Nestled in 35 acres of pine trees about 2 miles off Interstate 75 midway between Atlanta and Chattanooga lies Old Car City USA. This plot of automotive nirvana has seven miles of walking trails and an estimated 4,500 cars ranging from the 1920s to roughly 1980. The sheer variety of cars that occupy this former salvage yard is nearly indescribable.
Coverage of this expedition is being split into four parts, with each being picture heavy. So let’s begin our tour with the Chrysler Corporation, with cars being presented mostly in the order they were seen.
Old Car City began as a general store in 1931. Several years later, the owners branched out into auto salvage. As time went on their automotive inventory grew and the current owner, the son of the original owners, ceased salvage operations in the early 1980s. As he has stated on several occasions to various media, he was seeing more income from photographers than from selling parts. (ED: Old Car City charges a $30 admission fee to the public, and there is no additional charge to photograph. This is essentially a private outdoor museum/installation)
This 1938 Imperial (and somewhat newer Lincoln) were sitting near the back door of the main building, the door through which one proceeds to see the gardens, as it is called.
This Dodge is…an armored car? Obviously everything behind the firewall is not of Dodge manufacturing.
This Plymouth is staring at US 411, the route here from I-75.
This Plymouth Satellite is staring out the front fence, being taunted by the open road; you can see a black SUV darting by in the background.
A 1957 Imperial and a 1962 Chrysler.
Once in the main garden, the trees are plentiful and the sunlight cascading through the canopy amplifies the character and lines of the cars. It’s little wonder photographers flock here.
That’s a Gold Duster on top; I suspect the bottom one is, also.
If you like C-body Chrysler products, you’ve come to the right place. They are plentiful, with two more behind this 1969 Dodge Polara.
This 1971 Plymouth Fury could be seen in the prior photograph.
This Dodge Monaco spoke to me. Pinpointing a model year more specific than 1974 to 1977 was difficult; everything in front of the firewall is gone. This had once been a salvage yard, after all.
A 1962 Dodge, covered in the ever-present pine needles.
This Aspen was one of the newest cars to be found.
Many cars still wore their Georgia license plates, like this 1969 Dodge Coronet, with the newest registration stickers saying 1983.
In various articles about Old Car City, I’ve read comments lamenting how all these cars sitting here is a waste. Is it, though? In 1983, most cars from the 1970s drew about as much attention as a 2016 Hyundai Sonata does today. What if this Charger had been crushed upon arrival? We would have never known of its existence. Instead, it gets to be seen and enjoyed by people all over the world.
A 1968 Dodge Polara wagon. There were lots of wagons, of all makes.
Another joy of Old Car City is seeing what one rarely sees, desirable or not. How about a 1974 Plymouth Satellite sedan? When did you last see one? There were lots of 1971 to 1978 Chrysler B-body sedans here and this won’t be the last ’74 Satellite we will see, either.
This particular one had been a taxi.
There were other working cars to be found. Cartersville is only five miles from Old Car City.
With the rear bumper and header panel being gone, it was tough to pinpoint the model year of this police package Plymouth Fury, although I am guessing 1970 or 1971.
This was the first of multiple E-bodies I encountered, all of the Dodge Challenger variety.
A 1963 Imperial without a missing soft roof under roof, one of merely 531 produced.
Some of his cars are under cover…or in the air…or both. It is easy to succumb to sensory overload.
There were an abundance of 1960s era vans toward the front of the garden. This Dodge has not escaped the burden of carrying a heavy load.
A variation of an earlier theme.
This Plymouth has a really clean C-pillar.
People want to see that Road Runner. One needs to carefully pay attention to the cars here, as there are some big surprises along the way.
Old Car City has several very important rules. In addition to there being no alcohol, firearms, or nudity allowed (like cars, every policy has a story), one is also not allowed to open doors or hoods.
Lucky for us, this door was already open so we could see where this Aspen has a manual transmission.
This B-body sedan was too covered and incomplete to determine if it was a Dodge or Plymouth.
If I had to pinpoint the most commonly seen Chrysler product here, it would likely be the 1971 to 1974 Dodge Charger.
