Junkyard Find: 1963 Buick Wagon
The other day, I got a text message with a photo of a junked vintage Detroit wagon from Alex Vendler, creator of the CBR1000-powered Geo Metro Gnome and the upcoming Hayabusa-powered Toyota Starlet. Alex is a Hollywood cinematographer in his day job, so I figured he should be able to shoot some decent junkyard photos. “Shoot more!” I demanded. And he did.
Southern California self-service yards get quite a few ancient beaters with zero rust, like this Buick.
I love the old car radios with the CONELRAD stations marked. My ’69 Toyota Corona‘s factory radio had CONELRAD symbols, six years after CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System.
If I’m not mistaken, this is the aluminum 215 engine that eventually became the Rover V8. The Buick version is quite rare in junkyards, unlike its Rover descendents.
It’s always nice to get the work of a professional camera guy when you need junkyard photographs, even when he is forced to use an iPhone instead of a real camera. Thanks, Alex!
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.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
When I was in high school (mid 70's) a friend's brother acquired the Olds F-85 version of this wagon for the specific purpose of pulling the engine to stuff it into an MGB. He then junked the rest of the wagon. It was in great condition. I steered the engineless car when he pushed it out to the street to be picked up by the tow truck. I almost cried. He never did finish the damned MGB project either.
I dig the VIN tag. And those had FOUR bolt hubs? Call it the early Accord of the nuclear age...:)