Last night I completed a 17 hour drive from the edge of Long Island to the seldom visited bucolic scenery of northwest Georgia.
I saw a lot of interesting vehicles from here to there. A Lexus that was apparently given fake portholes on the side. An Avalon that looked like it got into a fight, and lost. Then there were countless numbers of Clinton Era luxury cars whose paint had peeled off and whose rears had sagged to the point where the song, “Pants On The Ground”, seemed all too fitting.
The hooptie population will undoubtedly increase over the next several years. They’re building them better than ever… even though a few neglectful owners don’t appreciate the past greatness of their ride. So with that in mind, what is the best car you have ever seen… in the worst possible condition?
Cars are lasting longer, to get an average 10 year old, mid size car, it costs around $4-6K. For minimum wage workers, to spend $2000, they usually have to get a late 90’s one. Or an early 00’s Aveo, if still running!
While some miss the good old days of getting an 10 year old car for $1000, they didn’t last much past 100-120K.
I always remember the saying, there is nothing sadder than a decrepit old luxury car, its like an abandoned luxury hotel.
I used to see late 70’s Cadillacs like that, peeling vinyl top flapping in the wind, running around on 4 blackwalls with black steelies and no hubcaps, silver duct tape over the rust holes at the base of the vinyl top.
There used to be a house near a friend of mines house that had a 1976 Oldsmobile 98 Regency coupe just sitting in the driveway rotting, the rust holes under the quarter window were big enough to drop a Chihuahua in, you could see the mold jungle growing on the carpet from the years and years of water leaks, and this was about an 18 year old car when I first saw it.
I know of an E-type thats rotting behind a Ford dealership down here, Series 1 roadster too, believe it or not, it’s broken in half.
Back when I was working summers in college as a lot porter at the local Cadillac dealership, there was an almost-new CTS-V that would come in from time to time. This poor car had its center console ripped out, crappy aftermarket electronics glued and drilled everywhere, cheap low profile chrome rims and tires, a ridiculous-looking spoiler, “Lamborghini style” doors that didn’t shut right, and the shittiest custom paint job I’ve ever seen. It was also beat to hell. Apparently, this twenty-something year old kid (meth addict) and his girlfriend had conned his wealthy senile grandmother into buying it for him unbeknownst to the rest of his family, who for their part, had long since disowned him. I’m sure that thing has long since been junked for whatever useful parts that were left unmolested on it. Sad.
Doubly sad because the damage was the result of misguided intentions, not neglect or accident. 🙁
Best car in the worst condition? I once saw a Porsche 904 that was someone’s beater daily driver. It belong to a ski patroller at a ski area at which I worked. It was the first 904 I’d ever seen in person (like any of us have seen alot). Second best/worst? At the same ski area another staffer drove a ratted out Mercedes 190 SL. I was not driving such loft wheels at the time, but in the same spirit drove a $300 Datsun 510 with eyeballs painted on the hood and a sheet of plastic covering the hold in the floorboard on the driver’s side.
A sheet of plastic?
Wasn’t there a stop sign you could pop rivet in?
Ski bums are great for interesting old hoopties. Here in Sierraland the Employee lots at Squaw Valley, Alpine Meadows and Northstar are always like Forest Gumps proverbial box of chocolates for a car enthusiast.
Hey Steve, were you at the Adessa facility out in Yaphank?
Cars in awful condition still being driven on the road are a very common sight for me. Lots of people in NYC have a purely utilitarian view of automobiles and have no qualms about using them as battering rams to fit in parking spots or nudge fellow drivers onward in traffic. In Manhattan especially, cars are frequently ONLY used for hauling stuff, and since they rarely venture beyond clogged city side streets they are still deemed useful even if they’ve got massive rot holes, missing gears, bald tires, mold-infested interiors, etc.