There is another E-body behind the Charger; would you believe I did not notice it until editing these pictures? That is how abundant the cars are here.
Another 1974 Plymouth Satellite sedan. This rear end treatment was only for 1974.
I did a lot of hard charging through the Georgia pines that day, undoubtedly exceeding the seven miles of trail.
My recommendation would be to eat light the day prior to a visit and bring along a backpack of snacks and drinks.
My goal was to capture what appealed to me plus the infrequently seen, such as this 1970 Dodge Polara.
Another Challenger. I wish I knew the story about the gallon sized tin cans.
The interior was full of them.
The rearmost section of the garden had some outliers. This K-car based Lebaron, the newest Chrysler product seen, is sitting in a briar patch.
A Dodge Charger, a clone of the Chrysler Cordoba.
These 1971 to 1974 Chargers were plentiful.
The plentifulness is no joke.
This won’t be our last Challenger.
The front of this Fury is now wrinkled from the tree having grown into it. There will be more examples throughout this series.
A 1975 or 1976 Plymouth Fury.
The model years of 1965 to 1978 appear to be the heaviest represented of all.
This Satellite wagon was very nice in its day.
Some cars, such as this Satellite, were easy to capture digitally. In other places, cars might be in rows that were six cars wide, making identification and picture taking quite difficult. Trees and brush often presented challenges, also.
Even though many cars were from the 1960s and 1970s, the 1950s were not unrepresented; one just needed to keep an eye out for them.
I spent nearly six hours walking the gardens. Like in life, one needed to get off the beaten path to see the more unusual stuff.
This has been very picture heavy, but finding so many good things, such as this 1969 Charger, made it difficult to make cuts. This is an example of a car being stuck in the middle of several rows.
A third 1974 Satellite sedan.
A 1969 Fury sedan parked behind…
…a 1969 Fury two-door sedan.
Another police package Fury.
This is not a young tree and this Dart on the left and Fury on the right have been here even longer.
This 1970 Dodge Coronet was yellow from the factory as the floorpans were the same color of yellow.
Many Imperials from different generations were there.
Another rarely seen Dodge, a 1970 Monaco.
Finding one of these on the street would be outstanding, but this is a great substitute.
Technically it’s foreign, but I’m putting this Cricket with its nameplate.
One last wagon, just for good measure.
This is our last Plymouth.
We can’t leave without one more Challenger.
Identifying it was not difficult.
I hope you’ve enjoyed Part 1 of this series. General Motors is up next, followed by Ford, then the Independents and Foreign will conclude this series.
All pictures were taken March 20, 2026; most have been mildly retouched via software found on an aging iMac.
Sweet .
Thank you for sharing, I’m beginning to have troubles walking the junkyards these days .
-Nate
Thanks. For the number of miles I walked that day, walking the next day was interesting for the first few hours.
I recommend wearing snake boots and gloves while exploring.
Going at that time of year likely helped. All I saw was a turkey, which I talk more about tomorrow in Part 2.
Thanks for the tour, Jason! – It’s like a Jim Klein post on steroids!
Looking forward to the rest of the series.
Stay tuned tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday!
Sounds like my kinda place. Looks a lot like the cars in my dad’s back lot at his shop, but with many more to choose from!
What a place! I have wanted to explore it for years but alas it is quite far away. I think everyone (besides you fine folks) would think I was nuts for traveling half way across the continent just to check out a junkyard so I need to find a way to combine it with another trip.
I’m sort of at the halfway point from you, so just honk when you pull up in front and I’ll pop out and spell you at the wheel for the remaining 1500 miles or whatever it is.
Yes! That will make my friends and family feel better about that trip. I am meeting up with someone I know from the internet half way along!
Joking aside that sounds like a fine road trip idea.
Old Car City is about 20 minutes away from me, so let me know when yall come and I’ll meet you there! Great little restaurant directly across the street from it too. We can take a break for lunch and go back.
I had wondered about that restaurant; I ate a pb&j while gazing at a Corvair.
