The only fate for a car worse than spending an eternity on display in a private garage is being left to rust. It honestly sucks to see an abandoned car because we all know someone who would love to drive it. The feeling only hits harder when it's an expensive sports car that was left to rot. While they aren't cheap to maintain, there are a million different outcomes better than just throwing them away.
We asked our readers last week to share the wildest cars that they've seen left to rust in the wild. It was basically impossible to draw a through line between each machine's past. Cars from Ferrari, Cadillac and Volkswagen all found their way to sit dormant. However, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Whether fulfilled or not, each submission shared the desire restore the car to glory. Without further ado, here are the comments that still stick in my mind:
kitmasterbloke / Wikimedia Commons
Back in around 1987 or 1986, one of my uncles who worked in a body shop found a Jaguar XK convertible from the late Sixties abandoned and in pieces in a cave. Because I was a kid at the time, I'm not sure how he was able to buy it and later sell it to someone else all because the frame was undamaged.
I remember he came home with all these books about Jags, and then a few days later my uncle was bringing this old Jag and the fenders and the engine and all of these other parts home on a trailer.
Submitted by: Omer Carrothers
Thesupermat / Wikimedia Commons
Knew a kid whose dad supposedly had a Ferrari Daytona coupe sitting in his garage. Never really believed him or thought much about it, considering the car was worth way more than the house whose garage it sat in, but I also had never seen it. Turns out he really did have a very real 1971 365 Daytona coupe sitting in his garage. It was originally bought by his grandpa and passed to his dad after his death. I told my dad about it and he just laughed and asked what the kid's name was, I told him, he laughed again and said, "Oh yeah, i bets that's so and so's Daytona." He was right, the "so and so" my dad mentioned to me was the kid's grandpa.
Submitted by: Scott Buchanan
Lotus Europa. Being fiberglass, it was more crumbling underneath with the cracked body lying on top of what was the chassis, but they're rare enough that it was a shame to see it in that state.
They were never great cars, and were cheap from the start, so nothing was really lost other than a truly oddball car.
Submitted by: potbellyjoe
In 1994, my elderly neighbors inherited a 1966 Chrysler Imperial from an even older aunt who had bought it new in 66. It was garage kept, dealer serviced and driven lightly right up until it showed up in my neighbors' driveway.
I immediately approached them and asked after the car and over the years, I begged them to let me buy it or at least help them maintain it. I was rebuffed every time.
It was this gorgeous metallic teal color with white leather interior. It sat for just over 20 years, baking in the sun and rotting in place. By the time they wanted to get rid of it, they were "stunned" that no one wanted to buy it. They ended up having to pay a guy to haul it off.
I have hated those people ever since. Oh, and they also let a 72 Cutlass Supreme rot in the driveway before the Imperial met its fate. Then they let an 88 Olds Trofeo rot as well.
The Car Killers. That's what everyone on our block called them.
Submitted by: bryanintowson
There was a Tucker 48 rotting in a field next to the road out of town when I was a kid. It had been there so long that by the time I was a kid, it was almost unrecognizable. The one thing that still looked salvageable was the chrome rings around the headlights.
Submitted by: Tom Brennecke
When I was a kid, the gas crunch hit. My dad had a rusty old Caddy with the 429 that drank 98 octane like crazy. He decided to find a new-to-him car.
Being my dad, he went to the jankiest car dealerships in the area. If it had a shed and bunting, Dad was there looking. Being me, I had to go along too.
What I remember, in retrospect, is how if you had a time machine to go back to that time, you could have made some stupid money on cars. 90% of the cars Dad saw he rejected because they had the Big Block. The dealerships couldn't give away a big-block car from the late 60s with the combination of unleaded lower octane fuel and the gas crunch making these cars basically unusable.
Anyway, in this look dad found a small silver thing with a red interior that was in perfect condition that had a 6 cylinder. It was in a lot that was down a muddy hill when he first discovered it. Dad LOVED that car. He wanted it so bad he could taste it. He went and haggled with the dealer regularly. I wasn't there when the ground dried out for him to drive it, but he said it needed a tune-up, but it ran good.
However.... It was a 2-seater. He bonked his head getting into it because the doors were weird. It was about 20 years old and he had a wife and 2 kids.
And that's how my dad bought a '73 Maverick, instead of a '56 SL300.
Submitted by: hoser
Back in the early '70s, I was at a Mercury dealership for service and there was an AC Cobra in the parking lot in pretty rough shape but apparently still running, likely a 289 or maybe the rare 260. I've always wondered the fate of that car.
Submitted by: RR
When I was a kid, my dad had a '72 VW Super Beetle that lived in the NE since new. He drove it a few years in NJ as a used car, then moved to the south. It was so rusted you could see the ground through the floors when riding in the car. The battery had a baseball-sized hole under it. The car came off the road in the late 80s and is still sitting in his backyard, where it has been parked for nearly 40 years. Fenders have rusted away to some degree, the driver side running board has fallen off, and if you were to sit in it, the floor would probably fall out with the seat on it. Old memories with the car, so if I won the billion-dollar lottery, I would probably have it shipped to Chris Vallone, the VW restorations guru, and tell him to save as much of it as possible but I want it to look like it did in the showroom in 1972 when he gets done. Cost would probably be into deep 6 figures to do such a thing but I would gladly pay.
Submitted by: Tex
In high school, I was at a friend's house, and across the street, the garage was open. Inside was an immaculate black 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.
I love those cars, so Tim, my friend, and I went over to look at it. The owner talked to us and told us how he got it.
He pointed to a scratch on the roof and informed us he gave it that scratch when he found the car. The Caddy had belonged to his grandfather, but had disappeared years before and he never told anyone what happened to it.
When his grandfather died, the grandson had bought a barn and its contents at the auction held to settle the estate. No one else bid on it, so he got it for almost nothing. Later, he went in to check out what he'd bought, and sitting in the barn was a big stack of hay bales. He climbed up on it to get a look around, but it felt weirdly springy when he stood on it. He got a pitchfork and jabbed it onto the hay.
He hit metal.
He cleared the bales off, and there was his grandfather's Cadillac. No idea what it was doing under there, but after some cleaning, fresh gas, and a new battery, it fired right up!
Submitted by: Stillnotatony