I’m not sure if the picture is gonna show up (uploading from my phone), but this ’78 Sedan deVille has been a fixture in Alphabet City for years. The 425 still runs strong (I can hear it from several blocks away starting up – it lacks any kind of exhaust system) but the rest of the vehicle looks like it spent some time at the bottom of the East River. Interior is mostly gutted, too. Last time I saw it, the owner had a “For Sale” sign in the window and I have a feeling it’s not long for this earth, but hopefully it’s sturdy big block engine will live on in something else. If CARMINE is interested, I can get the number (j/k)
Correction: Last line was meant to read “…if Junqueboi is interested…”, not CARMINE (editing never works on the phone) – sorry.
If it was say….close by, I’d be tempted! 🙂
A fresh trashbag for the RR window would be the first order of business…
I wonder if the dashtop “digital” clock still works?
You’re the Duke of New York….You’re A Number One!!!!
I used to visit the one in Jersey. With the manager who would greet all the dealers by saying, “How ya’ doin?” in a pure Sopranos accent.
I don’t know why but this is basically what pops in my head when 77-79 DeVille’s are mentioned. I remember seeing A LOT in this exact condition in Chicago in the 90s.
Weirdly, For some reason, I like it like that as well.
I hate this. How do people do this to luxury cars…
Amazing. I was just putting together a capsule of this very car! Sean, we have to get together in the city soon!
A couple of blocks down from my house, there is a BMW 507, just sitting there, for, I don’t know, 40 years, maybe? It used to be blue but know its a mix of puke green and poop brown. It has no driver’s door, so you could see the rips in the seats, the mold on the roof, and the wires coming from the dash. The guy also has a Benz 280SL. It used to be white, but now its a black – brown. The hood and trunk are missing, and its sitting on jacks with no wheels. He also has an unidentifiable car, with everything except the bumper, the siding, and the front ( grille and hood excluded ).
I saw a disco-era Rolls stripped off all its valuable chrome in a Packard salvage yard a few years back …
Just south of Hamilton in NZ is a RR shadow on a pole advertising a wrecking yard its nearly rotted away now but still up
I remember that.
They took it down last year and gave it a darn good spruce up. It’s back up now. From memory it’s a ’76. It was written off due to an interior fire; I’ll try grab a photo or two tomorrow when I go to work.
Was it disco era? Because those things span from the Peace and Love era to Punk Rock.
I always nicknamed this vintage Rolls, “Judge Smales Rolls”.
Thats a 60s series 1 in the pic as is the one on a pole here the 70s had flared wheel arches so Beatles era.
When we had the WPC Club national meet in Bothell, WA, in 1990 (I think it was), an old bearded character showed up with the rattiest 1957 300C hardtop I’ve ever seen. It was straight, but there was more iron-oxide brown than white showing on the exterior, and the interior was a shambles. It ran okay, but I had no idea what the drivetrain and suspension were like. Uff da!
Had there been digital/iPhone technology available to us commoners back in 1991, I would’ve had to have captured a late 70’s Honda Accord I saw in Guam. It apparently was still able to pass it’s safety check (as long as the cars can steer, stop, lights work and all that, it’ll pass out there). What was left of the quarter panels had wooden 2×4’s and various pieces of sheet metal holding up the whole rear end of the vehicle. Massive rust (warm, tropical salt air will rust cars top down and bottom up). In Guam, these were (and still are known as “boonie cars.” One of my bosses in the early 90’s had an ’82 Nissan Sentra that was a “Flintstone Car” on the passengers side.
On Oahu, these days, there are hordes of S class and 300’s; early to mid 1980s in various states of neglected decay and salt air rust – but still able to pass Hawaii safety inspection and are still running. Almost all of those are diesels and on the bumper/taillight area near the exhaust, all the beater Benzes have years of built-up diesel soot the size of Rhode Island.
I saw a poor beat-up Stutz Blackhawk at a flea market in Florida. It was owned by some eccentric woman that had a table there selling crocheted doilies of some kind. I went around and started taking photos of the car, but she shooed me away, nattering something like, “We are here working, not on exhibition!”
