I was off the beaten track today trying to find a used tire emporium near Warsaw Indiana and stumbled onto an old fashoned junk yard which appeared to simply be a rather large personal collection since it had no tresspassing signs.

In the yard there was (I am not making this up) an Opel GT, a couple of MGB's, a sprinkling of American cars and trucks, and a mercedes 126. There were also Motorcycles and fork lifts.

A real mish mash. If it had not been muddy due to the heat wave I would have liked to explore it a bit more to see what else was lurking there.

I don't think I have ever seen an Opel GT in a yard before!

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

You pull and pay in Cincinnati had 3 open GTs at once one time. Blew my mind as I've only ever seen 2 moving.

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68 280SL - 70 280SL - 70 300SEL 3.5 - 72 350SL - 72 280SEL 4.5 - 72 220 - 72 220D - 73 450SL - 84 230GE - 87 200TD - 90 190E 2.0 - 03 G500

Nissan GTR - Nissan Skyline GTS25T - Toyota GTFour - Rover Mini - Toyota Land Cruiser HJ60 - Cadillac Eldorado - BMW E30 - BMW 135i

All junkyards are private. Some are ran more like a business that permit entry during limited hours, etc. And some are like what you found. A smaller collection of cars. There is one in my home county. He, if still alive, was very much into Lincolns of he 60's and 70's. He had an original Chrysler 300 and a few trucks, etc. No trespassing sings all over, but if someone was there you could enter and negotiate parts/pricing.

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1991 560 SEL / 185k miles
1992 750il / 17k miles - project car

1972 Opel GT





My brother, when he got his license, wanted a Corvette in the worst way, but insurance for a young new driver was prohibitive, he settled for an Opel GT because to him, they looked like a mini Corvette.

I found one for him in San Rafael, CA, at a dealer near where we both were living, at our parents house at the time.

It was a couple of years old, a 1972 model, that had been traded in by a soldier stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco. It was sold new by Herrera Buick in San Francisco - long since out of business.

It was screaming taxicab yellow, and my brother painted the rear end flat black, put mag wheels on it, and it looked frozen in the panic stop position !

He only kept it 2 years but put about 47k on it , and at 60k it was burning oil like crazy, about a quaqrt every 100 miles, so he wanted to get rid of it.

So I cleaned it up and detailed it, and since the plastic mouldings around the windows all had gotten faded and brown, I blacked them out with a Magic Marker pen and the car looked good so he took it to a used car dealer and sold it for $1200.

When the dealer discovered how bad it burned oil, they called him back, but my brother cursed them out and hung up on them !!


That was in 1976, and and so I went and found him a nice moss green '73 Camaro with a 350-2bbl at Fairway Chevrolet (in San Bruno CA near the SF airport. also long since ou of business.)

A 1973 Chevrolet Camaro:



That one, he still has. It's still a daily driver, but he's kept it up well. It still has the original California blue '73 plates, and has about 400,000 original miles and runs good. Really good for an american car.

He also has an '82 Datsun 280Z and a '93 Nissan 300ZX that he uses.

He's about a couple of years younger than you, Tom, but never married
or lived wih anyone.


Those are the ONLY cars he's owned in his WHOLE life.

Me? I've owned 18 ! I think I will keep the two I have now forever though, I am real happy with them.

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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)

Pics? Where are the pics? I love junkyard pics.

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They are hard to find, because it's against the rules to take photographs inside the yard, and they are strict about it.

However, I cheated and did it anyway. I love to crawl the yards up in Sun Valley, in your area. (Los Angeles, but the San Fernando valley)

Here are some I took last year when "Cash For Clunkers" was going on; there was a huge, temporary spike of W126 Mercedes Benzes coming into the yards then. Lots of parts for them... for awhile.







Engine Death comes in a plastic bottle. Cash for Clunkers












Inventory in the big and busy LA yards, is divided into big and foreign yards usually. In the foreign car yards, the turnover is pretty much 100% after a month. A lot of it comes from abandoned, LAPD siezed and insurance total loss vehicles.

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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)

Bro sounds like me. I've only owned 5 daily drivers in my life. Which is interesting considering the hundreds of thousands of miles I've driven some of them. What does Bro do for his livelyhood? Just curious what other NBM bachelors have done to support themselves for 40+ years...........

Where is this going? Can't even take pictures on a junkyard anymore!

I used to spend so much time on junkyards, back in the days, since I was a teen. I still have a junkyard souvenir, a tail light for a '74 olds 98. Yeah, the 455 Rocket, 2door Regency in triple black.

I took both when I found those, 1 went one the car, the other I never used it. I think some day I will turn it into a low voltage electric deco lamp for my voodoo lounge.

In the meantime, I found good quality new parts, as far as mechanical parts goes pay off in time savings and longevity. Neverthelss I used to be a Junkyard Junky ...

Here is a Russ Meyer junkyard special:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ-eFks-_2o&NR=1

Don't miss it!

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Well, Joe, he's lived just north of the Golden Gate bridge north of San Francisco in suburbia all his life, and when he got laid off from his draftsmen's job in San Francisco, back in 1991, he got into his hobby big time.

