Madd Doodler

In the winter of 1999 I received a call from a local man who bought and sold scrap metal telling me of a field full of junk cars he was cutting up for salvage. He knew there were Studebakers in the lot and he thought there may be some parts left on them I could use. As anyone who collects Studebakers knows they tend to search you out after a while. Everyone who knows of one tells you about it thereby enabling your sickness as if you need any help.

I went to the site and found there to be around 30 cars of all makes, models and years. It was a fairly warm day for February, and there wasn’t much snow on the ground, so I took some time to look around at all the cars. What I found was quite unusual. Every vehicle in the lot had mileage that matched the year of the vehicle. For example, there was a 1958 Ford that had 58,000 miles on it, a 1948 Plymouth with 48,000 miles on it. After seeing this on a few of them I checked each vehicle there and found they all were the same. I’m not sure of the reason but the man who had owned the cars drove them til they had mileage that matched their year then parked them in his side field to rust away. They had been there so long that the trees were all grown up around them and most had to be cut up to be taken away.

There were two Studebakers in the bunch, a 1951 Champion and a 1952 Champion, both were two door sedans and had the matching mileage like all the rest of the vehicles there.

I took a few photos of the cars then set out to pull as many good pieces and parts off them as I could before it got too dark to see. There were some decent small trim parts but nothing great. The best part was the history that sat forgotten in the wooded field just a few hundred yards from a main road, and nobody had seen the cars for years.

The following day both cars were drug out with a bulldozer and cut up for scrap so the photos are all that’s left of their unusual resting place. Why the man gave up on a car once the mileage matched the year will never be known for now he and his cars are just memories.

My mother is quite an accomplished artist and after seeing the photo of the ‘52 painted an oil picture of it for me for Christmas. I’ve had prints made of this image. The ‘51 had suffered the fate of having two trees fall on it so it didn’t have much to offer anymore.

Read about a 9-year-old driving his first Studebaker

Contents copyright Madd Doodler Publishing 2010

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