In my neighborhood in Towson, circa 1968 or so, there was an old guy who had a very rough 300SL Gullwing in his carport. He took it out one day, into the driveway, and saw him tinkering on it, but I don’t remember ever seeing him out on the street with it. He lived in a very modest old house, and had probably picked it up cheap, but probably couldn’t afford to fix it anymore to be a proper runner. Even then, these were starting to become valuable. Hopefully he hung on to it long enough to cash in.
When I was a child living near Vancouver, our next-door neighbours had a Gullwing. It was in pretty good condition – I sat in it a couple of times, but never got to ride in it. I eventually saw it advertised in Road & Track magazine for, IIRC, about $6000.
Le sigh
A few years back, someone in the neighborhood owned a ’94-’96 Impala SS as their family car.
Never washed, all dinged up…
The owner came from a wealthy construction family, but the story went that the family paid him a salary to STAY AWAY from the company’s offices. Yes there was a wife and kids..,and apparently drugs and booze too. I’d see them at the high school football games when my two kids were in Marching Band.
That dinged-up SS was like a metaphor for the family. Sad.
One of my coworkers used to have an Impala SS as his daily driver, and a Toyota MR2 as his fun car.
Oh one more…
Back when new, one of the neighbors owned a ’66 Plymouth Belvedere II. 2-door, 4-speed, black over pale yellow…
…and a Hemi under the hood.
He’d always be doing something or another with the car…sitting in the driveway revving it to the nines…and each time he pulled it out of the driveway it was the same show…tires screaming, rubber smoking…then back home a few minutes later.
Sometimes with the car…sometimes on foot because he broke something amidst all the theater.
IIRC in two years he’d toasted a Hemi AND a 440 and a laundry list of trannies and rear ends. When we left the area due to my Dad’s job transfer, the car had a 383…its THIRD engine…and was all of three years old.
The guy shoulda moved to Detroit and gone to work for ChryCo doing torture tests at the proving grounds.
During my teenage wrecking yard touring days I came across a primered Triumph TR3 which had been attacked with a hammer. It was obviously a project car and the owner had apparently snapped. Poor thing looked like a golf ball, and it was doubly sad because the car had been in better shape than my own TR4 Project.
I also saw what I believe was an aluminum bodied Jaguar XK120 roadster (one of the first 240 made) in a garage in Perrysburg Ohio during a visit to an elderly friend of a college friend’s father (!!). Long retired and disassembled race car that he was going to restore someday.
And finally, the rough-but-running 1971 Plymouth GTX 440 6-Pack/Pistol Grip 4 speed/Dana rear. My highschool friend and I tried to scrape together the $1200 asking price in 1987. We didn’t have the money…
I know what happened to the TR3, but I always wonder about the other two…
A friend of mine used to rent space in his warehouse to a doctor that had Jags, one of them was a basket case aluminum XK120, he said the car was more oxide power than car, I think he still sold it for big bucks though.
Saw a nice XK120 on wednesday grey with spats it shot past me and was gone into the distance I, went for my camera and shot a roadsign my Hino is not the smoothest ride around empty.
Father-in-law’s 1969 Lincoln had 44,000 miles on the 460 when he parked it in 1983 beside the garage because of a broken water pump. With the drivers window cracked open. Had to use a tractor to get it on the dolly in 2011 when he sold his house. Everything locked up and dried out. Interior ruined. Frame rusted on two. Now it sits behind his new place under a pine tree. He thinks he’s going to get something for it other than scrap price. What a shame.
How much does your father-in-law want for the car? I have a mechanic friend who likes those old Lincolns and would buy that one in a heartbeat.
Also, has he had the car since it was new?
I has a sad.
On Saturday I saw a ’97-’00 BMW 5-Series that looked pretty sad. It was black with very faded paint all over. The front was the worst with rusted dents on the hood and a crumpled front side panel. Yellowed headlights. Rust around the wheel wells. The black leather interior looked equally worn.
