I've wrecked out about 15 cars. A lot of the time, they're worth more as parts than as cars, the cars are so devalued you can buy them at practically scrap value. This has been the case with the XD-XE-XF falcons, fairlanes and LTDs I've done. They're profitable to wreck, because they're cheap to buy and people still work on them, creating a market for the parts.
Some of the cars I've wrecked though, have been cars I'd have preferred to keep, if they were in salvagable condition. A HJ prem, the Chevy truck I wrecked, and this most recent aquisition, a ZH Fairlane.
I got it for $250, complete less engine and box. I really dig the lines of these cars, they have one of the best looking faces on any australian car and they're based on the XC Falcons, one of which I owned and was rather fond of back in the day. It might look alright in the picture, except for the buggered door, but believe me, it's mostly scrap metal now. The roof is shot through with holes, the sills are practically nonexistant, and there's a hole in the floor behind the driver's seat you could get both feet through. It is, in short, fucked.
There's a rego label on the floor on the passenger side that says it was last registered in June 2000, almost 11 years ago. The guy I bought it from said he's had it about 10, so it had probably just run out when he got it, or he got it with a bit left and didn't re-register it. It came from a house on the semi-rural fringes, probably a half-acre-ish block with a somewhat large house on it, and in the back yard, down the driveway, on the front yard, and in the street, around 30 cars all of the same sort of vintage. Not one was in roadworthy condition, and this Fairlane was, in fact, one of the best cars there.
Without much prompting, the seller began to spill the beans. He'd had some land, 38 acres, and had filled it with cars, from what he said, somewhere between 60 and 80. At some point, someone had vandalised most of them, probably a pissed off neighbor sick of looking at them, so most of the cars I saw had all the windows busted in. It was about 10 years ago that this had happened, and no effort to cover them up had been made, so they were mostly worse than this fairlane. He had moved to this semi-suburban house and had, over the past two years, moved all the cars to this house and another nearby house, where another 27 were supposedly parked. Presumably they were each as fucked as the ones I was looking at. Too many projects, he said. He told me over the phone that this Fairlane had "half a chance of getting back on the road". Buddy, no way.
I've seen it before. There's a wrecking yard in Cooma, just off the highway that leads to Jindabyne, where maybe 300 cars make their final resting place, and they range from '30s stuff to '70's, including maybe 50 Fords between mid 30s and late 40s. Not one of them has a chance of ever seeing asphalt again, but the owner thinks he's sitting on a goldmine. I tested him- asked prices for a few things- exorbitant. He even wanted twenty bucks just to get in, as if it were some sort of national attraction. Granted, there are a few decent parts among the lot of them, but for the most part they're scrap at best. They'll be nothing more than one big iron deposit in the ground at some point, or, with any luck, it'll get cleaned out and they'll get recycled into soup cans and park furniture.
I always feel a little sad, ending the 'life' of a once nice car, but I have to remind myself, it wasn't me that killed it, it was 10 years in a paddock. And why the previous owner thought he'd ever get around to doing anything with it other than allowing time to destroy it before selling it at, presumably, a big loss, I'll never understand. I've been known to have a lot of cars, probably slightly more than I can handle, but I will never be like that. I will never allow nice cars to deteriorate into uselessness whilst hanging on to the delusion that I have the capacity to restore 50 cars or more, or that storing them in a paddock, surrounded by dirt and long grass, with the windows smashed in, is any better than buying them and lighting them on fire the same day.
Epilogue- When I went to pick the car up, only a day after I had looked at it in the first place, the seller, after giving me the story that he was seeing the light, downsizing, cleaning up, had bought two more cars. Due to this he declined to sell me a second car I was interested in because he was, to quote, 'afraid of not having enough parts to finish the two new ones'. Another two bite the dust.
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