While normal people are crowding the shopping malls or taking the wife and kiddies to Disneyland, I'm out making the rounds at the 10 self-serve wrecking yards within a 30-mile radius of my home. There's nothing better than scoping out the clean, rust-free California metal that arrives every day. The sad punch line is these yards have to crush 'em every 30 days to make room for new arrivals, so everything you see here will be gone by the time you read this. Quit your job, hitchhike to California, and save a car!
This clean '64 Rambler American, a model popular with Hollywood hipsters, must have had a driver who swilled a few too many double-mocha mucho-grande, vendi-Wendy lattes with extra dingbat sauce. Not only is the front end smeared on this 100 percent rust-free beauty, the rear bumper is pushed-in two feet. But the sweet interior parts are ripe for pickin'.
While the nice '60s Mopar A-bodies are starting to dry up, the '70s keep rolling in like this clean '73 Dart Sport with the rare M52 manual steel sunroof. A 318 automatic car, this would be an easy save except for the fact most yards don't sell cars after they're put out for scavenging unless you're ready to pay cubic bucks and settle for a junk title.
If this were a Chevy, it'd be called a Nomad. Pinto station wagons are all two-doors and make great V-8 swap candidates. Imagine this thing with an aluminum 347, Tremec five-speed, and narrowed 9-inch. Rust? What rust?
We feverishly unscrewed the rocker-sill plates of this '69 Continental Mark III, a model made famous by Gene Hackman in The French Connection, but we didn't find any powder-filled plastic baggies. We'd love to see one of these done up with a Boss 429 and Top Loader four-speed.
We can rebuild it, we have the technology. Oh yeah? This rusted-to-hell '57 Ford retractable hardtop was spotted in a Massachusetts boneyard this year. May it serve as a wake-up call to anybody who thinks California is too far to travel to score a rust-free project car. Come and get 'em!