It was being driven by an attractive blonde in her mid-30s however. She was the car’s one bright spot.
In the early 90s I spent summers working in the NC Outer Banks teaching sailboarding, working in restaurants and goofing off. I had a series of interesting houses and roommates, but I will never forget Mikey–he framed houses by day and consumed his weight in budweiser by day and night. He was a character in many ways, but he was famous for his wheels, that he only rarely drove. He had a ’70 GTX 440 pistol grip with painted steel wheels, mismatched tires, rotting vinyl top, rust, primer and faded paint. It was roached out, but someone had redone the engine along the way and it was insanely fast. Of course Mike had no license and was famous/infamous for his high speed runs up the ‘bypass’ 4 lane divided road at 100+ mph when he got an urge. I often wonder weather either one are still around.
I had a friend with a car like that only it was a hemi Road Runner. This was circa 1974 and the poor ’68 Runner was just about on its last legs. The body had rusted thru in several spots and, when riding in the front passenger position, you had to be careful where you put your feet as some of the floorboard was gone and only had the rubber mat. Gerald got the car cheaply and abused it unmercifully; it finally broke the crankshaft after one too many drop clutch starts. As the speedometer never worked I have no idea how fast the Road Runner would go, other than “pretty damned fast”.
It’s an interesting coincidence that there have been 2 stories so far about a Plymouth GTX and one about a Belvedere, upon which the GTX was based.
Yup, a friend once had a 67 Belvedere GTX and was in the middle of redoing it right, and even installed a proper 440, I think Hemi in it and I forget what else. It was red with black interior, though the paint had long gone to dull over the years, then went into the military, and was transferred to California and it was there that someone stole it in its partially restored state. He had bought it originally in weathered, unrestored shape, and am not sure if it had the 440 originally, just know he put one in it.
He never got it back so who knows what happened to it then, and that was back in the ’80’s, I think mid 80’s.
The car that comes to mind is a brown Fleetwood Brougham 1976 or 75, can’t rem 74 Headlights being on it… Back seat Loaded to the gills will this persons Home needs. Yet from outside it looks like worthless stacked newspapers and pizza boxes so as not to draw street thieves. this car looks like 5000 pounds of excrement, in all its brown vinyl/leather brougham goodness.
i always see it at safeway/vons.
Circa 1978, in my neighborhood in Milwaukee, there was a young guy and his wife and kid that drove a beater Superbird. Passenger door was dented, rust on the quarters….seemed to be their only car. You would see them loading groceries in it. Wonder if it survived long enough to make him rich?
Back in the late ’80s there was a guy in Oberlin Ohio that drove a Saturn Yellow ’70 Buick GS455 Stage 1 year ’round…
Victory auto wreckers had a Lotus Europa stacked atop a Thunderbird I was getting parts out of several years ago, which was quite the uexpected find. Recently I found a pair of Alpha Romeo Spiders at a U pull it in Aurora IL. The one was coated in rust and it was so bad the floor buckled just ahead of the doors, The drivetrain seemed to be the only thing holding the body together.
When I was a kid I’d walk by a house on the way to school that had two Jaguar XJ/S’s, Both red. The one looked real nice and seemed to be garage kept and the other was dilapidated — Faded paint, flat tires, oxidized wheels ect. Now keep in mind this would have been mid to late 90s, so the XJ/S(although ancient) was still a current/recent design back then, and seeing one, at my young age, in the state it was in was pretty surreal. Weirdly that one was a straight 6, the nice one was the V12. Who’d have thunk?
I was thinking, driver and parts car?
I always assumed just that. It appeared to be in tact with an engine in it(the front end sat level so there was definitely an engine in it), but it could be that the troublesome V12 was swapped with the I6 and vice versa. I wish I wasn’t so shy back then, I could have asked the guy a thousand times lol
There’s a very beat-up ’03 Marauder I see now and then that has the worst paint peel issue, the roof has this Don King look going…
Sure it’s not a Crown Vic in drag? Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of conversions being done to regular Crown Vic P71s. Doesn’t take much
If not it doesn’t surprise me. Marauders seem to be regarded as just another Panther car in the second hand market.
