from the look-on-my-works-ye-mighty-and-despair dept.
And now for something completely different.....
One man's collection of Once Magnificent Autos is rotting away in the German woods.
And that was his plan all along.
Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW; just a few of the iconic names whose logos you would never expect to find on vehicles in such a sorry state. But what might really shock you is that these unfortunate automobiles are not actually abandoned, and their owner is in fact a classic car lover and expert himself, who has deliberately left these cars here at the mercy of mother nature.
The owner collected fifty classic cars and parked them in back woodlot as a present to himself when he turned 50 in the year 2000.
Even in the shape they are in, some of these cars could bring in ten thousand dollars from classic car restorers. But the owner isn't interested in the money.
This is his (semi) private monument to post apocalyptic automobile landscapes. Or an expensive junk yard. Its hard to tell.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @01:16PM
Seems like a monument to decay and aging... He bought cars made the same year he was born and bought them when he turned 50.
fifty classic cars were parked here when the car enthusiast turned 50 in the year 2000. Each and every car is from the year he was born, 1950
A guy at peace with the inevitable decay or at least not in denial of it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @05:54PM
I think its a Buddhist exercise, akin to sharing a room with a decomposing body.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @11:30PM
If there were skeletons of dead car fanatics, sitting in the seats, holding onto the steering wheels, and it was a true graveyard, I could go for that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @01:24PM
Being an antique truck nut I have seen the same kinds of collections rusting away. There are old timers who build up wonderful collections only to let them rot until they die. The family then has the property cleaned up by scrap yard and sells it. Pretty pointless. A recent posting by a photographer on a truck page drew a lot of criticism aimed at the "collector". Beautiful models including rare Mack LT's & LJSWX, rare International Harvesters, Peterbilts, Kenworths, Whites, etc. Many of them in restorable condition. The photographer defended the owner saying "it is his right to do what he pleases. you can't save everything". And I can partly agree with that. Is is the owners property. But at the same time, why let it rot until you die? Especially since there is money in there. Sell them off and give the money to your family. I mean they might get some money from the scrap yard. But the effort to come in, dig out, and haul off all that junk might leave you with very little in scrap value. Why be selfish?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday November 10 2014, @01:41PM
Basically this looks to me like the famous American railroad baron who used to light his cigars with 100-dollar bills. The guy evidently gets off on making a show of being such a rich, knowledgeable, well-connected collector that he can afford to throw away a dozen cars that other collectors would pay a fortune to have. Because he's that much of a dick.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @01:49PM
That is more of what I had in mind.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday November 10 2014, @03:01PM
I watched a model A 10 years ago literally get demolished by an old barn slowly but surely collapsing onto it because the old prick refused to sell it or do anything to save the vehicle and I'm sorry but those kind of people are just fucking douchebags! Shit like that just really pisses me off because it is a waste of something nice for absolutely NO reason or benefit, but you'd be surprised how often rich folks can be just fucking worthless douchenozzles.
I have a friend that works on the city roadcrew and you'd be fucking amazed how many times he brings me PCs that are practically brand new, I'm talking loaded to the max computers that in some cases still have the plastic film on the front, just sat out on the curb. He'll go ask the rich pricks why they are tossing it only to get told "oh I went out and got the latest model, you can have that if you want its just junk". Hell this one I'm typing on right now is one of the ones he picked me up in 2008 and when he brought it to me it was less than 8 months old, still had the plastic film on it and at the time this C2Q model was going for something like $1200 on the HP website....just kicked to the curb because a new model came out. Talk about spoiled pricks!
