So many junkyard eagles....

[Whuntmore]

It would be great if there was some law that was passed like the "endangered species" act. 

No cars that is XX old, or there's only soo many left, they are not allowed to be junked/scrapped/salvaged and/or crushed.  Must be set aside for a collector or a restorer.  But with the amount of cars going into junk yards each week, month or year, it would be hard to do this.  This sucks...

I'd love to be able to buy every eagle I see, but It's just not that easy, that's for sure.  But unless you have allot of disposable cash, a trailer to haul them (or the means to get them to you) and a place to put them, it is really hard to actually save them. 

I managed to Personally save one, and I've helped El Matador with about 4 other eagles now. 

The one I personally saved had one day left before going to the 'yard'.  The owner told us "Come get it before 4 pm the next day, or it's gone".  I did, put some money into it, and now I'm driving it. 

If I didn't have the help of El Matador, Mechanic, and a few others, it wouldn't have happened.   Mechanic and I spent the whole day just getting it together so I could get it home.

Between several of us here in Calgary, we've tried to save several other Eagles.  Some wanted too much for real junk, some wouldn't part with their eagles, and and some we just couldn't get something going.   We did manage to make a trip up north (last year) and rescue two eagles (stripped the third down to nuthin').

Two of us spent something like 19 hours driving alone.  the other three (EM, Mechanic, and AMCKen) spent like 5 hours stripping the third eagle) but it was really hard to get everyone together, make the trip, and actually save those two eagles.

It's a tough hobby - Saving cars.  and with these salvage rules, it makes it tougher.

[shanebo]

It certainly begs the question.....how many AMC Eagles are still in existence.

[Whuntmore]

Ya, really huh?

I remember back in '88, there were quite a few people who just dropped AMC then.  They were really cheap then (and I would have grabbed a ton of them - but there wasn't any internet to look this stuff up with) even the Javelins, and other more sought after models. 

But I remember how many then were going to the junkyard back then (or just sitting around in fields - Now we know why), or used in demo derbys... 

So maybe a third to a quarter of the production number are not totally gone?  Probably allot less.

[shanebo]

197,449 units were built between 79 and 88Im guessing there is under 30,000 left at  the rate they are being crushed

[Sunny]

It would be great if there was some law that was passed like the "endangered species" act.

That's a great idea.. Except people have different tastes.
One person thinks an Eagle is the best car ever built.
The next person think's it's ugly junk.
That would go for a lot of cars built after the early 70s.
A lot of car's from the 70s/80s are either a love it or hate it approach.
I'm sure that a lot of junk yards don't realize how many people still drive/love Eagles, so when they get them in they think.. OH this is never going to sell.. Crush it.

My dad used to have a buddy who worked at a scrap yard some 20 years ago.. and he said the car's they used to crush would still pull 5K easily now for a rolling chassis, just because they didn't realize what they had.

Tire shops used to toss out TONS of GM Rallye rims and trim rings/caps that now pull 600$/set at swap meets.

I bet you a lot of worth saving cars [of every make] have been crushed just because the owners thought nobody would want them.

[Whuntmore]

yah, I know reality sucks, and it all boils down to the 'almighty Dollar', and not everybody thinks this or that car is worth saving.  People used to think (what am I saying?? some still do) Pacers are crap, and all of them should be crushed, yet There's AMC Pacer lovers out there.

The Corvair and the Edsel were considered lemons in their day, but there's car clubs for those as well.

But that's just the thing - There's always someone out there (somewhere) who does want this, or that car.  I mean there's car clubs for just about every make (I consider a Grand Am to be a pretty common car, yet there are Grand Am car clubs - and I'm talking about people owning the newer ones - '97, '98, '99, 2000 and newer)

But if say (in our perfect world), Some old couple had a 1950 Nash, or like a '67 buick, or something that had a solid body (not necessarily a rust bucket) and it was complete, just not a DD, and they didn't want it/no time/money/etc, and they just wanted to get rid of it, it shouldn't be automatically scrapped and crushed just cause it went to a junkyard.

I think it would have to boil down to something like this:  If the car is rare (or somewhat rare) and not in production anymore, has a rare motor, and body is in good to very good shape, it should be considered not allowed to scrap.  Something like that.

We could also consider that (still in a perfect world) that any scrap/junk/salvage yard would have a current list of all the Car Clubs out there, and 'so called rare car' comes in, the appropriate club(s) get notified.  That wouldn't be that hard to do.  they have programs 'web crawlers' that do searches for things like mailto tags and such, there is no reason not to be able to write a program for a database where when specific info gets entered (something flagged rare) an auto mailing goes out to that club site/email.

Wouldn't that be great?  It's not reality, but I can still dream...

[shanebo]

Its true...If they dont make it anymore theres probably a club for it...Theres even a Yugo club!

[craigp29690]

We've got one yard around here that used to have quite a good inventory of older stuff.  I waslooking for apart and did an on-line search and found it listed at their yard.  When I called the guy said no, we don't have anything any older than 1990, scrapped all the old junk.  I thought, moron!.

Another place I frequent here is one of those high end commercial yards.  You know the prices before going in, no surprises, neatly laid out, cars are up on rims off the ground for underneath access and just a nice place to go pickin'.  But they have no rhyme or reason on how long a car stays in the yard before it just gets crushed.  They've had several cars I had been going back to pick off of and then all of a sudden, gone.  But what is hard to understand is that the 1998 burned Ford Taurus is still there 3 months later, but the 77 Grand Fury sport is only there for 3 weeks before it gets crushed.

They told me they couldn't sell whole cars once they went on the lot, something about their license, but if I was there when someone pulled it in off the street, that would be a different story.

[Whuntmore]

Its true...If they dont make it anymore theres probably a club for it...Theres even a Yugo club!

That's just wrong...  But who am I to judge another's love for a car type.

Well, I really wish things were different, but that's a pipe dream...  It's an industry, and it's there to make money - No matter how much it doesn't make sense.

[Zoro]

There was a NICE 85ish Eagle sport wagon sitting at the local tranny shop near me for a long time. I had finally asked about the car and was told the first $200 will tow it away, I told the guy that I had to wait until pay day and I would be back. When pay day came and I got to the tranny shop I missed the car by 15 minutes. I called the junkyard that it was being sent to and was told NO before the Eagle had even got to the bone yard. If I remember right it went straight to the crusher and was not parted