40-plus years of abandoned car-spotting went into creating a collection of images that has the power to evoke memories of long-gone automotive eras, and inspire musings on the lives of those who drove them
By Gerard Richards
There’s been a proliferation of ‘barn find’ and ‘junkyard relic’ type books hitting the market over the last 10 years or so. Writer Tom Cotter has been a major culprit with titles like Barn Find Road Trip, The Cobra in the Barn, Route 66 — Barn Find Road Trip and many others. In the same vein are: Lost Muscle Cars and a swath by Jerry Heasley, such as Jerry Heasley’s Rare Finds: Mustangs and Fords. They are almost exclusively American titles.
It got me thinking of all the road trips I’d charted around this country over 40 plus years hunting out and photographing what I thought of as roadside jewels — diamonds in the rough if you like, captured in all their glory, ensnared by time and weeds out in the back blocks. Interestingly, most of those cars have disappeared with the passage of yet more time.
Mulling on this point prompted me to go through scenes that had captivated me over 45 years on the road, an epitaph of sorts of earlier times, when these cars arrived at their final resting spot. I’d also capture those on their last legs, supposedly still operational and snapped curbside. I’ll also include a few snaps from my overseas junkets in Cuba, Buenos Aires and other locales.
HEAVEN FOR OLD CARS
There was a time in New Zealand when you would turn into a rural road, or drive through the backstreets of any country town, and you’d regularly see some interesting, old automotive tin in a paddock or under the trees, in a backyard, or auto wreckers. There was sufficient of this treasure around for me to make an effort to take images of them.
This was an era, of course, when buying new cars was harder to organise than a heist on the crown jewels. The country’s automotive fleet was older than just about anywhere else on the planet, therefore our old cars from the 1930s to the ’80s, had to be kept running at all costs due to the prohibitive prices of new vehicles. And, when they finally gave up the ghost, we often seemed to want to keep them around anyway.
Eventually though, the Hot Rodders, Stock Car boys and metal recyclers, took care of most of the wrecks and now there are hardly any to be seen. Any relics now tend to be tucked well out of sight from the casual retro, auto hunter like myself. The odd, private collection and small junkyard well off-the-beaten-track and hidden from view still exists of course. This is certainly the case, in the much-scavenged North Island. Yet, there are still a few gems to be found in the South Island for the eagle-eyed vintage auto historian, as I discovered on a late-2020 Otago and Southland tour.
OUT TO PASTURE
My fondness for vintage tin in the wilds was something of an obsession in the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s as I searched for the final automotive monuments of previous car eras. In me, it used to spark conjecture about the lives of the people who had travelled in those interesting wrecks and how the cars came finally to languish, slowly returning to the earth.
During that time I actually had an aversion to restored cars, which I believed stole their natural heritage. I was only interested in originals, either running or in their final resting place; a fascination which has put me ahead of the curve of the current fashion for survivor cars and original patina… a trend which has fueled many of the books I mentioned earlier. No doubt a number of those cars I found were eventually going to be restored, and I realise this is not entirely to be despised, as it means that at least some of them will get back on the road.
My quest has led me on an almost surreal journey, searching all over the country and off-the-beaten-trail, looking for auto icons of the past. It has been a rich and occasionally risky pursuit: seeking out old classics in picturesque surroundings. Clambering with weighty cameras over fences and into private property, my mind often fixated on saliva-dripping guard dogs. Fortunately, the savage attack never happened, though a pilgrimage and a not-to-be-denied illegal entry into the famed Smash Palace —Horopito Wreckers, National Park — on a fine winter’s afternoon in 2001, generated an especially strong frisson of fear.
These days, the easy photographic pickings down the highways and byways have long gone. The residue of our automotive past has been almost entirely effaced from the main thoroughfares of the North Island. Automotive flotsam and jetsam is now usually seen as an intolerable eyesore so what was left has been removed to auto dismantlers and, usually, these facilities are hidden in industrial estates. No doubt there will be future classics lurking among the stacks, but they are hard to get to and probably heading to the crusher.
JUNK AND DISORDERLY
I’ve rarely, if ever, stumbled across any derelict vintage performance or muscle tin in this country. Probably, due to the relative scarcity of this category of machinery entering New Zealand. Even when its heritage value was not considered Early American or Australian muscle, either succumbed to abuse, crash, or the privations of the speedway scene before finally being disposed of. Few survived to be restored. Two circuit racing icons that made it back from the abyss were Red Dawson’s Willy’s Corvette, which had languished in a Christchurch backlot for 40 years, and the Spinner Black/Grady Thompson full-house racing Holden Monaro. Both, especially the Monaro, cost an arm and a leg to refurbish.