I don't think if you gave me a billion bucks I could ever stand being so fucking wasteful, to just destroy something that someone else could find useful like that. At least I can say with total honesty I've never wasted anything somebody else could use like that, from my old King Cab that threw a rod (sold it for $200 to a teenager, he dropped a new motor in it from a rear ended Sentra and turned it into a sweet little sport truck) to the older P4s that end up in the shop which I sell in lots of 9-10 for the $30 in gas it takes me to drop em off to an old retired guy who refurbs them into $10-$25 towers for poor folks. I try my damnedest to make sure anything that somebody can find useful gets used, even if I have to waste a little of my time and money to give it away at least somebody who can find a use for it will have it.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @03:13PM
> you'd be surprised how often rich folks can be just fucking worthless douchenozzles
True. And the same of poor people who are wasters too. Jackasses who buy smartphones and then don't realize it's going to cost them a month's wages for service for the year. Assholes who buy a brand new car at the dealership and make payments on their car and stupid looking chrome rims, when a used car would be perfectly serviceable and 10x cheaper. Dickwads who eat at McDonalds when they could buy a weeks healthy food for the price of a lard burger and fries. These are all the scum of the earth, lowest of the low, despicable excuses for human beings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @03:39PM
Somehow, there's something qualitatively different about a person who chooses to spend $6 on a BigMac rather than $6 on a week of rice & beans, and a person who chooses to spend $600 on 100 BigMacs, to eat one and urinate on the other 99.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @04:34PM
Different actions, both performed by fuckwads and assholes.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday November 10 2014, @03:52PM
Dickwads who eat at McDonalds when they could buy a weeks healthy food for the price of a lard burger and fries.
I know you might have been exaggerating, but McDonalds is cheaper than healthy food. Lard burger with fries and a bucket of soda is about $7 if you order it in heart attack size. A weeks worth of fruits and veggies around $45. Meat averages about $5 a pound and milk and bread isn't any cheaper. Healthy, nutritious food is becoming a luxury commodity.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10 2014, @04:24PM
Beans and rice, eaten by huge swaths of the world, is far cheaper and healthier than McDs.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 10 2014, @04:41PM
but McDonalds is cheaper than healthy food
$7 McD meal * 3 meals a day (holy F would that fatten a guy up, but whatever) * 7 days/week = $147 vs your own spec of $45 for real food.
Healthy food is enormously cheaper both short and long term. One danger is caused by retail supermarkets, they obviously make more money off $7 worth of pizza rolls than $1 of lettuce, so lots of work is put into selling people air shipped kobe beef and russian caviar and really exotic out of season stuff from the other side of the planet. If you lower yourself to the pink slime and soy protein level of fast food, the equivalent is the partially rotted "day old" produce shelf that's just a step above compost, and that stuff's practically free although still healthier than McD.
Another big problem is waste or accounting errors. So a nice bottle of Italian vinaigrette costs maybe $2 and the lettuce head costs $1 so a salad costs $3, so its only half the cost of mcdonalds, right? No, thats enough lettuce to feed two people and a weeks worth of salad dressing even if you drown the thing which is pretty gross. So the cost is more like 55 cents. You run into this logic alot with snacks like carrots. Yeah, a serving of fries at McD is only like $1, and a bag of organic carrots is like $3, oh the injustice that "a" carrot costs three times as much as a pouch of french fries. But you dont need to throw out the other 11 carrots in that bag of carrots, suddenly "a" carrot costs about 25 cents or a quarter the cost of the french fries. I buy a can/bottle of almonds for a snack and its expensive, I think the last can was $7, but it lasts me about a month, making it rather cheap compared to daily vending machine "food".
I slow cooked a $10 beef roast on Saturday and ended up with 8 person meals out of it. Well, a lot of side dishes like my wife cooked green beans and stuff, so its really not $1.25/person/meal but probably closer to $2 once its all done. And I put a fair amount of spices and stuff on the meat before I cooked it. $2/person is probably about fair. Even at $3 it would be a good deal. Can't even buy a quart size corn syrup soda cup from McD for only $2.
We're getting into the thanksgiving season and the semi-stereotypical cost per person is about $5, so you can eat like an obese king for less than your McD example. Personally I can't stand thanksgiving fare (usually totally blah and boring and bland and super high carb), but it will surely fatten up even a picky eater for relatively little cost.
