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DainBramaged

(39,191 posts)
Sat May 18, 2013, 06:33 PM May 2013

Memories of the empire rustle loudly in the dirt ( a GREAT read)

Their Ghosts Still Haunt The Place: How Four GM Motorama Show Cars Were Saved from the Scrap Heap


An old-school junkyard, Warhoops Auto and Truck Parts squats on 15.5 acres of dirt speckled with the detritus of our throwaway culture. A Cadillac propped against a tree exposes its Northstar to the sky. Bent buses and crumpled cop cars line up against a white fence. It’s forgettable real estate except for one key attribute: location.

Tucked out of sight in an industrial area in the working class Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, Michigan, across the road from a Ford transmission factory and just a little north of the plant where Chrysler assembles the 200—and a straight shot up Mound Road from the General Motors Technical Center in Warren—the yard has been a fixture in the area since 1955. Founded by Harry Warholak Sr. the same year GM moved its Research and Design operations into the Tech Center, Warhoops is steeped in local car lore. Yet the wider automotive world will forever know it as the place GM sent its Motorama dream cars for their unceremonious burial.

Current-day proprietor Harry Warholak Jr. invites us to sit in his car for an interview because there’s no room and no privacy in his small office, which is little more than a warm shed packed with a counter, a desk, scattered memorabilia, and a door to hide some plumbing in the corner. Warholak explains that “Warhoops” was a nickname acquired by his dad during World War II, based on his ­Polish surname. The elder Warholak earned a Bronze Star as a mechanic tending B-17 bombers. Until he died in 1997, some people still called him Harry Warhoops, even after he turned the nickname into a trademark.

“I was in high school, probably 14 or 15, when Dad took me with him down to Warren to see these cars,” Warholak remembers. “It was all the Motorama dream cars, by that big steel-roof dome they’ve got at the Tech Center. I was too young to be involved in the negotiation, but you can imagine how my eyes got like saucers. These dream cars–the Buick Wildcats, Cadillacs, La Salles, Firebirds, everything–and he told me they ?were coming to our yard.”





http://www.caranddriver.com/features/their-ghosts-still-haunt-the-place-how-four-gm-motorama-show-cars-were-saved-from-the-scrap-heap-feature
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Memories of the empire rustle loudly in the dirt ( a GREAT read) (Original Post) DainBramaged May 2013 OP
What happened to all the car parts yards, anyhow? dixiegrrrrl May 2013 #1
Ground pollution, noise and nuisance ordinances by towns put the out of business DainBramaged May 2013 #2
Oh...didn't Ladybird Johnson have something to do with that??? dixiegrrrrl May 2013 #3
Her thing was roadside cleanup Mopar151 May 2013 #4

dixiegrrrrl

(60,010 posts)
1. What happened to all the car parts yards, anyhow?
Sat May 18, 2013, 06:53 PM
May 2013

Back in 1962, I remember some weekend dates with my future husband were spent in his pursuit of car parts, and we had at least 3 "junkyards" to prowl thru in town, and twice the number only a few miles past the town limits.
The man was...still is...a mechanical genie. ( we are long divorced)

Any old timers here may remember why he was so proud of his 1953 Merc "with glass pack muffler"
or some such phrase.

DainBramaged

(39,191 posts)
2. Ground pollution, noise and nuisance ordinances by towns put the out of business
Sat May 18, 2013, 07:00 PM
May 2013

The few that remain are now 'salvage' yards, and they are well-oiled machines.



http://www.salvageyard.net/

Mopar151

(9,965 posts)
4. Her thing was roadside cleanup
Thu May 23, 2013, 03:32 AM
May 2013

The yards had to put up fences, or crush/scrap the cars. Some of my local buddies got an award for using dirt berms instead of fences - in a few years, it just looks like brush growing up to woods.
And the crushing thing hit a critical mass with Ladybird's roadside cleanup - The junkyard guys near me who went into portable crushing had 3 tractor-trailers with "Ladybird" on the bug deflector, and they bought a lot of race cars from turning old Buicks into angle iron.

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