Saw a kinda sad sight yesterday. A couple weeks back, one of my deputy friends, a car guy himself, told me in conversation that he happened upon a place while looking for someone they had a warrant for that had several Mavericks laying around. He gave me directions to get there and yesterday with a light workload I had time to go looking for it. It was a piece of rural property that was turned into an off the books junkyard and there were 4 Mavericks there in all kinds of disrepair aside from numerous other cars and light trucks. Three small bumper and one '73, all 2 doors. I stopped and spoke to the owner, a nice guy. He wasn't looking to sell the cars and told me he had hopes of putting one back on the road someday, the '73. He was willing to sell me the side markers on the worst of the lot but not really anything else. There was a nice set of dog dishes on one but he wasn't parting with them. He wasn't going to charge me anything for them but I still paid him something. Told him I wasn't there to get something for nothing. I have my doubts that he will ever get any of them back on the road at all and what a waste as all of them have salvageable parts, it not any of the cars being restorable. Sitting in the grass in our climate, the undersides were most likely toasty if not gone altogether. From the last valid inspection stickers on them, most were off the road for upward of 20 years or so it isn't hard to imagine condition of what you can't easily see. He also told me he had some parts squirreled away like a Grabber spoiler but they weren't going anywhere. At least he wasn't a jerk like a few I've come across. He was a very friendly and approachable guy especially after I assured him that I wasn't there to arrest him. Right up the road a short way were several tri five Chevys all showing some work had been done on them to restore but were languishing away to nothing. I see a lot of wasted great old cars doing policing in rural America, stuff you don't see in or close to the cities. Farther up the road someone had several Fox platform Mustangs just sitting obviously for a while. Now, this was just on one road all within less than 2 miles of each other. I learned a while back that many of these people just won't sell the cars or parts off of them for whatever reasons they have. Curious thing but way too common. Shame.
Absolutely right ....... it is a shame how some get it in their head, "I'm going to do something with that someday" - and as you know, it will sit until someone else takes over on that property and sends them all to the crusher. Happened here with several cars I knew about. The hoarding mentality is tough to deal with. When I was a fireman I was in several homes where rooms were packed floor to ceiling with "stuff". Hardly a pathway was left to get through the room but don't even suggest to the people to clean out anything. It is like gold to them.
I just went past a car autobody shop that had a Maverick sitting out front ,I had stopped and ask about 20 years ago and was told that the owner did not want to sell it, the usual story that he was going to get to it one of these days , I went past the place a couple weeks ago and it was gone so who knows maybe he did get to it or somebody finally talked him out of it or it just got hauled away for scrap ?
I know where there is a yard in Florida which has over 500+ cars. Everything from fast back mustangs, barracudas, chargers, early corvettes, SS, etc... lots of high dollar cars all together worth a few million or so....just rotting to the ground. There is 8 Mavericks in the yard and he won’t sell a single piece off of them or any of the cars. He was offered 3 million dollars for the lot and turned it down. He will never sell and when he passes most likely it will all go to the scrap yard .
