And here’s another:
Vintage Snapshots: Car Haulers In Distress
– Posted on July 1, 2019
And here’s another:
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I’m digging the bow tie in the cow pusher on that wrecker
You don’t often see a brand symbol serving as a literal branding iron! Get a push, get a free embossed bowtie in your tailgate.
In such a situation today, would these vehicles be considered “salvage”?
Remember when Chrysler got in trouble for selling as “new” production cars that were damaged while testing them.
Looking closely at these photos, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to learn that at least some of these vehicles came out unscathed.
Some years ago, a shipload of Mazdas headed for the US were stranded at sea for a few weeks, and tilted at an extreme angle. From what I recall, there was little to no body damage to any of the vehicles, but Mazda didn’t want to take a chance that the engines may have been damaged due to their fluids pooling places where they weren’t designed to be for weeks at a time. So they worked with their insurance carrier and scrapped all of them! Makes me chuckle to think that GM purposely turned cars on end when they shipped Vegas in the “Vert-A-Pac” train cars, but of course the engines and batteries of those cars were designed to be shipped with the car standing on end.
I remember this with those Mazdas. If I recall correctly, Car and Driver did piece when they were literally being shredded in Seattle. Miata to metal filings …
The shot with the 59 Fords is great.
There’s magic looking at brand new old cars. It’s like seeing a picture of your family before you were born.
Cars come and cars go, but looky-loos are immortal. “Hey, Martha! The carrier trucks jackknifed on Old 16! Boy, it’s a real mess!”
Cars almost come under a live load heading now, they only strop the wheels leaving the vehicles free to bounce on their suspensions, but they are a light load compared to others just ugly to drive.
Those are some slick-looking roads! If that’s typical for the area in the later pic they’d have no problem selling the AMC Eagles.
The other cars I can identify on that hauler aren’t AMCs. I don’t remember seeing many car haulers loaded with mixed brands or used cars in the olden days. This seems unusual.
Perhaps those are used cars that were picked up at an auction; that is the usual explanation for a trailer load of “mixed”.
Looks like the lower middle one is a Fox body Mustang.
The cause of that first accident is obvious. It was carrying a Citation.
The pic looks about 1980 with the Fairmont, the Mustangs and the Concord/Eagle. They must not have put the hubcaps on until delivery. The Mustangs look like GL models as far as I can tell. (mid-range, 200 inline six/auto) Does seem odd for the AMC to be in the mix.
I’m not as clear on the second pic so I will take your guys’ word on those cars.
Could be worse. Could be 20 new Porsches: https://rennlist.com/forums/993-forum/495825-train-crash-20-new-porsches-hurt.html
That first pic reminds me of an incident my dad had back in early ’82. My dad had ordered an ’82 Concord wagon from Joe Erdelac AMC in Cleveland and then waited for his car to show up. And waited. And waited. And waited… for the better part of two months. Needless to say he was getting a bit perturbed that it was taking so long, not as if AMC was selling them faster than they could build them. Finally one day he got a call from the dealer, they found his ’82 Concord… seems that the trilevel auto rack it was loaded on was misrouted out of Kenosha on a route that had inadequate clearance… and my dad’s Concord was on the top level of said auto rack car. And it was now a convertible. He went back to the dealer and instead of ordering another Concord he picked out a light metallic blue Spirit… which was promptly stolen some 8-9 months later.