DISCOVERIES
Wordsandphotography:Will ShiersRoswell, New Mexico is home to this
Checker A1 cab. The design barely
changed over the decades, so it’shard
to date this one, but my best guess is
the late Seventies.Chrysler was still two years away from launching its
‘ForwardLook’ cars when this 1953 NewYorker rolled off
the line. It had been designed to have enough headroom
to accommodate four hat-wearing gentlemen, hence its
Gibraltar-esque styling! But while it wasn’tassleekas some
of its competitors, what the NewYorker had going for it was
itsV8Hemi and superb interior build quality.Int otal 37 ,540
of these four-door cars found customers.Iassume the ‘No smoking’ sign is an
instruction to visitors at this wooded
Georgia junkyard, rather thanaselling
point of the unloved 1958 Mercury
Monterey the message is scrawled on.
The Monterey’sstanding in the Mercury
model line-up varied during its 22-year
(1952-1974) production run, ranging
fromflagship to entry-level offering.Idiscovered this 1969 FordFalcon Futura in a
garden in Manitowoc County,Wisconsin. That name
will be very familiar to you if you’ve seen the Netflix
documentary MakingaMurderer.Iwas actually on
my way toAvery’ sAuto Salvage at the time, which
features in the show,but whenIarrived it was
closed.That was in 2015 beforeIhad even seen the
show orrealised the significa nceofthe yard. I’m
told at least two-thirds of the inventory has been
crushed in the last couple of years.Our intrepid salvage yard explorer brings you junkyard
jewels from across North America.Despite being partially blind and completely
immobile, this decrepit pensioner still has the
most amazingset of teeth! It’sa1953 Buick
Special, and is part ofaprivate collection of
classicsIdiscovered in Kentucky.106 classic-american.com