Junk yarding. It’s a pastime to some folks and a means of income to others. However you perceive it, the thrill of the hunt—particularly if you find a part needed for your own project—can be quite enjoyable.
The days of finding vintage Pontiacs in my local junkyard are over. The oldest examples are typically late '80s vintage, at best. I'm finding as much enjoyment scouring through newer Pontiacs.
There’s a pull-your-own junkyard in Omaha that I’ve been visiting since the late ‘80s. My first trips were with my dad while he was hunting small parts for his ‘72 Trans Am restoration. I remember being captivated by the variety of GM products on the lot at any given time and being able to pull your own made each trip a welcomed learning experience for me. Once I reached driving age, I began making regular trips on my own in search of treasures for my Pontiacs or simply to buy-and-sell. My visits at first were monthly, but it wasn’t long before I increased summertime frequency to weekly as I learned just how quickly good cars were picked over.
This '01-04 Grand Prix GTP was amazingly complete. The paint was glossy and the leather interior was clean. The supercharged 3800 was all there, too. There's no telling why it was there.
Over the years I sincerely looked forward to each junkyard trip. My imagination ran wild with what treasures may have been placed on the lot in the days since my last visit. I never knew what I’d come across as I walked up and down each row of scorned vehicles in the GM section. While it never resulted in anything like a round-port Trans Am or Ram Air GTO, I still had many great scores that I converted into spending money for my own Pontiac projects. There were also the somber moments when I happened across a well-used Pontiac I knew from the Omaha streets, now in its final stage of its life. One of which was my former ’75 Grand Prix!
Pontiacs are as plentiful as any other make in my local junkyard. Here are four in a row. With Pontiac's discontinuance, this sight common today will fade away.
In the nearly 30 years that I’ve been frequenting my local junkyard, I’ve seen body styles come and go. And a couple of years back I reluctantly accepted the fact that the era of finding anything with a Pontiac V8 had passed. In fact, it was hard finding any GM product on the lot equipped with a carburetor and/or a distributor with mechanical advance! That realization curtailed my regular visits, but what made abandoning that regularity even more convenient was the ability to view a vehicle inventory list online. Instead of physically visiting the junkyard every week to ten days in hopes of finding something good, I now check online to see what’s new and make the trip on an as-needed basis.
It seems that whenever I find a fourth-gen Firebird on the lot, it's well picked over by the time i get there. A recent check of the online vehicle inventory of my favorite local junkyard revealed three newly-placed Firebirds. I was there in hours!
These days I find that there are still many, many Pontiacs on the lot and most are Grand Ams and Grand Prixs. With Pontiac’s discontinuance in 2009, that will eventually subside, too, but we’re also in an era where fourth-gen Firebirds are old enough and so well used that they’re fodder for the pull-your-own salvage yards. Generally speaking, there isn’t more than one fourth-gen Firebird or Camaro on the lot of my local junkyard at any given time, and it’s usually picked over so quickly that there’s little left beyond a body shell by the time I get there.
This '96 Firebird was remarkably complete and obviously still roadworthy. There wasn't any immediate indication of why it was salvaged.
During my cursory online inventory check last week, I was absolutely stunned to find not two, but three Firebirds, a ’96, ‘97, and ’99 recently added to the list! And because I have two last-generation Firebirds, I loaded up some tools and headed out. While on the drive there my mind wondered about the treasures to be found. Could one be an LS1 car? What if another was equipped with the optional WS6 package? And did I have all the necessary tools to pull the appropriate goodies?
Despite worn paint, this '97 Firebird was quite clean and was chock full of parts waiting to for another '97 Firebird owner.
When I arrived at the lot, I excitedly walked up and down each row until I found all three. They’re weren’t the V8-powered Formulas and Trans Ams I hoped, but instead were three well-used base Firebird models powered by the 3800-series V6 scattered throughout the GM section of the lot. Each was in decent shape overall and very original and mostly complete. Checking over the exterior, I noticed typical paint wear. As I checked over the sheet metal portions of the body and chassis, I found all three relatively rust free. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much usable I needed for my projects, but I still poked around looking for small interior pieces, engine compartment clips, and any removable body panels that might be worth pulling to save and/or flip.
As the owner of a '99 Trans Am, I was very interested in what components I might be able to pull from this '99 Firebird on the lot. It was in the roughest condition of all, however, and provided little to me. There were plenty of good parts still left for others.
As I rummaged through the trio of Firebirds, I caught myself experiencing the same level of excitement and I had decades earlier when it was ‘70s Pontiacs that I was rifling through. I began thinking about a time in the hobby that seemed much simpler (and cheaper!) and how much fun I had junk yarding. Conditioned into believing those days had passed, I was having that same emotion nearly three decades later as I pulled trim pieces and knobs from the late-'90s Pontiacs. And best of all, I managed to walk away with $8.84 of small part satisfaction!
This image of an otherwise clean '85 Fiero is enough to make Fiero fans cringe!
What Pontiacs have you found recently in the junkyard?