Classic cars in a wrecking yard

Driving one of those would have looked like this:

 

Those Hillmans are Husky wagons, and they are not common at all! Rare when new, and very seldom seen now, especially on this side of the Atlantic. Hillman was the Rootes Group answer to the small Austins and yes, the Ford Consul/Anglia. Ma had a 54 Minx, her first car. They also made Rapier (more up market) and Humber (very up market). The Humber Sceptre was a very luxurious little car indeed, with the same body shell as the Hilman Minx, which is what the Husky was based on.

 

Audi was a postwar conglomeration of four German marquees: Auto-Union, DKW (Dampf-Kraft Wagen, in English 'Steam-Driven Car), Horch, and Wanderer. Auto-Union was famous in the '30s for their silver V12 powered racers.

 

In one of the first pics, there is a 70 Buick Wildcat, based on the rear bumper shown over the engine compartment. The front bumper still has the tri-shield emblem in the center... if you go back, pick that up for sure. On most 70's those disappeared pretty fast and they very difficult to find, so they are in demand.

 

Now that you mention it, I remember that the little car did say Auto-Union right on it.

 

Yeah, there is a Wildcat, in fact I'm fairly certain there were a couple of them.

 

Yup, the four circles in the Audi corporate symbol stand for the four makes in Audi.

 

What's with the remaing 4 cylinders?

 

OK, so it was a V16...been a long, long time since I've read about them. I get confoozled lately, likely from my slow blood volume.

 

Nice tour, thanks. I don't have any idea what kind of yards like that (if any) are in Pennsylvania.

 

Looks like a private wrecking yard; 2 old Skodas in Australia:

http://www.autotrader.com.au/cars-for-sale/1963-SKODA-OCTAVIA-COMBI-JCW3251871

 

The Wartburgs were East German continuations of the DKW 2-cycle cars. Here's a van built around a modernized DKW engine. The last ones, including the Trabants and Wartburgs became 4-cycle Volkwagen water-cooled engines and new trim. The article says the new dashboard pictured is modern. But, not necessarily an aesthetic improvement. The second image is the reservoir for the space heater fuel. The caption warns that only 4-cycle gasoline should be used to fire it up:







The caption claims that the 2-cycle set-up was reliable and it was when the powerful Volkwagen engine was bolted up that the drivetrain started showing flaws, despite minor drivetrain modifications:



The differences in torque between the new and old engines was overwhelming, despite an undramatic difference in top speed:



I prefer the instrument panel looks of the older Barkas:

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Fantastic pics and cars. Some real oddball stuff there. I LOVE places like that. Thanks so much for posting!

 

Can't get enough oddball stuff. Eh? Well, here's some more. Knock yerself out



The image at left is the dashboard from behind. Underneath, the commentary points out weight-saving details. The commentary in the middle image claims the brakes look more impressive than their braking capability:



In the 2nd image, the shiftgate was unusually set up, so that 2nd gear was right next to first. The middle image was captioned to say the more than 6 liter (around 400 cubic inches?) 16 cylinder engine put out more than 520 horsepower which was unusually high output for its day.

 

However they performed, they certainly were very beautiful machines. Oh, and I was partially right...the cars eventually ended up with 3.0 liter V12s after the Grand Prix sanctioning body limited all cars to that displacement. But that's okay, as the V16 cars could spin the tires at over 100 MPH, and had horrible oversteer. They were like driving Pandora's Box.
The really sad incident with them was Bernd Rosemeyer's untimely death, attempting to break the world land-speed record. His run was on a closed section of the Frankfurt-Darmstadt Autobahn, and at a reported speed of about 268 MPH, he skidded left, then sharply right, crashing at the side of the pavement. His body left the car and came to upright rest at the base of a tree, having pulverized every bone in his body.