It’s Friday once again, and you know what that means; the weekend is nearly upon us, and the Junkyard Outtake is roaring back for more rusty goodness.
This ’66 GMC fire truck was on hand to greet us at the gates. But just because it’s Big Truck Week doesn’t mean this Junkyard Outtake is all about the big iron.
Come on in! We’ve got cars aplenty, including one rare bird you won’t want to miss.
Why not start off with a bang?
Look what I found! It’s a Lincoln Continental; a ’66, if my limited FoMoCo knowledge serves.
These were fancy, pricey cars in their day. But ask anyone on the street, and they won’t tell you about how exclusive these cars were, nor will they mention their lines, their handling, or their power. No, the first thing that’ll come to their mind…
…is the suicide doors. And rightfully so; they’re a hard thing to forget.
I’m no Ford fan, but even I feel a twinge of sympathy for this car. When it first arrived in the yard eight or so years ago, it drove in.
The stack of “for sale” signs on the backseat with progressively lower prices, along with the empty cans of Mountain Dew, told the whole story: some youthful individual had likely owned it last, had been trying to sell it, but eventually gave up and junked it. Given the state of the underbody, the final blow may well have come from a leaking fuel or brake line.
Yup, no doubt about it–this is a driver-focused car.
Maybe one day, the right person will discover it, and when they do, it’ll be their own little parts jackpot.
This ’71 or ’72 Chevelle has seen better days.
It’s been out here for nearly three decades. Though it’s pretty picked over, I can still claim responsibility for the absence of its hood latch, which was pulled a few years back to complete a ’71 Malibu sedan I was putting together.
This 1977-ish LeMans Sport Coupe is a car I remember well.
One of the doctors in town owned it, and it was forever breaking down. One time, circa 1990, my old man had to help them get it started after its owner flooded it in the bank parking lot.
Around 2007, I had a chance to buy it but declined after recalling what was surely dozens of cans’ worth of ether that the former owner had sprayed down the throat of its two-barrel Rochester over the years. Some kids eventually bought it, beat it, and left it for dead. Now it lies here, collecting rain and snow.
Next door, we find a ’70 Skylark sedan. It was driven up until around 2005, when it was finally deemed too rusty for the road.
It’s about as plain as you get, save for the engine.
Hello-hello-hellooo! Nobody home under here.
This Skylark’s engine bay once housed a low-compression Buick 350, which was mildly stuck when I found it. That motor now resides under my workbench, waiting for the right project to come along.
Speaking of motorless GM products, anybody in the mood for an Olds?
This 1971 Ninety-Eight hardtop arrived around 2006 with a strong-running 455 under the hood. It didn’t take long for that motor to find a new home.
I’d leave you to soak in all its green goodness, but I’m afraid some of the green is mold, and the only soaking going on involves this wet bench seat.
Next week’s Junkyard Outtake will be a surprise! As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed.
Interesting look around, thanks for sharing! Some sad sights in there.
I take it this wrecking yard is a little ma/pa operation out in the sticks somewhere?
You have a chronicled history of a good majority of the little gems that reside there. It’s good to see that there are still some old time yards still around. The wrecking yards around my neck of the woods (Winnipeg), rarely keep anything more than 3 weeks and then it’s off the crusher.
Most of my life I have lusted after a suicide door Lincoln. Has not happened yet. It is cool to live in a place where you can walk into a junkyard and say “there’s old Billy Smith’s car. It was sure a POS when he owned it.”
I am the last guy you should probably listen to on this, but wouldn’t that GMC firetruck up top be a 67 at the oldest? I thought 67 was the first year for that new cab.
You could be right. My memory on some of these is a bit sketchy; only the pics with snow on the ground are recent, some of the others were taken as far back as 4 years ago.
If that Chevelle coupe was at the Lembrecht auction, it would have ended up sold for $250,000! Joking, but suprised it wasn’t parted out more, since they are so valuable.
In that last picture of the Olds, does that shift lever have the button in the center of it which activates the single-sweep ‘mist’ wiper function? My grandfather’s 1970 98 sedan had that and I thought it was really cool as a kid.
As I recall, this was a pretty ‘secret’ button that had no nameplate or decal to show that it existed or what it did, save for one reading the owner’s manual.
That ’70 Skylark sedan looks pretty rust free since I can still see the rocker panels and the base of the doors and the fenders. I bet the frame is swiss cheese though. Interesting how some vehicles still have their license plate(s) and some do not.
That Le Mans seems a little old for kids, the last time I saw my town’s high school student parking lot there was not a single 30 year old car. Also, if I had the opportunity to buy the rusty Skylark or Continental, I would consider daily driving one and seeing how long it could last while being patched up with bondo, duct tape, and pipe cleaners. And the story of that Olds 98 seems all to common, a perfectly serviceable classic mid level luxury sedan being harvested for its engine.
I’m sure the only reason they bought it was because the price was so low, and it sorta ran and drove at the time. I recall seeing it around town for its last couple of months, with the muffler cut out and its Rallye IIs rattle-canned red in a failed attempt to “make it cool”.
The punks who had it thought they’d found themselves a real American hot rod. Too bad that poor 301 couldn’t have turned its bald tire(s) on anything stouter than a wet lawn. (Though that didn’t stop them from trying!)
I wonder if that ’72 Chevelle was a Heavy Chevy (Heavy Chevys had blacked-out grilles). Not that a Heavy Chevy is much more than ornamentation… Whenever I run across stuff like this, I make a rubbing/impression of the cowl tag with a pencil & scrap of paper out of curiosity. At the scrappers, I just take the tags home with me.
The dashes on those Lincolns are so beautiful. I love the way the A/C vents are integrated into the grillework on the passenger’s side and also how the climate controls are styled almost exactly like the radio — perfect symmetry!
“Heavy Chevys had blacked-out grilles”
This one also had green lights behind the grill, and looked like its respray was done with rattle-cans. Wild guess, I’d say it didn’t leave the factory black 🙂
That being said, it’d be neat if it were. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in a junkyard.
That 66 suicide breaks my heart. At least it’s not a 67 2 door!