Down On the 1993 Hayward Street: Ripped-n-Stripped Victims

by Murilee Martin

Published: September 9th, 2011

down on the 1993 hayward street ripped n stripped victims

When scanning old negatives for the most recent installment of the Impala Hell Project series, I found these Ansco Pix Panorama camera shots that I took in gritty, grimy, industrial Hayward, California in 1993. They didn’t add anything to the Impala Hell Project story, so I’m sharing them in a separate post.

The Fish Driver Warehouse was not far from the site of the now-defunct Hayward Pick Your Part, a yard I’d been visiting since the mid-1980s, and the stretch of West Winton Avenue right outside the junkyard gates was a popular spot to yank parts off stolen and/or unwanted vehicles. Nowadays, with scrap metal prices so high, you wouldn’t see a scene like this.

A de-fendered first-gen RX-7 parked in front of a scissors-jack-suspended Pinto wagon. One thing hasn’t changed: old beater RX-7s still aren’t worth much.

I took this shot through the fence of the Pick Your Part holding area. Look, it’s a Rover P5! Anybody want to take a shot at identifying the ancient truck in the foreground and the sedan in the background?

#1990s #1993 #California #DownOnTheJunkyard #DownOnTheStreet #DownOnTheStreetBonusEdition #FordPinto #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #MazdaRX-7 #RX-7 #Pinto

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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2 of 9 comments

Obbop on Sep 11, 2011

Sigh........... the memories of traversing the streets to enter the East Palo Alto area where the dismantling yards dwelt. As the friendly folks stopped and waved their greetings at the Concord visitor. That IS what those motions were, right?

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RichVS on Sep 12, 2011

The truck is definitely in the 1928-34 range depending on make. With only a few cues to guess on I'll say 1930-31 Ford.

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