Japanese retro performance hardware is now rocketing in the collectable stakes, in stark contrast to when it was considered totally expendable. So, while examples of this exotica could once be found in fields, it’s no wonder now that even the saddest of these cars have gone. Any in revivable condition are seriously hard to find.
Revisiting the images I took during the halcyon days of my backroad wanderings was a revelation which highlighted the changes of our automotive landscape. A similar change, no doubt, inspired famed American auto hunters Tom Cotter, Jerry Heasley et al, and their readers. The trail of the elusive barn finds of celebrated, rare automotive hardware has become one of the most popular and evocative aspects of contemporary, historic-car stories.
With these thoughts in mind, I returned to my archive of photographs recently, taking another figurative journey ‘On the Road’… to borrow the title of Jack Kerouac’s book. I recall he had been a great inspiration for me, and countless other itinerant road jockeys over the years.
AUTO BIOGRAPHIES
I later heard the fate of one or two derelict vehicles that I had photographed back in the day.
Included in the pictures with this story is a 1942 Ford Jailbar V8 pickup that I photographed at Meeanee, Napier, in 2001. This vehicle still had the evocative, early sign writing for the Feilding Bacon Company, adorning its doors. It was one of two rescued from a smoking Waipukurau rubbish dump in the ’90s and taken to Meeanee Motors. Eventually it was bought and trailered to Auckland and restored.
An early (1984) discovery of mine was a derelict, 1948 Packard Custom Eight Convertible, which I found in a backlot in Papatoetoe, Auckland. It was an enormously heavy, post-war, top-end American luxury machine that had been sitting out in the elements for many years. It was an imposing and impressive sight but, unfortunately, seriously rusted. I later learnt it had been sold to someone at a Stokes Valley, Wellington address and used as a donor parts car for another ’48 Packard Custom Eight Convertible, the new owner was restoring.
A rare AMC Gremlin, with factory-fitted 304 cu in V8, caught my eye as I cruised down the Takanini straight in South Auckland one day in 1992. It was out front of the then landmark Miami Motors which dealt in serious Detroit iron and Aussie stuff. I came to a scrabbling halt, to check out the wild yellow Gremlin muscle. Fast forward to around 2005 and the now purple Gremlin had morphed into a rusty derelict at a Mt Wellington wrecker. It had been purchased with the hope of rescuing it but, sadly, it was too far gone. It became another parts donor car, with the engine and trans retained by the new owner.
While trundling down the main chute of Rotorua back in 1978, I was gobsmacked to see top-end Yankee muscle in a run-of-the-mill standard car yard on Fenton Street. A factory 1976, 350 cu in V8 Chevy Monza … not what you’d expect to see in New Zealand, anywhere, in those far-off distant days. I was stunned to see this state-of-the-art, asphalt shredder, which was literally a new car, at least in Kiwi terms. Fortunately, I recorded this auspicious occasion with my less-than-top-shelf camera equipment at the time. Ultimately, the outcome of this sleek piece of kit, was no better than the previous two mentioned here. It passed down the food chain until its inevitable demise, possibly on the speedway.
The destiny of the other screed of derelicts and streetside sightings I captured on film, apart from those four cars mentioned above, is unknown to me. The images in this story show some of the best of those I managed to capture.
South Island epilogue
I had thought my derelict car-hunting days were all long behind me, but surprisingly, there was one final chapter to play out in this saga. In December 2020, while dodging Covid outbreaks, I made an 11-day Otago and Southland road trip which reignited in me the wild excitement of discovering a cache of amazing, retro, derelict vehicles not far from the main highway.
In Dipton — a tiny burg on the Queenstown to Invercargill highway famed mostly for being the homepatch of retired Prime Minister Bill English — I struck gold by sighting a late-1920s six cylinder, Grahame Paige. This was extra special as my grandfather once owned a brand new one of them. In the same location was a cool, yet derelict Mk I Ford Zephyr and a nice old gas pump, which certainly got my juices running. Nearby, in this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it settlement, was the remains of a strange old Australian-version Studebaker, an early Ford Prefect, plus other bits and pieces.
Later, at Waitahuna — a small town on the Lawrence to Balclutha highway — a quick run through the backstreets on a whim saw me hit pay dirt again. In a paddock by a house there was a collection of ’30s Ford V8s including a sedan and various pickup derelicts. Despite the cold, sleeting rain, I cranked the camera back into gear, and crossed my fingers that I wouldn’t be accosted by the angry custodian of the vehicles while capturing his dominion on film for obviously nefarious purposes. This was indeed saving the best to last.
If anyone has any good news on these car genealogies pictured here, I’d be interested to know, please send any information as letters to the editor – [email protected]