Generally our weekly grocery bill is about $120-$140 for four people so you're looking at about $1.70 per person per meal long term average for "really good food with some wasteful luxuries and some junk food". Compared to McDonalds thats pretty cheap! I'd round it up to $2/person-meal long term average because there are the occasional "stop at store and pick up something forgotten on the way home".
Tonight is looking like $8 of steamed fish split four ways and the last of the green beans (hopefully) and some carrots so we'll call it maybe $2.25 per person.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday November 10 2014, @07:09PM
Look, I don't dissagree with you. Preparing your own food is cheaper than eating out. However, the point I was making was
Your argument is correct, but I first commented becasue it the OP's inaccuracy. A McD's meal costs about a days worth of healthy food, not a weeks worth. Also, I wanted to make the point that not being able to make your own meals and eating healthy is expensive, to a point that only the mid to upper middle class and higher can afford.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Monday November 10 2014, @11:56PM
Another really cheap health food is beans. They are loaded with fiber and protein, and can be had for about $1/can, or about 25c a serving. Black beans, pinto beans, whichever ones you like. If you rinse them out good before using them, you won't fart much.
Another stealth health food is salsa. A big jar of Tostitos costs about $3-4 and if you look on the ingredients, you will see nothing but A-list vegetables on it.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:52PM
Yeah, but Pythagoras warned us about beans. Are you trying to destroy our civilization?
That is all.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Monday November 10 2014, @04:51PM
I know you might have been exaggerating, but McDonalds is cheaper than healthy food. Lard burger with fries and a bucket of soda is about $7 if you order it in heart attack size. A weeks worth of fruits and veggies around $45.
So a week's worth of McBurgers and fries costs $49, and a week's worth of fresh vegetables costs $45... And that proves that McD is cheaper?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 10 2014, @08:20PM
One of the films I saw about junk food ("Fast Food Nation", perhaps?) also contained the falacy that junk food is cheaper. Embarassingly, they followed a poor family round the supermarket where they picked up a head of brocolli, said "sigh, one whole dollar" (for something which would have been good portions for the whole family for 2 days), and put it back. Cut to the kids eating happy meals (which cost more than a dollar). They had the evidence in their hands that good food is cheaper than junk food, and they simply didn't recognise it. Even the cheapest and best value junk food is about 10$/kg - almost every ingredient will be cheaper than that. If you start adding anything like (5c of potato) fries to that, or, heaven forfend, a drink, then there's no way that it can compete with real food.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday November 13 2014, @04:17AM
Boy ain't that the truth! I spent a few months living at the state capital while working a job and I found that buying a week's worth of groceries there, nothing fancy either just meat that wasn't all grease and basics like bread, milk, potatoes and corn, would set me back nearly 90 bucks for the week and I'd be stuck eating the same thing for a week and having to have cereal on the weekends OR I could just go by Mickey D's and getting lunch and dinner there I was looking at around $6.75 a day for 2 meals so when you figured in the cereal and milk I was coming out 30% cheaper AND I actually got to have variety instead of eating the same thing all week!
This is why I no longer judge poor folks for bad eating habits because frankly you really can't eat healthy on poverty level income, you just can't. And don't bring up those that have made videos because they are ignoring the advantages they have which rigs the tests like 1.- having full size fridges and often having deep freezes, many apts have mini-fridges and no deep freeze so you can't buy in bulk and save like they can, 2.- Being in a decent neighborhood they have easy access to quality food, go look at what the grocery stores on the poor side of town stock and you'll see that isn't the case, its all fatty meats and veggies bought for shelf life NOT taste. Figure in the increased cost of getting to somewhere that has decent groceries and the number of trips required because you just don't have the storage room? You find that its just too expensive for those living in poverty.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday November 12 2014, @02:19PM
There's a huge difference between a fifty year old car and an 8 month old PC.
