You know, many years ago while I was still living in an apartment in San Francisco, I got talking with the landlady's boyfriend who was a plumber at the San Francisco airport. It was a good Union job and he "liberated" his share of tools or so he told me....

Anyway, SF International Airport is a very busy (Gateway to the Pacific and rest of USA) place and it has a huge long term parking facility. Well, it seems that about every 3 months or so, the airport police does a "sweep" of the facilities and picks up and tows away the cars that are abandoned there. Most of them are nothing too special, but obviously, ALL of them ran when they got to the airport and were put in long term parking,presumably until their owners arrived back at the airport after their trip to take them home.
But, sometimes they didn't come back for the cars.

Why weren't they picked up by the owners? Who knows, but the cars if are unclaimed after an attempt of notification to to the owners, every three months, when enough have been accumulated, there is a big auction and they get rid of the cars. He laughed and said sometimes they get some REAL nice cars, he remembered once they had a Rolls Royce, the guy probably had to leave the country quick.

I actually saw the lot where they collected them before the auction, it looked like about 50 cars parked in a distant and inaccessible and fenced off corner of the SF airport, and at a brief glance none of them seemed truly exceptional from far away. But they were definately a HUGE cut above the ones the SFPD auctions at the abandoned/seized/towed cars auctions they hold every week, where I bought a cheap beater.

Nobody else seemed to know anything about these airport auto auctions, though, and I never really pursued the lead through the maze of the San Francisco airport bureaucracy to find out the specifics.

Aside from the fact that probably the SF airport employees would have the chance to cherry pick the best auctioned cars, there would still be lots of good ones left.

Does anyone else know anything about auctions of cars abandoned at long term parking in major airports, I bet there might be some nice Mercedes left at DFW, Miami, LAX or airports where people with nice cars went to the airport?

What do you guys think? Is there a cheap dusty gem of a car waiting to be had for next to nothing?

Jim

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1991 560 SEC AMG, 199k <---- 300 hp 10:1 ECE euro HV ...

1995 E 420, 170k "The Red Plum" (sold)

2015 BMW 535i xdrive awd Stage 1 DINAN, 6k, <----364 hp

1967 Mercury Cougar, 49k

2013 Jaguar XF, 20k <----340 hp Supercharged, All Wheel Drive (sold)

http://origin.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/15859501.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_business

That would happen a lot at Heathrow Airport in London. In 91, parking was GBP 1.70 for 30 minutes which worked out to 48.00 GBP day.

Some people would dump cars deliberately because they were leaving the country and could not sell them. Others would go on vacation for three weeks and come back to a $2000 parking bill. In some cases they would walk away from the car because it wasn't worth the cost of retrieval.

I've also seen people pull a number of stunts in attempting to get their car out.

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With best regards

Al

I had a van stolen about 8 years ago. It was found (not burnt to a hulk), I went to get it at the police storage lot and the battery was dead. It was late at night, so I came back the next day and they'd moved it to long term storage. Hadn't said a word about that the night before, the dim-bulbs.

Anyway, the day I showed up to get my van was the same day as the weekly auction. There were some halfway approachable rigs there. I understand they make new keys based on the VIN, so you don't have that hurdle to cross.

I've never gone shopping there but it's on the back burner. I know the boneyard guys definitely shop there. The MB dismantler not far from my shop go there. Could be they get a 126 with decent body parts now and then.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K