Look At What I Found!: Not For Sale

Every year, the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum sponsors the Orphan Car Show, dedicated to vehicles, brands, and companies that are not with us anymore. Lots of oddball cars and classes means lots of graphic content for Cars In Depth and maybe an article or two at TTAC. It looks like there are more than 800 images on the memory cards so it’s going to be a bit before I get them all processed and winnowed for a proper report on the show for the Best & Brightest. Still, as I’ve said before, you never know when you’re going to find an interesting car or something else automotive worthy of note. Driving to the Orphan show I decided not to take the Interstates and instead took winding two lane roads out to the Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti area. I wasn’t sure about an intersection and ended up going a couple of miles in the wrong direction. On the way back I noticed a home with a bunch of old Fords in front of the garage. There were a couple of 1970s vintage LTDs, two Fox body Mustangs, and a Pinto. One of the Mustangs has current license plates and looks like it’s a daily driver. The rest of the cars appeared, from a distance of about 100 feet, to be solid restoration candidates, but they had the look of “when I get the time” projects. What really caught my eye, though, was the yard sign standing by one of the big Ford sedans: “Cars NOT For Sale – Don’t Ask!”. It’s enticing to wonder what’s out of sight in the garage, but it’s still a nice collection of Fords.

For a second I was tempted to knock on the door and ask the owner about his collection and his sign, but I figured that maybe, just maybe he was tired of answering questions. I’d like to write something poetic or insightful about dreams as yet unfulfilled, but to be honest, it was just a bunch of old cars by the side of the road.

Not long ago I found out about Cars In Barns, a web site devoted to, well, you’re not stupid. People report old cars that they spot in barns, behind buildings, in fields, and wherever you might find an interesting old car (but aren’t all old cars interesting?). Some are proverbial “ran when parked” barn finds. Others are shells, exposed to the elements and returning to the same. Many of the cars are probably beyond restoration, some of them are steel and rust lacework, but every single one of them is about passion, or obsession. Many of the reports at Cars In Barns read something like: “I’ve known about this car for ten years, but every time I ask the owner, he says that it’s not for sale.” To me that speaks of passion on both sides, the passion of the owner who still dreams of a restoration, and the passion of the guy that keeps bugging him about selling it. That passion for a specific car is sometimes rewarded. It’s not entirely uncommon, when reading a particular vehicle’s history or hearing an owner recounting the acquisition thereof, that the first efforts to buy it were rebuffed. “I’d been asking him to sell me the car for years and finally, when he was thinning out the collection and wanted it to go to a loving home, he called me.”

So I understand the guy with those Fords feeling the need to ward off the lookie loos and wish him well with his cars, whether they end up as 100 pt restorations, parts cars or, sadly, Chinese washing machines. I also understand the people who stop, see the sign and say, “well it can’t hurt to just leave my phone number in case he decides to sell.”