The PC still has functional value. The car is basically only aesthetic value. Sure, you can restore the car and drive it around just fine, but you're going to spend more than buying a modern junker for a car with less power, fewer comforts, and fewer safety features. Nobody buys these cars just to drive them around, they buy them to admire it.
So I can't really bring myself to care much if idiot collectors let cars rot instead of selling them to other idiot collectors. I'd prefer they crush them down and recycle the thing, but whatever. Either it rots in Joe's barn for ten years, or it rots in Jeff's garage for fifty. Buying the damn things in the first place is pretty wasteful if you ask me...no different than people who'd buy a Picasso painting for thousands of dollars, or the latest high fashion every year, or a massive collection of thirty year old computing equipment...it's all pretty equally useless.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @01:57PM
Arrrrgh, hit post instead of preview.
My other point I was going to make is this: it's like those hoarders and collectors on those shows that cant bear to part with their crap. Meanwhile most people would shovel that shit into a dumpster and haul it off to the dump or scrap yard and be lost to time forever. If it has value to someone then sell it to them. Let someone use it if it has value. Sell it, save the money and let it grow.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday November 10 2014, @04:06PM
(basically, what I replied below)
You don't seem to be considering that he actually attaches value to this state of affairs -- enough value to go out, find all these cars, buy them, and have them transported.
In contrast, most folks commenting how evil he is have not gone out, putting in time and money to locate these vehicles and put them to a use they find valuable.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @04:18PM
I don't consider it evil. I can understand someone wanting to collect. But to collect and then let them rot isn't really collecting, it's hoarding. It is a mental problem.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 10 2014, @06:43PM
Demonstrating how the greatest toys made the same year as you will rot and decay isn't hoarding.
It's some kind of lucid statement on his own decay and mortality.
You may not agree with it, but it's not a mental issue.
I just hope he drained the fluids and removed the batteries. No need to make an environmental mess out of the thing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 10 2014, @07:29PM
Demonstrating how the greatest toys made the same year as you will rot and decay isn't hoarding.
Rot and decay when you don't take care of them. His argument is rather pointless. Sure, nature will "win" when you let it. So what? We didn't get where we are (or make those marvelous cars) by letting nature win.
Many collectors show that nature can "lose" when someone takes care of the machine in question. And if he's "saying" something about his own decay and mortality, then perhaps so are all those collectors who do take care of their stuff.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @08:46PM
I read that part. But I can't understand his feelings. We already know nature always wins. It is an absolute given, everything is finite. I suppose he has become more aware of his mortality when he passed the half century mark. Many people do.
If he really is aware of his mortality and wants to enjoy life then he should shed his possessions and free himself from the burden of ownership. Convert that junk to money and enjoy life using that money. Then let someone else beat nature at its own game and breath new life into the automobiles. Or use them for parts.
Again, he can do what he wants with them. I just don't like what he is doing with them. My opinion, my thoughts.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday November 11 2014, @01:54AM
Do we really need a demonstration to know that 50-year-old cars will fall apart if you leave them sitting in the woods and don't take care of them?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday November 10 2014, @02:54PM
Feel free to make the owner an offer.
Incidentally, you might also want to do that for all the other antique trucks and cars who are currently not getting the treatment you think they deserve.
You'll likely find that the value some people attach to what you call "rotting away" is greater than the value you are prepared to offer for what you might call "saving them".
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 10 2014, @03:55PM
The point is these people will not consider selling, PERIOD. They just don't want to let them go. And perhaps you are right, they attach some sort of value to them. Perhaps sentimental. Maybe they feel rich because they have this stuff. Maybe they like having the old iron around to keep them company. Maybe its an art collection to them. I don't know.
I have seen plenty of people pop onto sites selling an old truck for $10000+ and have people either laugh at them or break the news that it is only worth scrap because of the effort needed to restore them. They can hold out forever but many cave in and just get what they can, usually above scrap value. Or they simply scrap it out of frustration and spite. I once saw a mint 60's Autocar DC go to scrap, with a rare supercharged "iron lung" Cummins NHRS because the owner didn't want to sell it for nothing and would rather junk it than let someone have it for "nothing." People are pricks.
