In May of 2006 I spoke with a guy in Ogden, Utah, who had a 1961 Fiat 600. He mentioned a junkyard off of Beck Street in North Salt Lake had a couple of Fiat 600s and he bought a lot of parts from there. North Salt Lake is a mildly depressing place dotted with refineries, factories and construction businesses. To find a bunch of obscure European cars there seemed odd. Although, story has it there used to be a guy there with a couple of Miuras and a 300SL (the 50s, gullwing type) but that's a different story for a different time.
I went to check it out and sure enough, the cars were there. There were no Fiat 600s but they had two Fiat 850 Spiders, a Fiat 850 Sedan, a Saab Sonnett II, a Lancia Beta that had been hit by something significantly larger in mass, two Fiat X1/9s, a couple of Corvairs, a Crosley sedan and, of all things-- two Renault 4CVs. They weren't hit and mostly complete. You could easily have made one car out of two.
Sadly, I left the country the day after that and didn't do much about them. When I got back, most of the cars were gone and the remaining ones were stacked on top of each other and consequently had major body damage. The yard clearly had no interesting in saving them.
I went back there a couple of months ago.. the yard has since changed ownership and all the old European cars have been crushed, replaced by Firestone-era Explorers and the like.
3 comments:
A cool blog from a truly European car aficienado. I too have had many Alfas but like the engineering of the Mercedes and Porsches better.
Nope, not a Saab Sonett II, it was the more common Sonett III.
Damn, that was a typo on my part.
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