Find Reviews by Make:
18 Comments on “Niedermeyer Wasn’t Kidding About Oregonian Car Fungus...”
Read all comments
Latest Car Reviews view all
Latest Product Reviews view all
Recent Comments
- Lou_BC: @Carlson Fan – My ’68 has 2.75:1 rear end. It buries the speedo needle. It came stock with the...
- theflyersfan: Inside the Chicago Loop and up Lakeshore Drive rivals any great city in the world. The beauty of the...
- A Scientist: When I was a teenager in the mid 90’s you could have one of these rolling s-boxes for a case of...
- Mike Beranek: You should expand your knowledge base, clearly it’s insufficient. The race isn’t in...
- Mike Beranek: ^^THIS^^ Chicago is FOX’s whipping boy because it makes Illinois a progressive bastion in the...
Car Reviews By Make view all
New Car Research
Who We Are
- Tim Healey
Managing Editor - Matt Posky
News and Social Media Contributor - Timothy Cain
Sales Analyst - Murilee Martin
Junkyard Finds Author - Matthew Guy
Contributor - Chris Tonn
Contributor
- Adam Tonge
- Bozi Tatarevic
- Corey Lewis
- Jo Borras
- Mark Baruth
- Ronnie Schreiber
Ever see that History Channel show “Life After People”?
Riveting, I watched it twice. I grew up around those cars.The 55 Buick and the 58 Olds and a 59 Mercury. They were all in my neighborhood. Dad’s all out washing and waxing them….. ahh the memories.
Ever see that History Channel show “Life After People”?
That’s exactly what I thought of!!
i shed a tear when I saw the blue 63 Fairlane, had a lot of great times in mine.
If only cars could talk, these would have some stories to tell. It is a shame to see them abandoned like this. With the internet and auction sites cars can be parted out down to the frame so going forward I don’t think you’ll see as much of this in the future.
In the end if buyers for the car or parts were found they would have been recycled back into the system. A world wide market for parts via the internet makes this possible.
There are some extraordinarily mossy vehicles there.
Check out these few pics I’ve taken over the years,
http://homepages.tscnet.com/pmadsen/oldcars.html
…and you may agree that old cars deteriorate faster in Hawaii than in western Washington.
Nice shots there; some of them look familiar.
When the rubber on the bottom of your side window starts looking a bit greenish in the winter, you know your car isn’t really new anymore. Happens within a couple of years of newness. It’s our version of that first ding.
Reminds me of an older Prius commercial where the car is made like a hut, then gets consumed by mother nature in the end. Except this is real and doesn’t blow.
Interesting video. It’s sad to see what was once someones pride and joy discarded like yesterdays newspaper. I used to visit Ron’s auto parts in Minnesota where there were roughly six thousand 50’s to 80’s cars put out to pasture. It was a constant reminder of the disposable society we live in…
When the rubber on the bottom of your side window starts looking a bit greenish in the winter, you know your car isn’t really new anymore. Happens within a couple of years of newness. It’s our version of that first ding.
Yup. My Geo Storm started growing algea out of the side moldings one year.
There was a rundown farm near where I grew up. At least a dozen cars rotting away in the brush.
When the rubber on the bottom of your side window starts looking a bit greenish in the winter, you know your car isn’t really new anymore.
Man, I’m glad I don’t live where you do. I’d be afraid of what might be growing in my lungs.
Here in the Pacific NW, my wife and I call moss a “bio-roof” when it’s on a house, and “bio-paint” if it’s on a car. Either way, it’s not as ugly as blue poly-tarp, which is the other trailer-trash approved roofing material here.
Years ago I had to park my then-new car in the same spot every day, facing east. In less than a year I was vainly scrubbing the driver’s-side window gaskets with a toothbrush and Weed-B-Gone Moss Killer.
It didn’t work.
Most of the green stuff seen on cars in western Washington and Oregon is Douglas fir pollen. We had a huge pollen-fall here in early June, so much that it windrowed in the driveways when it rained a couple of days later. When it falls, it’s yellow; if left until winter it turns dark green. Either way, it tends to adhere to wet or damp metal surfaces. I had to scrub it out of the drains around the hood, trunk, gas cap, and yes, off the window rubbers on my Accord, which lives outside.
Last winter I drove southward on one of the back streets in Parkland on the way to see someone who lives out toward Mt. Rainier. I came back the same way, and it was then that I noticed that on those cars that had stood in driveways and yards long enough to start looking greenish from moss and old pollen, the north sides looked a slightly different, greener color from the south sides. One should never underestimate the tenacity of plant life. Steel is temporary.
All of those cars were someone’s pride and joy once. New car smell, dealer sticker on the window, payments and oil changes, money spent on repairs to keep it on the road.
Then along the way the relationship changed. Sold once, maybe a bunch of times, to someone who only wanted to get from A to B and do it cheaply.
In the end the car is pushed into it’s final place and left. After a few weeks Mother Nature starts to take over. A few parts are removed, a door or hood is left open and the elements gain entry to the inside.
Eventually the floor pans go or a window leaks and rain pours through places where paint is absent and the decay accelerates.
About 100 years from now almost nothing will be left of these cars except for a few plastic pieces and some other parts made from stainless steel.
Here’s an MSNBC link with a picture of Ken Kesey’s old “Furthur” 1939 International bus. Seems highly appropriate here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10792061/from/RL.5/
The bus is supposedly to be restored. Good luck with that.
IMO, the Hornet and the Maverick never looked better. May the delivery trucks return from whence they came…
How many who have watched this found themselves wanting one of them for a project? How many said “aww that’s not that bad..”
They are like pets aren’t they?
Ever see that History Channel show “Life After People”…
Welcome to Earth: Population Zero. I loved the Life after People show and the follow up series. Just goes to show how insignificant we are.
Beautiful photographs. Something very zen about the whole thing.
I’ll never forget a rainy February day (redundant, I know) driving around somewhere in Snohomish County, Washington while house hunting with the wife… winter of 1999. I was driving along a rural road and on a long right-hand sweeping curve at the base of a hill, obviously clear-cut some time in the 80s a flash of orange caught my eye. There, about 75′ up this steep hillside was a Triumph TR7 with an alder tree growing right up through the middle of it!
How the hell did it get up there?
I made a mental note to come back on a dry day and photograph it, but I was soon distracted and forgot the location. I’ve driven just about every road in the foothills since trying to find that car. Given that it is now a decade later the car is likely completely overgrown and invisible. sigh.
–chuck