I purchased a 1961 Mack B61. It was restored in the 80's, ran great and had a lot of great factory options and added goodies. The engine was a factory turbo Mack 671T diesel with a factory Jake brake, runs like butter and starts within three seconds of cranking. It has a factory roof mounted Kysor air conditioner. The previous owner added a 25,000 pound (11339.8kg) winch made by the now defunct Freuhauf, another rare addition. So a running and driveable antique truck that was loaded was worth $9000 to me. And that is a bit high but I knew what I was getting. I also received all of its paperwork and history. If I ever get tired of it or can't keep it anymore then you can be sure I will sell it and make the price more than reasonable just to be sure it gets a good home and goes fast.
One more thing: collecting shit is really a dumb thing to do. I should know, I collect old computers. You don't own it, it owns you. I trimmed my collection down but I kept the good stuff: NeXT station, two AT&T Unix PC's, MITS Altair 8800B, SGI systems, IBM System 80, Franklyn ACE 1200 (an Apple IIe clone) and a few others. Still takes up a lot of space. And they only make me feel rich in the sense that I own a piece of history. Other than that they are crap. But I would never throw them out.
(Score: 1) by skater on Monday November 10 2014, @04:13PM
The article implied that he's doing it to demonstrate that as great as these cars are, nature is still more powerful. In other words, it's an art installation. Kind of a neat idea, actually. It's hard to see running cars left to rot like that - but that's the point.
(Score: 1) by Translation Error on Monday November 10 2014, @06:36PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 10 2014, @11:30PM
As to the claim that "Nature is stronger than technology", were any of these cars intended to be left in the woods for more than a decade? To make it genuinely sporting, the builder should have intended for the car to be used in that way. It's a whole different thing to actually make a luxury car that is intended to be left in the woods for thirty or so years and still be quite road ready at the end of that time.
Maybe it is as impossible to do as he claims, but nature is not an insurmountable power. While there are a few things, like the overall entropy of the universe, which can't be reversed or evaded, most of nature can be overcome with enough technology, time, and energy applied to the task. For example, maybe you have a robotic repairman (self-repairing too) stored in the trunk of your Rolls Royce who can repair the car (even should it be completely destroyed - obviously without destroying the robot as well), keep the bar topped off, and the chrome polished.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday November 12 2014, @04:48PM
Most of what most people do in life is relatively pointless anyway. Sorry, but it's true. You sleep or relax through about half of it. Another third leaves you (almost certainly) working at a job with no discernable benefit to society other than keeping you and your family semi-stable, easily discardable bricks in its structure.
Why? Because human life is disposable. It has to be, otherwise the world would collapse when we, inevitably, die. It is cheap to produce.
Are you so genetically superior that your genetic offspring will change the world? Are you going to go down in history as a genius of some sort? If not, you've basically become one of the faceless crowd that shuffles through history doing work, but otherwise, to the world at large? Well, what you do really is pointless in the larger scale of things. Or, more precisely, you doing the things you do is relatively pointless. It's a simple matter of statistics.
That is all.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday November 10 2014, @02:06PM
Lots of nut jobs out there when you talk about cars (I'm referring to the comments in TFA). Fanatics much? If the guys owns them, he can do whatever the heck he wants with them. I actually like the looks of them like that :). Would make for a good scene for a shooter or something.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 10 2014, @04:49PM
He can do what he wants, but using what you can get away with as the sole arbiter of morality/ethics is generally not a good idea.
Its almost exactly like buying a bunch of museum grade fossils and running them thru a rock grinder to pave your driveway just to show off that you can do it.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday November 10 2014, @03:10PM
This article was one of the suggested links on the site: Abandoned supercars in Dubai after economic crash. [messynessychic.com] Sounds like an amusing topic for a Top Gear episode.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh