8 replies to this topic

[mab01uk]

AROnline: The disappearing joy of the old-school scrapyard.
"A scrapyard is a strange sort of memory vault – not the polished, curated kind you get at a classic car show, where everything is waxed, explained and roped off, but the other end of the story. The bit after the brochures, the finance agreements, the family holidays, the MoT advisories and the final FTP. The bit where cars stop being transport and become fragments.
Finding one was harder than expected. Google quickly produced a dispiriting selection of national car extraction services, followed by modern dismantlers that strip cars, catalogue the parts and sell them over the counter or online. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It is cleaner, safer, more efficient and probably better for everyone involved. But I didn’t want efficiency. I wanted to browse through a muddy place and look at car carcasses.
I wanted a grubby corner of the world that connected directly with being young, skint and hopeful, when a better steering wheel from a dead car felt like progress..."
The full article here:-
https://www.aronline...ool-scrapyards/

 

 

[sledgehammer]

Health & safety killed the old style scrap yard , and oil in the ground .

 

My regular scrappy started up in the 60's thru to about 2008 .

 

a tidy scrap yard , cars only 2 high & squared off in rows ,

 

He used to run banger racing , started a few clubs up , Worked with the police doing recovery etc ,

 

Nice bloke if you treated him right .

 

In the 90's he had to put in interceptors , drains , filters , covered workshop's etc , stop the mud / oil ,

 

He had to get newer cars in to strip , older classics just sat , no-one interested .

Took orders over the phone , tried to keep up . but in the end , rates , rent , wages etc , finished it ,

 

I think if it existed now , idiots would find a way to injure themselves anyway , 

Now it's all larger company's  , and Ebayers stripping crashed shells ,

I assume there are a few old yards about , but they are getting scarce .

 

 

Edited by sledgehammer, 29 June 2026 - 09:04 PM.

[68+86auto]

I know a wrecker who was forced to move into the town by the council as he was running a business. About 20 years later he was forced to officially close down and move back out of the town due to all the things he had to comply with. That was 20 years ago and it has only got worse.

 

Everything is still sitting where it is at his place since when he moved it from the town.

[stuart bowes]

I guess also a lot of people just rent cars now don't they, no-one really owns them any more, or at least we're in the minority

 

because who's got time to learn skills like repairing your car when you could be spending all day posting pictures of your dinner on facebook and being an influencer lol

 

old skills die out in favour of new .. Skills?  (stretching that word a bit)

[evansisgreat]

 

 

Nice bloke if you treated him right .

 .

 

That sound so familiar! I think they must all be like that. I live in Dundee and there are 1 or 2 that have big concrete yards and they'll let you wonder round if you show up in overalls and hi viz. 

[floormanager]

Loved the old traditional scrap yard.  Climbing over rocking cars, three high, on oil-soaked ground, to upgrade my mini with things like two speed wiper motors from a Dolly I think and an 1 3/4" carb from a Princess.  Things like flasher units and switches used to fall into my toolbox on the way round.  I even got a set of 10" discs calipers, driveshafts from a burnt out 1275GT.  Happy days.

[Black.Ghost]

I kept my Rover 25 alive for ages visiting the scrap yard and getting bits and pieces. Like all of you, I’d love going over there on a Saturday morning and rummaging about trying to find stuff. I was talking to my wife about it just a week or so ago.

The point about rented cars is true. Not only that, the average age of cars on the road seems a lot younger her than it used to be anyway, and younger cars are less likely to need new bits on average.

It’s a shame, but it’s just another part of life that has changed and moved on. Seeing someone out fixing a car at the weekend is a thing of the past for the most part.

[panky]

I got locked in when I was removing the head off a Chrysler 180 (yes it was me who had one), in Barrow Hall Lane scrappies Penketh, when I heard the main gates being dragged closed. I legged it over and stuck my head through a gap in the gate and nearly got my face bitten off by a dirty great German Shepard. Luckily the guy heard the commotion and came back to save me, I came back the next day for the head. 

The yard is long gone and is now a housing estate  

[stevie77]

There were three scrapyards where I grew up in Northampton close to me.
When was in my late teens/early twenties, I used to love going around each one on a Saturday morning to see what ‘upgrades’ I could get. It was great because you could just wander around with some tools and take off what you wanted.
I was into hot hatches, and occasionally you would strike gold and there would be a Peugeot 205 gti, or Escort xr3i or a Fiesta xr2 that would still have some bits left on I could put on the base model car I had at the time. What a rush that was!
Very little health and safety, but good times.