I'm really rewinding the clock for this one.

Back in 2011 at the end of a long summers day exploring I stumbled across an amazing car graveyard outside an abandoned cottage. The cottage itself was a little time capsule however my shots of it are poor at best as the lighting inside was awful. This was the first real car graveyard I had ever found in the wild and it would still be up there with one of the best were it not for what happened afterwards leaving a very sour taste in my mouth which I will go into below.

It was amazing to find somewhere so untouched, and I shot to my hearts content amongst the couple of dozen cars sat on the property. However what followed was a sorry tale of what happens when locations get leaked too soon, as only a matter of days after my visit someone worked out where they were and let the location loose. The next day one of the cars was winched out, and thanks to the location being published in magazines and online over the next few months the place got smashed to smithereens by braindead morons. Every window and every piece of glass on every car was broken and pieces of concrete were bounced off their roofs and other panels, it was all very distressing to see. There was also some other stuff that I personally was accused of at the time - which the accuser later understood was false once he heard the real sequence of events - which then indirectly lead to the setting up of an old blog which took great pleasure in outing thieves in the community for a short time.

After all of that crap went down it left a very bad taste in my mouth in relation to this location and I pretty much washed my hands of it. It's still there now although all the cars were removed and the house is little more than a shell, and only recently have I been able to look back at my photos of the cars with a bit more happiness as I was one of the very few who managed to see them as they had sat for years beforehand.

What happened to this location is the main reason I rarely ever share where car graveyards are, not even with most of my friends a lot of them are kept just between me and my other friend who I shoot them with.

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Thanks for looking

Managed to post this in the wrong section like an idiot - if a mod could move it that would be grand

number 6

Badged in the USA as "Le Car"

number 9

Badged in the USA as "Mercury Capri"

Number 15

Could never get the hood up on these to check the oil level when I pumped gas, 43 years ago...

That Citröen DS is awesome. Actually, most of these are, but that's the one that excited me the most. The Beetle is a close second (because European spec) and the R5/LeCar in third.

That loss is a damn shame.
I take it you were either bundled up or careful during your explore there? That's quite a few stinging nettles. I learned about them the hard way.

Posted by corvidcache That loss is a damn shame. I take it you were either bundled up or careful during your explore there? That's quite a few stinging nettles. I learned about them the hard way.

Always careful around them, never wear shorts exploring for that reason!

Sadly they are a real pervasive nuisance during the summer months in the UK but you just get used to them after a while even if they still hurt like a bitch, me and my friends have walked through shoulder height patches of them with our arms up in the air holding tripods etc before ha.

Some of those license plates don't even have state names on them! That's how old they are.

Posted by Gamewolf66 Some of those license plates don't even have state names on them! That's how old they are.

They're also Eurpoean.

That's a bummer. Obviously you must have provided identifying info in your photos or posted enough info along with your photos for someone to figure out the location. Did you ever figure out what it was?

I love the Citroën DS, that's my personal dream car.

Posted by ahhntzville That's a bummer. Obviously you must have provided identifying info in your photos or posted enough info along with your photos for someone to figure out the location. Did you ever figure out what it was? I love the Citroën DS, that's my personal dream car.

It was a location that was already semi-known about within the classic car community - at a guess, someone saw the pics and then told someone else oh its that place near 'x' and word spread and then snowballed, like it does.

Also Flickr appears to be being an arse and not showing any of my photos!

the citroen ds looks awesome.

The Talbot Tagora (11) and Renault 14 (18) are almost impossible to see on the roads in the UK.

Great pics!

my god, even though it goes against everything I would have killed to get that Citroen DS safe in my own garage. I love those cars so much! Fuck the guys who ruined this place.

These are awesome! I can relate to that sickening feeling you talk about after a place like this gets outed and destroyed. At least I can understand the motives for people that scrap and steal. I even get the tagging to some degree I guess, but I just cannot for the life of me understand what anyone gets out of vandalizing and destroying places and things - especially historic and/or valuable places and things. I'm pretty certain that if I did something like that, I would feel like shit. I'm always surprised at how many people out there must feel the exact opposite since it's such a common problem.

Anyways... this location reminds me a lot of one here in North Texas that I visited a few months back. I haven't been to a lot of car graveyards, so it was definitely a unique treat (and it was winter, so I didn't have to worry as much about the bees, bugs, and poison plants as I would in the summer).
I love seeing the ones like in your photo (#12) of the car with the tree growing out of it! This always puts the chronology in perspective for me and makes it that much more awe-inspiring to see these relics being taken back by mother nature. Chronological clues are always one of the first things I look for when exploring, whether it be calendars, objects that define a specific bygone era, or the approximate age of a tree growing through the hood of a vintage car.

Nice work!

Here's one from Texas with the tree included:

Montague Relics by Dee Ashley, on Flickr

Posted by Gamewolf66 Some of those license plates don't even have state names on them! That's how old they are.

not too many US plates on junked cars in the UK I reckon

Posted by Hawkwind number 6 Badged in the USA as "Le Car" number 9 Badged in the USA as "Mercury Capri" Number 15 Could never get the hood up on these to check the oil level when I pumped gas, 43 years ago...

42 years ago I was turning wrenches at a euro car dealership in Dallas TX, Triumph MG Jag Rover but we also claimed to be a Renault dealer, never new why because they never sold any but we did work on them, One of the worst motor vehicles ever made and when the Le Car came out they sold a few it and it proved to be the worst of all. When they crapped out after the first couple thousand miles you could not even get Renault to warranty anything

Nice find mookster being a car guy myself these places always make me sad, we got one or two . . . hundred thousand, car dumps as well I can see a small one on a neighbors ranch from my back porch! lol. The rural US has a junk car just about anywhere theres enough space to dump one. Or twenty.