Junkyard Find: 1970 Alvis Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked)

by Murilee Martin

Published: September 30th, 2019

junkyard find 1970 alvis combat vehicle reconnaissance tracked

From 1962 through 2016, one of the continent’s most amazing junkyards operated in the Sun Valley neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles: Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking, also known as U-Pick Parts. Plenty of scenes for movies, TV shows, and music videos were filmed there, in addition to providing some great Junkyard Finds (not to mention parts for my personal cars, when I lived in Southern California in the late 1980s).I snapped a couple of shots of an armored vehicle of some kind there, back in 2014, and now it’s time to share them.

As well as I can tell, this is a much-picked-over example of an Alvis Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), built in the UK in 1970 and sold to military organizations all over the world. I can’t tell if we’re looking at a Sultan, Scimitar, or Sturgeon here, but — because of all the other funky movie vehicles and props scattered around the U-Pick yard — chances are that it had a role in a film or video production at some point.

The CVR(T) was in the IMPORTS section, naturally, near some pretty impressive vintage inventory. Yes, the Nash Metropolitan is an import, assembled by Austin in England.

Here’s the truck from Universal Soldier, providing that extra bit of junkyard ambience. I would visit this yard whenever I hit Southern California on junkyard-photography expeditions, and now it’s gone forever. You’d think it would have made the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, at the very least.If you like these Junkyard Finds, you’ll find 1,700+ more of them at the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™.

#1970 #1970s #Alvis #ArmoredVehicles #BritishCar #BritishCars #California #DownOnTheJunkyard #Ex-militaryVehicle #Junkyard #Military #JunkyardFind #Tank

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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4 of 16 comments

CaddyDaddy on Sep 30, 2019

Scrap is at an all time low when considered for inflation. With Environmental regulations for fluid containment and rain water run off requirements it's a tough business to turn a profit. I do not blame LKQ for wrenching off the good parts before hand, you got to do what you need to do to survive. China ain't buyin' and it's worse if you are not close to a major steel producing region. Here in Colorado we have Evraz making Seamless Rail in Pueblo. How is that high speed rail project going in California? No takers, so scrap is worthless.

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- Pwrwrench on Oct 01, 2019
  
  Yep, Have watched the prices for more than 40 years. After a few trips to the scrap yards and finding 2 cents a pound for steel did not bother anymore. The guys with the 25-30 year old trucks would come by and take it away. Aluminum, copper, and brass are worth much more. Prices go up and down, but usually about $1 a pound. What I heard is that most of the steel in California goes into making rebar. Also cast iron, brake rotors, engine blocks, is worth about double the price of steel. Even so, unless you have a lot of it there is not enough to buy the gasoline to take it to the scrap yard.
  
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-Nate on Sep 30, 2019

I miss this old yard and am well pleased to see some one took pictures ans is sharing them . They also had a home made 'Stoll' Coupe (VW derivative) that was pretty crude and as mentioned, lots and lots of TV / movie cars ~ before they closed up I got parts fro my 1908 Cadillac S & S Victoria hearse there, two of them used in a shoot were summarily dumped after the job . For a long time they had Motocycles in there too . Too bad you didn't take photos of the 1958 Cadillac four door sedan with the roof cut off and filled with mannekins up on a pole ~ someone drove by and unloaded a few deer slugs into it late one night.... Memories, lots and lots of them there . Adlen Bros. dated back to the 1960's and rented out space to independent import self service yard operators before turning it into "Dos Pendejos" P-A-P . -Nate

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- Karonetwentyc on Oct 02, 2019
  
  I miss Aadlen's as well. They were one of the three junkyards of the Sun Valley Unholy Car Parts Trinity, the other two being the name-I-can't-remember next door to them and the 'El Pulpo' Pick-A-Part a little further down on Glenoaks. In addition to the Fiat Multipla up on the wall, the one vehicle I can clearly remember also being up there was a Citroen SM. Oh, and the shark in the trees by the office, which apparently was made from the moulds used to make the original prop from the movie 'Jaws'. They (along with the others) kept a ridiculous number of my Peugeots, Renaults, Fiats, Alfas, and others running over the years. Shame that they're gone.
  
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