Photo: abandoned cars (wikimedia.org) Author: Konstantin Shirokun
What do they mean when they use such an expression and is there always something sad behind it? Let's figure out where car graveyards come from and what benefits they can have.
Read about why cars end up in the cemetery in the RBC-Ukraine article.
Photos that strike the imagination of a sincere motorist with rows of old cars in the middle of a field, forest or in a large hangar appear in news feeds from time to time. How are such “expositions” formed and what kind of cars are resting on them?
When a parking lot becomes a car cemetery
A car cemetery is most often called a territory where someone finds a certain number of cars abandoned at an unknown time and by an unknown person. More precisely, any expert in the automotive business can identify most of the cars, the time they stood unattended, and the period when the object was founded in a few minutes. And the “author” of this, excuse me, project can usually be sorted out.
Most often, such finds happen in the USA, where, firstly, there are huge and sparsely populated territories, and where, secondly, a car does not represent much value to citizens.
Let's look at the history of a car cemetery using a typical case that took place several years ago in the state of Missouri. At the end of 2021, several media outlets posted reports from a real car cemetery: a cluster of abandoned cars that stood, in rows and scattered, for some reason in the middle of the forest. Automotive experts immediately tied them to the time – the 1940s-1980s, and to the countries of manufacture – the USA and Europe. And soon other secrets were revealed.
As you can imagine, there was no forest at this location half a century ago, but a huge unpaved area where the owner of the land kept old cars – probably for the purpose of resale and dismantling for spare parts. Finally, the respected citizen, having reached a venerable age, decided that he no longer needed the cars parked many years ago on his property. And through a trusted person, he published a photo session of his collection. Of the more or less interesting things here – a four-window 1949 Dodge coupe (with rare elements of factory tuning!), the iconic 1972 Chevrolet Impala (in a coupe body, by the way), a 1964 Oldsmobile sedan and a Ford truck with the coveted V8 at all times.
The exact address (if you can call it that) was not initially made public so that only truly interested specialists, ready to pay real money for the most interesting specimens, could get to the site first.
Why did no one know about these cars before? Because America is big, because a forest has grown up among the cars, and also because from the nearest road to this cemetery or museum you have to walk another 20 minutes. A telling moment – it seems that precisely because over time the cars ended up in the forest, they were stolen in small parts, and not whole – it is not easy to extract American full-size sedans from the wild forest. Especially since trees have grown right through the luckiest cars.
Another very recent case is 400 cars found earlier this year in Louisiana. The picture is similar: it was a used car and parts dealer's lot, who was buying up goods for resale or dismantling. After his death, one of his descendants decided to show the abandoned stock of half-disassembled cars to fans of vintage cars. And indeed, something interesting was found between the trees: a Dodge Charger in a rare configuration with a 7.2-liter V8 with 375 hp, a Dodge Challenger, a Plymouth Road Runner and, again, the obligatory Chevrolet Impala for such cases.
There used to be a car dealership here
Another, less common way of forming a car cemetery is abandoned and, for some reason, forgotten warehouses of dealers. Bankrupt dealerships in Europe and America sometimes get into such a difficult situation that all their property is seized – including the car dealership building with neighboring stock parking lots. And even if the territory remains under guard during the period of legal proceedings and paperwork, time will not spare the cars. Even those that are indoors rust over the years, lose their marketable appearance, and also go out of fashion and become morally old. In the end, all the property may become useless to anyone, and depending on local customs, the cars become victims of vandals or simply rust – to end up in the news feed in half a century as another car cemetery.
Short
Of course, for a person devoted to the automobile business, the expression automobile cemetery does not sound very optimistic. However, in reality, each discovery of such a storage facility can please historians, restorers and collectors of old equipment. Since in fact it is a warehouse (yes, a warehouse, although with such conditions) of historical cars, unlike thousands of their contemporaries, not disposed of, but preserved in one form or another.
In preparing this article, materials from Autobild and Autocentre were used .
Let us recall that RBC-Ukraine recently reported why pedestrians are not always right.