I’ve seen them in Washington, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and plenty of other locations: a car that for some reason or another, was absolutely killed, stripped of any semblance of being an automobile, and was left for dead. There was a mid-1970s Monte Carlo that somehow kept getting worse and worse every time I went to look at it, and what didn’t get raided kept getting coated in tree sap and fir needles. The mid-1970s Buick had met it’s match on a mountain road, where it had gone for a mild roll that broke the passenger front suspension. And the poor Edsel…it was the only object for miles that wasn’t growing from the ground, riddled with holes, it’s interior a fluffy mess that generations of field mice had to have been mining for the ultimate in rodent luxury. You look at a car like that, with it’s missing parts, empty engine bay, and wonder why nobody bothered to haul the hulk to the scrapper. You just want to see the poor thing finally put out of it’s misery, don’t you?
Here’s why you should ignore that thought. This Valiant Pacer’s rear suspension left the program one day and for the owner of the car, that was that. He left it to roast in the Aussie sun, it’s fate sealed. Over time the paint cooked, the graphics lifted, and the body got ventilated from the random gunshot, but look at it now, rolling with a six cylinder back under the hood, looking like a proper anti-hero car. This isn’t the guy in the white hat who always saves the day with a smile, this is the grizzled ex-cop who has seen some shit and is ready to take on anyone dumb enough to get in the way. This might be the coolest Pacer we’ve seen yet!
That car is the ‘pictionary’ definition of “well earned patina”
This was literally the Aussie version of Graveyard Cars.
what are the odds of finding matching colors doors for a Dart/Valiant in Ozland? 🙂
It was, surprisingly, a very popular colour on Valiants!