I don’t suppose it’s a green car with red doors, is it? Or maybe the other way around, I’ve forgotten, though I’m sure there’s a picture of it somewhere.
As to the OP question: I think sometimes it’s “I’m gonna fix it someday!”, and sometimes is “I’d have to pay to get it hauled away and I ain’t gonna” and sometimes it’s “that’s been there so long that none of us even sees it any longer.”
The other factor is - there’s a lot of stuff. Something in there may be valuable: but you don’t know what. And the amount of research necessary to determine whether any given item is the one you’ll see in the papers as having been picked up out of the garbage by somebody who recognized it was worth a couple of million is daunting.
(That wouldn’t apply to one individual car. But it can apply to large collections.)
As a car guy, you see it all the time. Most of them are missing that vital restoration part: a round tuit. The bulk of the rest are those guys who saw a professionally restored example sell at auction for a fortune and decided that their rust bucket is worth half that because it will be an “easy fix.” Bonus points for the ones that decide you’re a low-down polecat city-slicker that thinks they’re a dumb hick.
The saddest? When a buddy of mine was shopping for a vintage Mustang Fastback, we learned that a lot of the ads were just lonely old widowers looking to shoot the shit for a while with someone else into cars; they had no intention of selling. Very “ghost of Christmas future” for us, being car guys.
This is me. Two motorcycle sat unused for years. I was planning to ride them, but I got married, the house needed fixing, etc. The YZF-R1 is up and running. The XJ600 is a work in progress. Life and finances intervene sometimes.
Ah well. The chances that you’d somehow wound up with my 1970’s SAAB 95 wagon were minuscule. Especially since mine, when I last saw it, was pretty much a parts car.
But I loved mine, too. And they used to be unusual enough that, if somebody driving one saw another on the road, we’d start honking at each other.
I had an SAAB 96 I drove all over Boston in the early to mid ‘70s My dad owned the first SAAB in Nebraska in the ‘60s and when he got bored with one he’d give the old one to a kid of his so he could buy the snazziest new one. Dang! I loved driving that car all over Massachusett, even took it to Nantucket
I had several relatives who were farmers and they practically never threw anything big out. Cars, trucks, tractors, farm equipment, etc. All just sitting where it was last used.
One uncle was actually a collector and bought more stuff. He had also got his father’s giant old school combine onto his farm. It all went away with an auction after his death. (Some pieces ended up being bought by regional museums.)
One odd case was my grandfather’s Studebaker Lark. After he died, my grandmother (who didn’t drive) just let it sit out at the end of the drive on the farm. She thought it convinced people that someone was home all the time. But it never moved. Weeds were growing where the floorboards used to be.
I did a Bing streetview tour of the town I lived in when I was small. (Google doesn’t bother doing the whole town when it’s this small.) Man, the place has gone downhill junk vehicle-wise since my last visit there. People didn’t use to have junk like this in their front yards back in the day. It was considered embarassing.
I used to put about 1,000 miles a year on my '67, when I lived in the country
Now that I’m in the city, where driving it is just less fun, I was putting dramatically fewer miles on it.
Last time I changed the oil, I saw signs of a spun main bearing. Unfortunately, between being in the city and having a much smaller garage, pulling the engine and rebuilding it just isn’t a priority.
So it sits in the garage until, someday, I do something about it.
YES! When I sold my '65 Corvair, I received calls from all over, even one guy from (supposedly) Hawaii. Many people had Corvairs (especially when they were broke) and have all the stories to go with them and hope to tell you those storiesz1
A momentary pause of reflection from the professional wet blanket:
Those beloved relatives who will inherit your property when you slough off this mortal coil are going to have to deal with the detritus of your joy in owning junk machinery and vehicles that will never run again. And they will not be happy you gifted them with it.
I am at the age when a plethora of my friends and relatives are faced with cleaning out the houses, garages, and yards of massive piles of metal and other junk that their deceased did not see fit to deal with while they still could. It is not a small, inexpensive, nor pleasant job.
So? Those friends and relatives are going to inherit houses and other assets worth very substantially more than it would cost to hire someone to just take everything to the dump. As to the old junk cars and piles of metals there are people would would haul that away free as they can sell it.
I’ll just change my will to leave the old car to someone else along with permission to keep it on the property. Next time I die my heirs will think better about disregarding my estate.
I guess you either aren’t of an age to have peers who are dealing with this right now, or you’ve never done such a thing yourself. Often the burden falls on one heir, the one who is geographically closest or simply the most responsible one, but they only get a cut of the estate, and that only when it is finally settled and liquidated – believe me, it is a messy experience, emotionally, physically, and financially. I know very few people for whom it went smoothly, and many whose lives were upended, sometimes rather permanently.
In some cases, non-profits will take junk cars as a way to make money. I hear my local public radio station mentioning it all the time. I’m assuming they have an agreement with a towing company and sell the cars for scrap. If you happen to have some junkers you need to get rid of, it might be worth looking into as a way to get rid of them for free.
One problem that vehicles have is titles. An inheritor doesn’t need the extra hassle of pushing thru junkers in probate to make sure the buyer gets a good title. (Sure most are just scrap/parts but many buyers are like the deceased in thinking “I can fix that up but meanwhile I’ll just park it on the side of my house.”) There’s also keys to find and sort out.
If you’re old or unhealthy, get rid of your junk. Your junk, your problem. Expecting other to clean up your mess is far from mature.
QFT!! Even if you aren’t old and unhealthy, get rid of it! My MIL use to have a room full of collectable crap - I mean like a museum, with shelving units packed with stuff “displayed” that no one ever saw. We pleaded with her to inventory the lot and document how much the more valuable things were, in case she departed us sooner than expected. She basically laughed at us. When she had to move into a senior apartment, we had to have an estate sale, and we were lucky that someone came in and took the whole lot of that crap in one fell swoop (another collector)! We told her we were not going to sort thru the remains of the collection if it did not sell, but would probably ether donate it all or just haul it to the dump. She still laughed in our faces. Collecting is hoarding’s prettier cousin.
< – That’s supposed to be a shrug