Oh no, sadly it’s a Marauder. I’ve looked it over in a parking lot and it’s a sorry sight.
PJ . . . It’s in northern Wisconsin but the wheels are locked up, the frame is completely rusted in two and the motor hasn’t run in years, and even then it barely ran. Hasn’t been on the road since the 80s. Had a guy in Madison buy it only to back out when he saw how much it would cost to get it there.
I’ve only seen two non-rodded Terraplanes in my life. And one of them had a tree growing through it.
I still remember around 1976, seeing a beat up white ’68 GTO, with bondo and a loud muffler in traffic, and my parents going ‘listen to that racket!’.
The Goat was only 8 years old! I was 15, and sad to see it that way, remembering the TV ads when new. And, just before GTO’s started appreciating. It was all the teenaged Boomers that wrecked new ones that make them valuable today.
Oh yes, in the late 70s classic muscle cars were worth NOTHING. We would ride our bikes up to the cruise strip to watch them go past, rumbling and clanking, all being driven by basically Todd from Beavis and Butthead.
I wouldn’t say the classic muscle cars of the 60’s in the mid-late seventies weren’t worth “nothing” . . . . I remember trying to get “The Bank of Dad” in 1976 to finance for me a ’67 Goat with slightly faded blue paint, cheapo belted tires on black steelies with moon hub caps (2nd tier used car lot had that one and I believe someone took the “good” wheels off of it) . . . . price was $2595.00 (September, 1976) . . . .
Truth be told only the milder versions of the classics were available straight and very clean. The hotter ones at the time in Northern California usually were well driven up . . .
Where I grew up anyway, the Todd types were mostly driving cheap old stuff with big engines stuck in them. They would then buy the taller spring mounts and jack the thing up 6″ or more. Add a set of Cragar mags and some big bias ply boots you had the pot-head muscle car. There were loads of them around, too.
Back in the 70s, I saw what was supposed to be the 1941 Lincoln Continental coupe that had been used in the movie The Godfather. This was the car in which Sonny was ambushed at the toll booth.
The car had holes all over it, probably made with real bullets. Explosive charges had been put into each of the holes, and covered with bondo and the cheapest, crappiest black paint job I have ever seen. Then the charges were set off during filming to make it look like the car was getting shot up with machine gun fire. The car was a real heap, not even sure that it ran. But it was absolutely ruined.
I remember a childhood friend lived on Prospect Drive in San Rafael, a winding, very narrow lane in the hills and up the road from his house was an old man who had a driveway with a couple of pre-war Fords, and one ’41 Lincoln Continental. Not “ruined” like the Sonny Corleone car, but this one appeared to be a running car and what caught my eye was that it looked like it had been hand painted with a combination of gold Krylon spray paint and interior home latex. It looked horrible and there was overspray everywhere. This would’ve been around 1971-72, so I’m hoping that somewhere along the line, this car would’ve been lovingly restored.
In Hawaii, a certain West Pacific ethnic group loves to decorate their cars with reflective tape, fake Mercedes SL “stick on” vents, exterior lighting and so forth. Wouldn’t be so bad except the cars they like do them to are . . . . . Mercedes . . .
Last year during a visit to Philadelphia I saw a rather new (who can tell?) Bentley with a bike rack screwed to the trunk.
And speaking of not having the money, while in high school I was offered a ’37 Chevy. Can’t begin to name the model, but it was 4-door and large. The interior smelled like a monkey house, but it was complete and running. The asking price was $35.00, which I didn’t have.
In Venezuela I lost count. From Dodge Darts with swapped Nova sub-frames to derelict Fiat 131 and Ford Fairmonts. Or Disco Novas with the collapsed rear end due to corrosion. All of them doing taxi duty. Or throughly oxidized LWB FJ40s still doing the rounds as public transport in barrios.
