Cars ditched by the road -or elsewhere- have been a tradition of sorts since the automobile came to be. A sad and unintended custom, but one we have to contend with. As for myself, my feelings are mixed on the matter. Depending on mood, vehicle, and location; sometimes I feel they possess a quiet beauty, and others, I wish the cars in question had been rescued. But well, consistency; what does the human brain know about it?
As for the images, these come from the National Archives for the Documerica project and were taken in the early to mid-70s. They’ve been slightly color-corrected for this post. As for the lead pic, it was taken near Orleans Parish, in Louisiana.
Somewhere in the Mississippi River.
Santa Fe County, New Mexico.
Breezy Point, South of South Jamaica Bay, NY.
Unknown location.
Water-break on Navajo Reservation.
Little Duck Key, FL.
Gaede’s Wrecking Yard, Albuquerque, NM.
Shoreline at JFK Airport, NY.
Breezy Point, NY.
Many of the cars here were no more than 12-13 years when the photos were taken and looked to have been here a while. The truth was, a typical ‘50’s – 60’s car was finished after ten years or 100,000 miles. Today, the average age of a vehicle on the U.S. roads is 12.5 years and many more reach 200,000 miles and up than ever before. Yep, they sure don’t make them like they used to.
’50s and ’60s cars mechanically would easily reach 200k with good maintenance, perhaps with, a most, a valve job. Certainly that mileage would have been attainable if they had had benefit of modern lubricants, the technology of which has come a very long way since then. That said, the inadequate corrosion control measures at that time would have necessitated fastidious cleaning and prevention routines, our ’63 Ford had significant rust beginning on the rear quarters at 5 years old. Strictly cosmetic, but still.
Every time I see photos such as these, especially the ones with significant numbers of old cars in them, I mentally tally the likely expenditures of money and effort that had been invested in each car. Ignoring inflation and so on, and simply doing the calculations in some sort of basic unit of time/money measure, the total for each car is rather high. Get a group of abandoned cars together in a lot somewhere, and the numbers quickly become staggering. We are a culture deeply invested in our automotive transportation, in money, in time, and often in emotion.
We also cycle through our vehicles at a prodigious rate. Cars are often briskly and efficiently shredded, and many of the materials are reused these days. But they used to quickly stack up when we were done with them, quite literally.
Dead abandoned cars litter the world, as a line haul truckie I used to see them appear never move and get slowly dismantled roadside after a few days, of course the dead cars differ from the posted cars in that our versions are for the most part ex JDM cars which arrive with zero parts backup, its often cheaper and easier to slap a down payment or not on another one and hope for a better result, My car isnt easy to get parts for but they are out there, it took a friend 2 months to conjure up a tail light for inspection of her Corolla Fielder, the lights look the same on all of them to me but I only look at them in traffic but there are differences who knew, A Ford Territory got stripped on hwy 5 over the last few trips down there now the shell has been removed cheap/free Territory parts are no longer on offer there.
As a kid, always looked out for “junkyards”, and the like. Come the late “80’s” they all kind a went away..
Interesting to see the photos in and around Brooklyn and Queens. Abandoned cars like these – typically stolen then stripped of valuable parts, sometimes torched – were a part of the landscape of these boroughs through the late 1980s. Most often seen all along the Belt Parkway and less populated areas near the airport and along the beaches.
I like the JFK pic with the Pan Am 747s in the background.
Very early 747s where the upper floor was used as a lounge for first-class passengers, which is why there are only three widely-spaced windows on each side. By the time I flew on a 747 they just used the upstairs section for more seats, and the windows now had typical spacing. The upper floor was also stretched in size over the years, ending further back into the plane.
Had an unregistered Alfa parked on my street for two weeks.
Since the owner is inconsiderater AH, I had no reservations about setting the council on him.
It’s now in their yard.
Time was……..
I used to occasionally drag an abandoned vehicle home and get title to it then rebuild and sell it on…..
Those days are never coming back .
As mentioned, no one thought a 5 year old anything was worth anything apart from those few who held on to their oldies and kept them in good shape .
-Nate
That t-bird picture hurts my heart.
30 years ago, Cobbs Creek Park in Philadelphia had a woodsy section filled with recently stolen and stripped cars that my adventurous friends and I would explore. I remember finding a late model BMW 5 series, though sadly burned to a crisp.
If I’d found a batwing ’59 Chevy, however, I would have dragged it home with me.
Back in the day, you could always get a rough approximation of a Lousiana tagged car’s home by the letter in the middle of the tag number. That letter would correspond to the State Police Troop jurisdiction in which the car was tagged.
I think tag number systems that located a car were once common. Oklahoma for example tagged cars by county. Before it was found on Russian tanks, the letter “Z” designated a car tagged in Tulsa county.
Today most of those systems are gone. I know Montana still retains it as my company car is tagged in Flathead county (tag prefix “7”). Not sure how many state still do this.
Old cars were once commonly used on the banks of rivers as “Rip Wrap” erosion barriers. It was usually out in the country where there wasn’t a constituency that would complain about how bad it looked.
Over the years many governmental agencies would mount blight eradication programs that would remove abandoned cars. Mobile crushing set ups made this job easier, but it’s the price of scrap metal that fuels these programs. Recycling the steel and other materials is a good idea.
Street Rodder magazine once had an editorial addressing some of their readers concerns that blight eradication was eliminating the stock of cheap project cars. Their advice was “if you want a specific vintage car, find it, buy, fix it, and preserve it.” At least that particular car ill be saved.
It’s funny how the Orleans LA .has a ’53/’54 Chevrolet with Elkhart, Indiana 1971 license plate…
Just found a pre 1900 chain drive chassis and yes, we will be dragging it home
If they were well maintained, cars from the 50’s and 60’s could reliably reach 200k and some even went over 300k. Their biggest enemy was rust. In the pictures posted here, the one I would have wanted the most is the 58 Chevy convertible.
Texas used to do the registration/plate characters by county as well. Gonzales County, where my grandma lived, used the prefixes EUA/EUB/EUC. I can still remember the plates on her ’68 Pontiac Tempest, even though she died in 1985 and the car got scrapped a few years later(it got parked behind my aunt and uncle’s house when it quit running while they were driving it, and no one had time to figure it out).
Texas issued new plates every year in March, through 1974. Then in ’75 they went to a color coded corner sticker, that changed colors each year. When they first started the “year of manufacture” vintage plate program for collector cars, in the ’90s, this wasn’t a problem. Now they also have a Classic and Antique plate program, for vehicles 25 years old and older. That’s what I’m going to use on my ’97 Chevy truck when it’s re registered; nice part is, it’s no extra cost if you don’t get a custom number.
The comments are very interesting. Older “Boomer” age people love to hate on the young kids these days.. meanwhile the “Greatest Generation” couldn’t stand the boomers.
People over 50 have these thick rose colored glasses, as if people got lazy and became a throwaway society only recently. I remember as a kid asking why aren’t there more old cars around? “Because they were junk when they were new” was an often heard answer.
People back then really had no reservations about just ditching a car in the woods, as if the car has NO VALUE what so ever. Nothing was worth saving. The car wasn’t worth parting out. The glass, the engine, nothing was worth saving. They just slid the thing into a ditch and walked away… What a sad waste.