Speaking of, I suppose you’ve been to the Savoy Museum? Being only five miles away, I had to visit there also. I will write it up someday.
I’ll bring the banjo. Everything will be fine.
David, if it helps any, going across country was about the second time I met Jim. He’s easy to travel with! So said another guy you only know from the internet.
Yes, my wife actually works at Savoy. Cartersville is filled with hidden gems!
Interesting, and lots of things of interest! While I understand the very haphazard arrangement of vehicles scattered all about a huge lot without any recognizable organization especially in an older establishment such as this that probably started as someone’s dumping ground originally, I don’t understand why any cars would be either entirely on top of each or other or even more peculiar, partially on top of each other if the purpose was to actually sell parts off of them (such as the Challanger, Polara, and the Duster duo) once it became established as a business. I see enough wasp nests and rat and mouse turds in the “modern” establishments I see, walking around this I can agree with not getting too close to anything, there likely are some things living in some of these that are best left undisturbed…
Looking forward to the next installment!
Some of the arrangements had me puzzled also. A few cars we will see tomorrow and Wednesday were in “Car Circle” or something like that. Stacked two high, it was a large 3/4 circle of cars off to one side of the yard near the Thunderbirds and right in front of the Imperial convertible seen above.
Overall, I think the arrangement is a mixture of random and intentional. One I did not mention in any of the four installments is the owner’s office, which is how I met him. The walls are covered with over 12,000 Matchbox cars in different mosaics and such.
It would be worth a road trip to see again. The other guy working there (his retirement gig) said there is a guy from Poland, I think, who has been there every year for 25 years and sees something new each time. That statement has validity given the sheer numbers there.
When I first started going to self service Junkyards circa 2006 the one closest to me was Victory Auto Wreckers(which is locally famous for their long haired 70s man/door falls off “that old car is worth money” commercials that ran well into the 2000s) they stacked cars as the space at the time was limited(they modernized in the 2010s). Certain parts were rendered trash by the practice but I never had a problem getting what I wanted, whether the car was on top or bottom.
The peculiar partial stacking I wonder started from a more uniform stack and after a wind storm or ten over the years sent the top car sliding down. In my aforementioned experiences I did once find myself there during a pop up thunderstorm getting something or other from the interior of a Tbird underneath, and I sat it out in there with the car above audibly rocking and rolling! Good times!
Had no idea this was right off of I-75, I could have visited many a time as I usually go to Atlanta to visit family at least once a year.
It is definitely worth the drive up from Atlanta. We were staying in Decatur and I made there is 65 minutes on a Friday morning.
Fantastic tour – thanks!
Aw jeez, yet another bucket list item added….
Glad I could help!
The gestation story of this junkyard struck me, and made me get all literary. In Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, a desperate family’s quest for a new life has them traveling west in an old jalopy that was ill-suited for the task. Plenty of those old jalopies never made it and wound up being abandoned wherever they failed. More than a few purveyors of rural gas stations and general stores found themselves unintentionally in the junkyard business this way.
For when this yard started, another few dollars a week meant a lot. My grandfather wanted to start a salvage yard but my grandmother nixed that idea.
Truly ashamed the leaves aren’t blown off the 1000s of cars
Exactly. I’d even volunteer to carefully sweep and/or leaf blow off the leaves and pine needles so as to allow a better viewing experience.
Come back tomorrow. It’s GM Day and from what I can see of your avatar, there may be something really identifiable for you.
That could be a full-time job!
Sure it’s a shame that all these cars are there, by the hundreds or more, but who has the resources needed to bring them back to life? I would not habitually advocate for them to be scrapped, but the steel could be put to good use making something new again. Might be the better trade off as compared to letting nature slowly absorb them over hundreds of years. Keep a few of the most significant ones. Even the expense to drag these out to the crusher would be coslty.
Take a picture, they will last longer. Sad to say a long goodbye to these relics.
Seeing them was a mixed bag. Few, if any, would be easily restored. Most had body damage, lots of drivetrains were gone, glass broken, etc. I hate seeing them sit there but the place is truly a snapshot of a time long ago.