Down here… nah, they never get to that level of deterioration.
There is a Bentley – I think from the 80’s – frequently parked in my neighborhood (dense seaside city) with a zonal parking permit; it looks a lot like the Cougar in Steve’s picture. Every time I see it I wonder who in hell would try to keep such a car going as parts and labor must be astronomical and yet the body, upholstery, etc. have gone to seed so there is no earthly reason to maintain it mechanically – plus gas mileage would be horrendous.
There are also a couple of grim looking 70’s Cadillacs in the neighborhood, one a first generation Seville in grey primer with patches of rust and other colors here and there, one side with whitewalls, one with blackwalls. The other is a Sedan de Ville (in a faded version of the banana yellow we were discussing a few pages back) with pounds of electrical tape holding the rear bumper on. Well beyond the level where you would think of restoration but they must give the owners some kind of satisfaction…
In the late ’80s, there was a shop in my hometown restoring Italian exotics. I couldn’t believe how used up and neglected once-beautiful Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Maseratis of the ’60s looked when they came in.
And the memories keep coming! San Rafael High School auto shop – 1976. The facility was shared with Marin County’s vocational training program so it was a very well equipped shop. There were usually several “practice” cars . . . one was actually pretty straight and restorable with minimal hassle (a blue ’52 Ford Customline Victoria Hardtop). The “sad” ones were: ’59 Ford Skyliner (hammered in at every corner); a ’66 Pontiac Tempest; crushed quarter panel, surprisingly clean interior; OHC six/Quadrajet; ’57 Plymouth Fury . . . straight body, moth eaten upholstery which I actually got running and the one car we thought deserved to be there for all of us young gorillas: ’65 Buick Skylark that had those taxicab “water bumpers” . . . and damaged sheet metal all around those bumpers.
The saddest was the ’59 Skyliner. I knew back then how special that car was.
This Rolls, no longer rolls.
Seen this one personally
This too, same place as the black Rolls.
You have seen the cars of Cuba but not the cars of Guantanamo. The base is separated from the rest of the island and under a Navy Commanding Officer. There were vehicles there that spent 20 years on the base. The one I was closest to belonged to my sponsor. It had no doors, chains functioning as gates across the opening. No bed. Plywood floor etc. It didn’t stand out from the others. Where the island keeps their old cars for years and looking good, the base keeps theirs for years and appear to be beyond hope.
The description Billy Rockfish gave to Guam and the Marianas Islands beaters was number two in my memory. He described it very accurately. Cuba was worse. No civilian involvement – just a bunch of sailors and marines.
I once owned a 79 Datsun that ran till I couldn’t look at it anymore. Bondo, rust, and plywood. Used tires for the whompy jawed front end would last 10-15k miles. Never died on me. Nissan cast iron engine.
My tour in Guam (1990-93) saw numerous Datsun 210/B-210s/early Sentras in varying degrees of decomposition. A couple of them too had plywood hoods; one had bungee cords stuck through the rust holes in the hood attached to the front bumper. One acquaintance had a rusty B-210 whose trunk was accessible through the right quarter panel. Holes in the floors allowed the big cockroaches a place to exit . . . .
My experience with base cars is it’s kind of a competition to see who has the worst car, for the least amount of money, that still runs. It’s a lot of fun for everyone. That said, since the DoD would ship cars, I was always surprised to see American stuff tooling along the roads in Japan. One day I saw a 1970’s Mercury Monarch driving down the road with military plates.
neighbor once had a Fiat 124 coupe, light metallic blue with white interior. This was in the mid ’80s. Apparently it gave him too much trouble, so he started tearing it apart, right there in the shared parking area. Invited us neighborhood kids to take part (sad to say, I joined in. Learned to use a hacksaw on the C-pillar that day…) The pile of parts sat there for months iirc.