In a big urban area, there is a huge market for "niche" jobs if you are clever.
And he's VERY clever, so before long, his new career as an entrepreneur took off big time.

He breeds, raises, and sells Arizona Mountain kingsnakes to collectors all over the USA, he is one of the most respected and successful and widely known of them in the USA.




They eat small mice for food and he used to buy mice for them from pet stores. But one day, he bought a pregnant female one, by chance, and when it had about 13 babies, a few days later, he asked himself, why am I paying for these?

So now the other, and HUGELY proftable arm of the business, is wholesaling baby mice to pet stores for food. They pet stores mark them up and resell them to retail customers.

He in turn, buys huge lots of baby frozen mice from a company out of Houston Texas, near where you are, I believe.


A large part of his work is making deliveries of live baby mice to pet shops ALL OVER the San Franciso bay area. It has grown so large and profitable he is thinking of hiring additional help, but knows that carries attendant risks, paperwork and complexity also.


He has not taken a vacation in probably 20 years, and works seven days a week, and handles all aspects of this, customer service, follow up, deliveries (sometimes ships snakes on the Greyhound bus!) but never cared about travelling much.

He rotates his 3 cars, for work, so as not to pile up mileage in any one of them.

How many people LOVe their work? He really does!

He will be 60 years old, next year. He is happy, a homeowner, debt free except his mortgage, and quite well fixed in life, financially, and in good health.

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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)

In about 1988, I was working N. Cali. I crossed the Golden Gate heading north, and pulled in to a BMW dealership on the right to look at a 735i?? in the showroom. That was the last time I was in SF.

I'll be 60 late next year too. Other than his debt, we sound more similar than different. I love my work when I'm doing it, but lost interest many years ago for the mostpart. My work doesn't involve a lot of work busyness, as his does. Just occasional nurturing mostly to keep the jack rolling in. Sometimes I wish I were busier, but really I like not being busy. That's just me.

Never in a million and a half years would have guessed that livelyhood.

There are actually TWO places the I think it could have been, off the right of 101 off the bridge, back then. Sonnen BMW/Porsche in Mill Valley, that used to be on Francisco Blvd, parallel to the highway also (now a Subaru dealer is there I think.)

Southern Marin County, beginning on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge - is lousy with money, with a wondeful climate and location. And lousy with BMW Mercedes Benz and Porsche and Audi automobiles too.

A Marin county joke is that BMW = "Basic Marin Wheels"

A character in Cyra Mc Fadden's hilarious satirical book "The Serial - A Year in the Life of Marin County" (1976) owned a 450SEL.




It was described by Cyra, therein, as a "Mill Valley Volkswagen".


Sounds like you have a great life though!

Are you a lifetime bachelor like he was, also, then?


Carleton Hughes on here said once that "marriage is a funeral where you get to see and smell your own flowers" hahaha

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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)

The Opel egines were pretty decent for longivity I believe. He may not have changed the oil much.

Looks like he is doing well with the camaro though! (That body style is one of the best camaro designs ever!)

I have had over 100 cars now and have slowed down a little in purchasing them.

Although I am true blue to my Mrs. I get tired of cars after I get to know them inside and out.

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

my 70 opel gt liked oil too.but back in school in the late 70's with no money.hey the milage made up for it.but the one thing about that car that bugged me.it would start down to 0 degree's,but just 1 degree below zero and forget it.used to get up in the morning and if it was below zero i either grabbed a ride to work with my dad as his shop was about 2 blocks past the school or called a buddy for a ride.otherwise i had alot of fun with that car.wish i had another one right now,but they are getting hard to find.

Always kinda liked the GT. Never sat in one, I might be too tall, but they look neat. I see lots of them on the road and on Craigslist here in OKC, Corvairs too. Must have been a haven for quirky cars.

Cool story T, I am always on the lookout for old private yards like that. I found one north of Tulsa, up in Kansas, that had some very cool older trucks in mostly good shape. Never anybody there and there was a 6 foot fence around most of it, so I didnt venture inside.

Great life? Yeah, I have no excuse to not. Yes, lifetime bachelor - never a live-in, no dependents. No commitments, no boundaries within reason.

Yah, it was the BMW dealer on the right. It was a Sat. afternoon, drove from Walnut Creek southward around where Berkely is, drove through SF and headed toward the north. The sales manager of the firm I repped 19.5 years for was/is hot for Porsche/BMWs. He's owned several Porsches over the years. We had left OC on a west coast two week sakes trip. Anyway, his dream car was a BMW 5 something 4-door, stick, which he bought one new a few months later, it sucked a valve - or so he said. BMW afficionados don't like to be told a BMW engine can suck a valve. Search me, I own an MB diesel, and I'm not a mechanic. Anyway, he was hot to see this big, new 4- door 733, 5i?? in the showroom, and we stopped so he could jaw with a sales rep. Nice area, I hope to spend some time there whenever I quit working 100%. I dig the weather on the west coast.