Why do you see old, maybe non-running cars, trunks, tractors whatever sitting in people’s yards just rusting away? Why not sell them or give them away?
Because nobody wants an old rusty non-running vehicle?
The owner is planning on fixing that car to get it back on the road again. He’s going to start this weekend.
Short answer: people intend to fix them up but haven’t got around to it yet due to lack of time, funds, or motivation.
Another possibility is that they are intending to use them for spare parts for another vehicle. Or they are selling spare parts and running their own little junkyard.
My boyfriend’s grandpa has a whole property full of rusted out tractors with International engines. He was a fan of International engines, and fixing up tractors. He rescued them like people rescue cats.
I don’t know that he fixed a single one before he died. The hoard lives on, though, because his son lives on the same property and continues rescuing International engines.
I don’t think anyone who lives on that property can see the rust or cobwebs or weeds. Just the International logo and the promise it brings.
In the For Sale ad: “It ran when parked!” 
Yep. We have a 1980somethingToyota FJ and a 1970-something Saab 95 wagon sitting out there - Husband Projects. He definitely has Plans.
Frankly I think he enjoys the planning more than the doing, and so they sit 
When I met my spousal unit, he had a boat in his parents’ yard. That is, it was a boat-shaped pile of wood. He was going to fix it up. Never happened. It was gone within about 3 years after we married. Good riddance.
Now we’ve got a Harley in the shed that he hasn’t ridden in at least 4 years after multiple spinal surgeries. It’s no longer registered. He was going to sell it, and yet it sits. At least it’s hidden away when the shed door is closed.
Or possibly in two weeks. I suspect most people have more good ideas than they have either time or money.
Yeah. Definitely the next weekend if I don’t get to it this time.
When we moved to my suburban neighborhood 24+ years ago one house had an old Chevy Blazer parked in the driveway. It still sits there today, unmoved. When the family of that house opened the garage door occasionally, there is an old Willys in there, covered in boxes and other stuff. I suspect there may be another vehicle buried in there as well, but they haven’t opened the garage door in some time.
I don’t understand it, either. Why not get rid of something like that while it still has utility and value, instead of letting it rust and rot away?
My grandparents had a whole bunch of old, rusty, non running cars parked around their farm. I think part of it may have been that “never get rid of anything” mentality common among people who grew up during the Depression (they were hoarders of other things too). But I think the main reason was that they weren’t worth anything as used cars, and given the distance involved no junkyard was willing to take them because it would cost more to haul them away than they were worth as scrap. So they stayed on the farm.
For a long time, that was my dad – until the company he worked for got sold to a different parent company and we had to move. No more extra cars in the driveway after that.
The last ones I remember were a pair of white first generation Plymouth Valiants, one project car and one parts car.
Hoarding thinking. I have hoarders in my family and my husband has even more in his. Hoarders generally also have some ADHD which contributes to their inability to make decisions and follow through on them. Most of the male hoarders I know personally collect machinery, tools, and vehicles. They imagine a life in which they take worthless junk and turn it into useful, even salable, objects. But they never put forth more than five minutes of effort into making that life a reality, mostly because they would have sort a lot of junk and throw it out first, and they are unable to do anything like that.
Women tend to accumulate more indoor things. But even if the wife of a couple is not a hoarder, she probably can’t get her husband to move that rust bucket off the lawn. I have known two men who accumulated over an acre of vehicles before they vacated the premises (one died, one went to a psychiatric nursing home).
This was more common in rural areas where a man might identify as a “Chevy man” or a “Ford man” He felt insulted by the trade-in offer when he bought his last vehicle, and so vowed to simply keep it and use it for spare parts.
Then there is the guy who says:…“I know what I got and they ain’t for sale” This guy says he is going to “fix them up someday” and eventually dies and his family must sell/give away the lot. I knew a guy who had 50 V-W engines and probably a dozen rusty Beetles, mostly stored inside old shipping containers. He died and his wife had to deal with it all
What everyone else said: they’re planning on getting around to fixing it. Next weekend maybe. At worst it’ll be next summer’s project.
