Crushed: The Tragic Wagon
CJinSD, FRONT AND CENTER! Thank you. Today, you will be recognized for having a very well-polished crystal ball. You were able to see five years into the future with near-perfect accuracy. Time for you to accept your prize, which is a whole bunch of EXPOSURE! Don’t spend it all in one place.
Yesterday, I told you about the disappearance of more than 40 good-condition B-body station wagons, commonly called “bubbles” in American street culture. I asked you to help me find my old bubble — and if that wasn’t possible, perhaps to help me find a solid “Oldsmobubble” Custom Cruiser Wagon with the Vista Roof.
There were plenty of good ideas, but it was fellow TTAC contributor Bozi Tatarevic who solved the mystery of what happened to my old car — and its compatriots — in painful detail. He pulled my inadvertently hilarious “DTF” license plate from the original story on the Caprice Classic.
From that he got the VIN.
From the VIN, he found out the car’s history.
That “historical record” entry is likely from when I had the car comprehensively serviced shortly after buying it. Or maybe from the title transfer. You can see that the title was transferred with just under 53,000 miles — and that’s how it sat for eight long years until it was sold to Buckeye Auto Parts, which stripped it, scrapped it, and junked the title.
I called Buckeye Auto Parts and was told the rest of the story. All of the bubbles came in together. Whether they ran or they did not, they were stacked up, painstakingly stripped — BAP is not a “Pick-and-pull” operation, they do their own parts removal and inventory — and then crushed for their weight in steel.
My wagon, which ran perfectly up to and including the A/C and all power features, which had fetched $3,000 dollars from the obsessive Bubble collector, was crushed. With 52,908 on the odometer. If that doesn’t upset you just a bit, then, my friend, I fear for your soul.
CJinSD called it. From what the guy at Buckeye could remember, the brothers had died and left the bubbles to relatives who didn’t want them and didn’t care about them.
My wagon is gone, along with many more like it; good, top-condition cars, many of them the Roadmasters with the LT1 engine. It’s a shame. But it’s also a lesson: if you don’t have a plan, a plan will be made for you. I’m taking that lesson personally. It applies to everything from my guitar collection to the stacks of gold and silver coins that, I’m afraid, are probably going to disappear in a tragic boating accident shortly after I quit work for the last time. The tragedy here is that the intransigence of the Bubble Brothers led to a lot of good cars disappearing a long time before they could have, or should have.
The vanquish’ d hero leaves his broken bands,
More by Jack Baruth
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My younger brother had a 96 Roadmaster wagon that either came with or was converted to a 9C1 car and had been equipped with a slightly massaged LT4 engine. Carfax said it was owned by state gov't in New York IIRC. Anyway, he got it for $1600 on craigslist from a slightly shady Russian fellow. Told my brother that the oil gauge was broken. Turns out, the oil gauge was 100% accurate, it was the pump that was bad. So, about 500 miles later, the engine seizes and rods make their escape. He rebuilt it, drove it around some more, and the damnable 4L60 ate its own face. After that he parked it for a while, and came upon a "deal" of a $300 96 Impala SS that was in a flood and mostly ruined from the door trim down. He figured he could flush the trans and swap it over. Well, in the course of yanking the wagon apart for the trans swap, he discovered a couple of two-basketball-sized rust spots in the floor. Under light structural investigation, they quickly became two giant holes in the rear floor. OK- Plan B time. He took all of the really good stuff out of the wagon including the wiring harness and engine (impala's was toast) and basically combined two cars to make one good one, since the Impala's body was rock solid and somehow rust free after the flood damage. He got it all together, running like a champion, and three weeks later the transmission blew up again because he discovered he forgot to flush the trans cooler. Now it sits, for about six months now, because he is fed up with fixing it and saving up for a 4L80 to go with the little 5.3 truck LS he's been building on the side as well. Should be fun once he finishes it. The death of that wagon though, it was tragic. Out of all the cars we have owned together, that one was up there as one of the most fun ones.
Ironic, I think CJinSD was banned long ago.