Someone in college in about 1976 came in with a new 76 Chrysler Cordoba in triple white. Within a semester it had numerous scrapes and dents and the white soft Corinthian Leather had numerous burn marks from seeds from the numerous joints smoked in it. The half white vinyl roof was shredded from him running through a barbed wire fence with it. I remember thinking the car was beautiful when I first saw it but wow did it go down fast.
Closer to the present seeing the old new cars at the Lambecht auction on line sure brings a tear to my eye.
http://www.vanderbrinkauctions.com/auctions_details2.php?photosel=auction_images/135/fullsize/120L_1.JPG&detail=135&pageno=4
My worst that I remember seeing as rust here isn’t an issue was/is an early 90’s era Corolla that some lady drives. It’s dinged up good, driver’s door bashed in from an errant garbage dumpster that rolled across the street into her door, the passenger airbag was removed somehow, and the cavity filled with papers and other crap, the grill was also missing, and I think at least one wheel cover too for that matter. It was dark green though it didn’t look too bad, just that the car had become a hooptie just the same.
Another was an early 90’s Camry sedan that was well faded metallic red, that I recall, and had been neglected to the point that the rear end bounced up and down without much provocation and I think the car had other blemishes in the body too. I just saw it bounding along past us in the gas station as I filled up Mom’s car. This being what, 2 years ago now, and some young chick was driving it too it looked like.
The super sad mobiles aren’t as common here as you’d think, but a 20+ YO car is still found aplenty though.
This’ll blow your mind:
http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/05/21/so-in-dubai-the-amount-of-abandoned-luxury-cars-lying-around-is-kind-of-a-problem/
Currently on the Bay of E, there is a Cimarron D’Oro convertible. The VIN provided decodes as a 4-door. So is that a chop/conversion, or a Cavalier convertible with Cimarron bits (including VIN)? Either way, the ad deceptively doesn’t state. Wasn’t there someone here who wanted a “Cimarron D’Oro convertible”? Cimarron lover here, but… yuck.
Caveat emptor!
I always thought about making one out of a Cavalier convertible and Cimarron parts, if I had the time and went off my rocker….
Back in ’86 or so, in Falls Church, Va, rotting away in someones backyard was a ’57 Eldorado Brougham. Saw it about ten years later in a magazine, someone had taken pictures and submitted them, same car, worse condition.
Couple months after the picture appeared, it was gone. That was also my biggest missed opportunity…
If this is the same house I’m thinking of, just up from the 7-11, the same guy had a Series 1 XKE in pieces wrapped in tarps, on sawhorses under his deck.
Lotta folks tried to buy both over the years….
1-A Toyota Corolla GTS Twin Cam Coupe in white (AE86) I saw a few weeks ago in a bridal shop parking lot.
2-A Pontiac 6000 STE that I last saw a year ago in the local HS parking lot.
3- This:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/cc-capsule-1984-oldsmobile-cutlass-ciera-brougham-convertible-by-hess-eisenhardt-theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute/
4-This:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/cc-capsule-1976-oldsmobile-delta-88-royale-the-greater-land-brougham-whale-faces-extinction/
5-This:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/patina-week-classic-1963-chrysler-300-sport-convertible-parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow/
P.S. The first two cars looked like they had been “pickled” in a solution of saltwater and vinegar.
About 10 years ago my dad bought a ’75 Corvette L-82 Convertible with 2,500 actual documented miles on it. It was ordered new with every option by the general manager of a Chevy dealership in New Orleans. He died a year later and his widow put the car in an outdoor shed and piled junk on it for years. By the time my dad got it, rats had eaten through the top, parts of the carpet and door panels. The plastic bumpers had rotted as well as the paint deteriorated.
Today the car looks great and is back on the road, but it’s a shame that such a low mile car had to be so extensively refurbirshed.
Sorry guys, gotta post this one here. That inside door panel is in super shape.
A Jaguar XK120 FHC wire-wheel car in terrible but not unrestorable condition.