That said, there are a few very unusual examples to be seen.
Looks like my Grandma’s property, circa 1980 except with Chryslers vs. Chevys. (OK, there was a Dodge and the 1961 Plymouth wagon that we towed up there to Grandma’s, but nothing quite like this)
Oh, and 1000 times more.
So, I can’t quite figure this place out, even after going to their website (which seems a lot nicer than one might guess for what this looks like). Is this a functional junkyard, or are they marketing it as an attraction? I’d go to either, and will the next time I pass through. What brought you to White, GA? Surely there’s a story about that too.
We were visiting Decatur and I had a free day. It was glorious to visit here, with nobody urging me to hurry up or asking when I would be done looking. He has sold no parts in about 40 years, it’s all sight-seeing visitors. There were about 30 others there but you don’t really see each other.
You need to stop next time you are through there.
The Savoy Auto Museum is only five miles away and it is the utter opposite to Old Car City.
Thankyou for sharing!
Thank you.
I’m too sentimental about old stuff to enjoy junkyards, but even so, this is a remarkable place. I’ve never heard of it before.
I find it fascinating the the owner realized – decades ago – that could receive more revenue as a tourist attraction than from selling parts. I wonder if there’s any other junkyard owner that came to the same realization?
I suspect there is less headache dealing with photographers and car guys than in selling parts.
It is almost worth the trip to Georgia just to visit this place. Somehow I stumbled upon its existence about two years ago and was bummed out when we didn’t have time to stop when driving back from Orlando in late 2024. So, that has been corrected!
These are all cool and make me want to watch vintage Chrysler Corp. commercials on YouTube while eating dinner tonight.
Daisy Duke’s pre-Dixie Road Runner! And those Dodge Aspens, not nearly as rusted as I might have assumed, their being southern cars notwithstanding.
There was lots of good stuff to see.
White is not overly far from Covington where the first five episodes of Dukes was filmed. However, I doubt it is the same car.
Seems like there would have been a chance of a jump-damaged 69 Charger ending up at that yard!
Hi Jon. I sent you an email about your upcoming post. Did you receive it?
Those were found in another salvage yard – and restored.
Wow, what a neat place. I would definitely go if I could spare a day to roam it, though I find it a bit sad that these cars have all been sitting so long returning to the elements that none could even conceivably be restored. It’s kind of like civilization ended, in a post-apocalyptic world decades after the event (whatever it was).
Going through it took about six hours. By that point I was hungry, thirsty, and my knees were talking to me. But it was worth every minute.
Most of the cars were rough, but there were a few that had maintained more sparkle than the others. Seeing all these cars does make one think, like the combined mileage of the bunch, how much was spent to acquire them all new, how many gallons of fuel they have burned, who all drove them, etc. Go if you ever get a chance.
Wow that is overwhelming to look at just some of the photos.
But is it a waste? I don’t see much better than a parts car, in most cases these would have been crushed decades ago so it’s an art installation now.
Thanks, looking forward to the next installment.
It was absolute sensory overload. You know how in a crowd of people it can be difficult to concentrate with just one person due to the noise? That is how it is here – so many things to look at it is difficult to see and/or focus on something right beside it.
I still think that it’s sad that they no longer consider selling parts, as nothing distresses one more in the hunt for a desperately needed part, than to find one that is not available for purchase! 🙂
I get it, but the interiors are mostly shot, sheet metal is often questionable, and badges are often available as a re-pop. Many were also wrecked prior to arrival; a few had me carefully to avoid looking at blood stains and such.
I am late, but this post just begs for comments. This looks like an XL version of the Mopar section of lots of junkyards from around 1980. Except that the cars were not hostages to the foliage.
I suspect that most yards that allowed older stuff to accumulate were not all that profitable for their owners.
Your last sentence has me suspecting that is why he quit selling parts. Plus, with his current clientele, he likely doesn’t have to worry about people trying to over-negotiate a deal.
That 62-65 (early) Dodge D200 was one of a number built for the US military, in this case the Air Force, judging by the blue paint bleeding through.