles away from civilization raises some questions.
It was either stolen, a case of insurance fraud, or its owner drove out here to hike, camp, fish or hunt and never returned to their vehicle for one reason or another. Fell down a ravine? Got brutally attacked by a bear or mountain lion? Had a heart attack? Was murdered? I may have been wrong in those assumptions, maybe it was just “dumped” but who would dump a car that would have been no more than seven years old at the time, even if it broke down?
It bothered me enough that I stopped at the local police station in town to give a description, the license plate number and its approximate location (you couldn’t miss it if you flew a helicopter over the area, a red station wagon sitting in a field) but the police said that there were no stolen red Volvo station wagons that were reported and that they will keep it in mind if something did come up.
I still think about it to this day. I never did call the police station to follow up with them, but maybe if something did happen they probably couldn’t tell me because of an ongoing investigation.
I had a used rental car that was in Kauai its first year, so the firms do send some retired cars back to mainland. Otherwise. the islands would be overwhelmed.
Wow, I didn’t see any abandoned cars when I was there. I guess I stayed on the beaten path though. That looks more like what I used to see in some areas of Oakland, CA west of 880, but even then it wasn’t like cars were sitting for weeks, months, or years.
How hard can it be to pick these cars up and then send a bill to the owner, half of them still have the license plates on them, presumably all have the VIN. That’s called “revenue” to the city/county, and they tend not to skip easy pickings like this in most places in the US.
Why wouldn’t the owners just “give” the cars to the junkyard, even if they don’t want the parts they can still shred the carcass and sell the material. I guess there are people everywhere that just throw trash on the ground too, it’s a shame.
“How hard can it be to pick these cars up and then send a bill to the owner,…”
I wondered about that too, for towing contractors, or more likely, local governments, are stuck with the bill if the scrap value is less than the cost of dealing with the abandoned vehicles. In addition to license plate and VIN tracking, it seems to me that local residents must know the owners of some of the vehicles that have prowled their roads before they were abandoned.
Perhaps people just look the other way and allow these costs to be borne by the taxpayers.
The only place outside the Hawaiian islands where I have seen a significant number of abandoned vehicles, albeit significantly fewer, and likely for very different reasons, was in Alabama when I lived there some years ago.
Every so often a vehicle would appear on the side of the highway, where it would last a week or so, all the while being diminished and damaged by scavengers and vandals, before eventually going away, to where I never knew. Though I don’t know the real reason, at the time I attributed it to state policies; no insurance requirement, no emissions or safety inspections, that made it possible to keep vehicles on the road that owners would have had incentives to junk or repair in most other states, and also the effects of poverty.
There was a higher percentage of truly decrepit, unsafe vehicles on the road there than I have seen anywhere else I have lived or traveled, and I suspect some of their owners drove them until they would go no more and abandoned them where they died.
Makes me think of my first visit to Oahu in 1983. While there my girlfriend and I took a drive up the east side, a drive to the north shore and then a drive to the west side of the island where people told me to be careful.
It was on the drive to the west side where I got to see a Hawaiian fence as they called it. The fence was nothing but old rotting cars abandoned along the side of the road where one became two, two became three, and so forth till the line had dozen upon dozens of cars. At the time the west side was mostly native Hawaiians and considered lower income and why I was cautioned rightly or wrongly.
Ha, the best part was driving some routes right out of Hawaii Five-O just like the routes out of Bullitt in San Francisco.
A buddy of mine bought a beater ‘74 Catalina in the early 80s; on the the way back to Jacksonville from Atlanta the motor blew. He only had it a month or so, so he had never properly registered or titled it. On the side of I-75 in middle Georgia, he removed the tag, stuck a rag in the gas filler tube, lit it, and walked away. Never heard about that car ever again.
Interesting, and sad to feel that the residents of Hawaii are content to accept such environmentally irresponsible disposal and detritus.
The AV label confused me initially – in France AV in the window would mean A Vendre – for sale. I guess they are, but to a very limited market.
When you’re in Hawaii sometime, look in a telephone book (if they still are in hotels) and you will see that there are more pages devoted to car rentals than to new or used car sales. The rental of cars to tourists is a big deal there, at least on the four larger islands, and a very high proportion of the cars one sees are rentals.
The rental car outfits don’t hold their cars much longer – if any longer – than other rental car firms in the United States. What they do with most of them is to ship them to the mainland. I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that they go there on the same ships that have delivered their new cars to the Aloha State.
The fleets of repatriated used rentals will probably be retailed by outfits like Manheim for the most part, and end up serving the same functions on the west coast that mainland-based ex-rental cars do.
It’s interesting what one learns by being a license plate collector. I wondered why Hawaii license plates were so easy to obtain here in western Washington, and found out this information by poking around a little bit.
Visiting the rural northern parts of the Big Island, which I do on a regular basis with Ohana (family) living there, you see a lot of non-running trucks rusting away on private property. It blows a transmission or other expensive repair and it just gets put aside. I’ve watched the same old F-series dissolve over the years.
Authorities should take action and remove abandoned cars.