Car guys are by nature boneheaded optimists who choose to ignore rust-infested reality on four wheels.
It is both a weakness and, strangely enough, a strength in any case where a car guy defies the odds and completes a project without bankruptcy and/or an ugly divorce.
Jim Sutherland
The cold hard truth is some car projects will break your spirit and should be categorized as a lost cause in a Hall of Fame kind of way. The vehicles in question are typically dragged to a forgotten patch of Rusty Acres and allowed to disintegrate into a patch of metallic soil over the course of time.
Occasionally the car corpses are discovered by the property owner’s descendants or the new owners of the property after the dead owner’s estate is settled by hungry lawyers and greedy heirs. The fate of the newly discovered mound of rust and former home to massive rodent civilizations will be determined by people who believe it should be saved because it’s worth its weight in platinum-and people who believe it is well past a date with the crusher.
Eventually the dust will settle and the vehicle in question will be in the hands of the latest owner who will have to decide the fate of the old relic. The sad fact is many abandoned vehicles are too far gone to justify the brutal cost of their potential restoration. Instead, they should get a blanket put over them because they are not a pretty sight, to borrow from the old movie cliché list.
What to do–what to do at this point? MyStarCollectorCar has five solid suggestions for car guys who are in way over their heads on a project and would like to share them with our readers:
Our first suggestion: sell your broken dream – even if you take a financial hit if necessary to get rid of it. You may have paid too much for the dead rust bucket, but most car guys will simply acknowledge your stupidity and offer a realistic price for the project vehicle. Bear in mind that one car guy’s reality is another car guy’s painful blow to the groin region in a financial sense.
Our second suggestion: strip the car down to its underwear before you take it to the crusher. There are many salvage parts that will help somebody with a realistic project reach completion. The parts they seek will likely be very scarce and you may hold the key to their project’s success.
Our third suggestion: itemize the parts while you carve up your broken rusty dream. An accurate list of your salvaged parts will prove to be invaluable when you put them up for sale. An interested car guy will become a buyer if he is certain about your car parts for sale.
Our fourth suggestion: research the difference between junk and gold when it comes to old parts. You had a good reason to cut bait on your lost cause mouse house, so why waste your time on removing parts with no value?
Which brings us to our fifth and final suggestion: rusty parts with no value will add to the scrap weight value and help ease the financial pain of an investment in a lost cause retro ride.
Remember this point before you risk tetanus during the dismantlement phase of your terminally rusty broken dream.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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