THE LOST ART OF WRECKER-DIVING
This past week we dropped a BRAND NEW PROJECT CAR on the channel (CLICK HERE), which we then used as part of Supercheap Auto's latest BEST PERFORMING OILS ad campaign (CLICK HERE).
Some younger viewers may be confused why we're racing around a big dirt lot full of junk cars, because they've never experienced the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with going Wrecker Diving, and that makes me sad.
Car enthusiasts of a certain age know of a special place that was a challenge to navigate, a test of your patience to interact with, but always an amazing adventure. It was a storied place full of lost hope and despair, but also the promise of future life as the buried treasure within its iron-sheeted walls could hopefully breathe fire back into your project car.
I'm talking about wrecking yards.
Wrecking yards, called junk yards in the USA and "breakers" if you're in the UK (or "my bloody backyard" if you're my parents) are special places that have slowly died off. And that's sad as younger enthusiasts are cheated of the life-enriching experience of driving - sometimes several hours one-way - to a dirty yard to pull a part off a busted, burned or smashed car that will make your car righteous and awesome. And then negotiating with the hard-nose trolls behind the front desk to not have to pay a king's ransom for this used piece of hardware.
But they were also full of gold.
These places were massive, covering acres of land. They could be arranged in different layouts, some with crashed cars stuffed down into a back corner while the best had everything set out by marque and in alphabetical order.
Their heyday ran largely from the 1950s until the 1990s. It was a regular task for ordinary people, even those weird ones who don't love cars, would visit a wrecking yard to find second-hand parts to keep their cars on the road and functioning well.
This was before the Internet meant you could order brand new spare parts from your lounge. Spare parts were, arguably, also more expensive and frugality was - generally - valued as more of a priority over the speed and convience of taking your car to a mechanic for basic maintenance, or buying brand new parts instead of servicing what you had.
Got a noisy CV shaft? See if you could find a good one at a wrecker. Cracked a radiator end tank? Go find one at the local Pick & Payless.
Their origins are many, but largely they were a place operated by the local tow yard who'd haul smashed cars to an empty lot. Insurance companies would often just cut the car owner a cheque and the smashed car would be given to the tow operator in lieu of them getting a tow fee. So, they'd sell parts off (or sell the smashed car to a wrecker) to make their money back.
This meant sometimes you'd be walking past cars that had been in gnarly crashes which had messed up (or worse, killed) the occupants of said car. This was the grisly part of wrecking yards and, on more than one occasion, parents of teenagers about to get their licence were brought to a local yard to show them the consequences of driving like a bin rat.
But these places were especially valuable for car enthusiasts wanting to build something cool.
Even 10 or 15 years ago I remember people finding classic cars in the junkyard that had been left there when they were worthless second-hand old rides. Sure, they weren't going to win any shows without work, but they were prime project cars.
The very sport of hot-rodding cars was born in junkyards as teens searched for the latest-model cars that had been crashed to pull their V8s, big brakes, transmissions and differentials to put in their chopped down rods. Long before it dominated NASCAR speedways hot rodders hunted Chrysler 331cui and 392cui Hemis, along with 331cui Cadillac V8s and 389cui Pontiacs.
In the 1970s these yards became fertile ground for kids wanting to take their poverty pack (base model) Ford Falcon, Holden Kingswood or Torana (or Camaro, Mustang, Satellite, Le Mans, or Malibu in the USA) and make it just as fast as the top-spec models with a V8 from a wrecked full-size model.
Typically, as the parts were used, they'd be cheap. As the price to operate and wrecked cars became more expensive to source the operators had to charge more to stay afloat. And this was where the decline arguably started.
It's a sad fact the humble wrecking yard is today a rare business to find. The internet and online spare parts shredded their business model, while the cost of recycled metal plummeted and environmental levies and Workplace Health & Safety regulations made operating the businesses difficult and barely profitable. Land prices became the final straw.
The cost of tying up acres of land with dozens of smashed or wrecked cars to have people come past and take one part off at a time is simply too high when real estate developers will gladly pay for their acres of open land.
If you've got a wrecking yard near you, go have a wander through it while you can. You can sometimes see some absolute gold there, including rare classics, cool retro mods, or sometimes just an old car you haven't seen in an age.
