The car cemetery through the ages
03/03/2013
Around 25 years lie between the individual photos published in this blog.
In 1983, the cars were still stacked up as they were and then slowly but steadily recycled until only the body shell remained. This is shown in photos taken in Austria.
Nowadays, delivered scrap vehicles are first dismantled into individual parts and then quickly reduced to the smallest possible volume! Car bodies flattened practically beyond recognition are piled up by the hundreds in Daventry (UK). From there, they are sent to a metal recycling plant.
Car graveyards used to be very popular and well visited. Cars back then rusted much faster and many a spare part gave up the ghost after just a few years (or before). Warranty periods were short and spare parts were expensive at authorized garages.
You could get parts cheaper at the car graveyard. If your car was already a few years old, it was hardly worth buying new parts. You could get them at the graveyard for a "tip". You could save even more pennies by dismantling the car yourself, but there was also always the option of having it dismantled by a professional.
As with people, no distinction is made in the cemetery between rich and poor, expensive and cheap. The scrap value of expensive luxury cars is at the same level as that of a cheap small car.
And if you had visited the European car graveyards thirty years ago, you would probably have found something that would be worth restoring today.
