Some enjoy the occasional browsing of a dealership filled with straight, organized lines of shiny new cars with no more than 10 miles on the odometer, and I have to say I enjoy it as well.
However, I’d much rather spend an afternoon perusing a junkyard.
In my experience, unless you’re in the middle of nowhere, it has become increasingly hard to find the coveted afternoon-stroll junkyards. Junkyards have gotten with the technology program, and they have a running online inventory on the cars in their lots. They will ask you what you are looking for when you enter the lobby, and if there is no search query found in the database they will send you on your way. I mean I can see their logic, as you don’t need people wandering around near the crusher and the broken glass and metal.
On my last trip home I visited our local “U Pull” salvage yard. The goal was to find a part for my dad’s car; the reality was that we were going in whether they had said part.
As I walked around I couldn’t help but shudder remembering the 2009 Cash for Clunkers fiasco. Pretty much any car you ever liked from the ‘90s was on the chopping block. Sure, saying “1984 and later” rules out what are traditionally considered “classic cars,” but as of this year, anything built in 1995 is officially an antique. The cars were all up on blocks, even if they still had tires. They were organized by domestic, import and European. Trucks were on one side, cars were on the other. There were rows upon rows, just like at a new car dealership. Except these cars were smashed, dented, rusted and cracked for the most part. Instead of 10 miles on their odometers, most read more than 100,000. The créme de la créme were lined up at the front. Their bodies still fully intact, they hoped someone would buy them whole. I made a beeline for the imports, located at the very back corner of the sandlot. On my way, I couldn’t help but hear the sound of the crusher and notice an old Eric Forman Cruiser stationwagon standing in line for his turn. I had to look away.
When entering a junkyard, I always have the unrealistic dream of seeing Christine, the 1958 Plymouth and star of Stephen King’s horror novel of the same name. This particular day, I did come across a not-so-uncommon Lincoln Continental Mark III, the star of the lesser-known, lower-budgeted horror flick “The Car.”
It’s a mixture of excitement and melancholy that I feel when I see a junkyard. When driving in the middle of nowhere is when one tends to see them most, on the sides of old two-lane highways. My first thought is always, “I wonder what gems are hidden in there?” As I look frantically while trying to watch the road, my next thought is, “Oh, that’s a nice old car, it’s a shame to see it rotting there.” There are certain junkyards I pass on my travels in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, and the inventory always seems to stay the same. It doesn’t appear that the cars are being sold or crushed, just sitting there in a sort of car graveyard.
A current internet find that I will be seeking out in the near future is Old Car City USA, located in White, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. A former car dealership founded in the 1930s, it is exactly a car graveyard. The property spans 34 acres and has more than 4,000 old cars. My mixed feelings come up again, because as cool as it seems to be able to walk among what is highlighted on their website as “the beautiful vegetation of the deep south that is intertwined with the hundreds of cars,” it kind of seems like a giant waste.
My unrealistic dream is for all old cars to be bought, restored and, dare I say, even driven around. It’s fun to see rare older cars in any capacity, but it would bring more joy to my heart to see them cruising around instead of remaining hoodless, covered in vines and rusting.
I’ll take what I can get, though. I can only do my part by saving my next new-used beauty from a rusting fate. I don’t have any plans to buy a brand-new car … ever.
Erika Canfijn is a UF public relations senior. Her column appears on Thursdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 12 on 7/16/15]