My dad, for many years, owned a MKIII Supra. Beautiful car. He sold it 20 years ago. This summer I was helping him move some stuff around his barn and came across a pile of parts for the Supra: a set of factory wheels, matching doors, a gauge cluster, and some other bits. All in pretty good condition. I asked him why he’s kept these for so long and his response was “I’m going to sell them. They’re pretty valuable today.” Yeah dad, they are. So then sell them instead of talking about selling them. I know he’ll never do so.
When I was a teenager I had a summer job tending a comercial-ish cherry orchard. The owner had an old 1950’s era Ford pickup parked at the edge of his property against the main road, so he often had people stop and ask him it the pickup was for sale. He was a grouch and berated anyone who stopped by, claiming it was his project truck and they wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway even if he was selling it.
A year or two ago I drove down that road and noticed that pickup still parked in the exact same spot, rusted out, windshield now broken, and the whole thing mostly covered in brambles. 3 decades since I first saw it. I’d be surprised if the guy was still alive; he’d be in his 80’s now. Clearly fixing that pickup was just a dream.
Edit: he was this guy, clearly:
My son wants me to get a “project car” that we can fix up. Find an old Mustang or something similar, park it in the garage and slowly restore it. I’m not opposed to the idea per se, but I don’t want my garage turned into a perpetual pit of miscellaneous parts and bits for a car that will never be roadworthy and I know that’s exactly what would happen. Dreams are nice but reality has a way of biting you in the ass.
Another edit: I would personally be mortified to have a dead junker in my yard. Curb appeal means something to me. As noted having a vehicle sitting in my garage, as an active project, doesn’t sit well with me but I could deal – the door would be closed. Or a classic that actually runs and has some value that’s closed away in barn? I could deal with that. But some non-running scrap of rust sitting in my yard? Shoot me first.
There’s a “museum” in Moriarty, NM that has an indoor area with some nice, classic cars, and then acres of junk, arranged in rows. All the the outdoor cars are just rusting away. I can’t figure out how they even manage to make the tax payments on the property:
EXACTLY! 
Want a solution? Do what I did when an in-law imposed on me with the line, “I just need to house this in your driveway for 3 days. It’ll be up and out by then.” Two WEEKS later, I called AAA and had it towed down the street and left in front of somebody’s house. I called my ingrate in-law and told him, “Your car is now on the public street in front of somebody’s house. I have no idea how long they’ll wait before calling and reporting it as an abandoned car. It will then be towed by the city and impounded.”
He came and removed it the next day.
Yeah I can see this as a strong motivator for someone to hold onto something long after it was valuable in reality. A friend of mine has a couple of storage units stuffed with a co-mingled mass of “stuff” from his parents and in-laws homes (only one parent is still alive, and in assisted living). I ask him why not get rid of the hoard - his response is exactly that - “some of this stuff is valuable!” To whom? I think they forget that something is only as valuable as someone is willing to pay for it, but there is emotional attachment and it’s hard to argue with that, or take that first step to try and sell it.
I get that, because it can be a paralyzing dilemma. Some of the stuff very well may have a value high enough that you’d feel real stupid throwing it away. But not a value so high that it’s worth the trouble of selling it right now. So it just sits there.
I’ve got a painting that might be worth in the $100-300 range. I don’t want it, but that feels too valuable to donate to a thrift store to sell for $15 to someone who just wants the frame, because they were smart enough to not do an image search of the painting to see if it was worth anything. If it was worth a few thousand, I’d get on it.
I also think that the explanation for many yard cars is that the person just doesn’t care. They parked it because it was broken, or stopped being useful. Now they just don’t care that it’s rusting in the yard. When someone asks about it they get defensive, so say something about a project or whatever, but the truth is, if they’re not looking at it, they don’t even remember it exists.