Murilee Martin

Two weeks ago, we had a 1993 Honda Civic with 414,982 miles on its odometer as our Final Parking Space subject.

Subaru began selling the Leone in the United States as a 1973 model, and all Subarus sold here (including the BRAT) were Leone-based until the appearance of the XT in 1985. Today, we'll admire an example of the late Leone, a loaded wagon found in a Denver-area yard in 2024. The Leone name was never used in the United States, despite the car going through three generations here. We got Leone coupes, hatchbacks, sedans, pickups and wagons during the 1973-1994 period. Just to confuse…

We've seen a couple of first-generation Chevy S-10s in this series in recent years, and now it's the turn of the SUV-ized version of the S-10. I spotted this well-traveled S-10 Blazer in North Carolina two years ago. I'm always looking out for junkyard vehicles with odometers showing better than 300,000 miles, and this truck is by far the best-traveled member of the S-10 family I've ever documented. Like most high-mile vehicles I find in car graveyards (with a couple of notable exc…

Stay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox.

During nearly 20 years of documenting interesting junkyard machinery, I've written about a half-dozen discarded examples of the original Ford Maverick (plus four of the Maverick's Mercury-ized siblings). None of those cars had the Grabber trim package, disappointingly, but now I've found a genuine Grabber in a New Mexican boneyard. The Grabber package was available for the 1971 through 1975 model years. If you want to get respect for a restored Maverick at a traditional American car…

Stay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox.

Genuine mid-1970s-style custom vans still show up in the car graveyards, a good half-century after they reached their cultural zenith, but it's tough to find one that has remained largely intact. Here's a Chevy Van at a Denver junkyard that's an honest time capsule, down to its authentic purple shag carpeting. This once-righteous custom Chevy got parked at some point in the late 1980s and didn't move again until it was towed into the recycling ecosystem this year. What makes a prop…

Stay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox.

These days, nearly all of the Porsches you'll find in American car graveyards will be Cayennes. From the early 1980s through the middle 2010s, the 924 was the Porsche junkyard king, and discarded examples still show up now and then. Here's a first-U.S.-model-year 924 that now resides in Greeley, Colorado. The original idea behind the 924 was that it was going to be sold as both the cheapest Porsche model and the most expensive Volkswagen model. This had worked, sort of, for the 914.…

Stay up to speed with stories written by drivers, for drivers. Get automotive news, DIY tips, market trends, in-depth car profiles, and more right in your email inbox.