(frogs croaking)
- This is the best day you can have,
finding a hoard like this.
There's muscle cars, there's vintage cars,
there's race cars, just cool stuff.
I'm Tom Cotter.
The first car I found I was 12 years old.
I'm 61 years old now, I'm still finding cars.
And in this series, you'll see
that there are still plenty of cars left.
(rock music)
This is a good deal.
I don't know what it is,
but there's a rumble coming out of the back
so we'll see what happens.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just let it go
until it either fixes itself or breaks.
(rock music)
That's what's broken?
- [Voiceover] Just to bolt back down, it's for holding.
- Heard about a place called Bubba daiz or daz, D-A-I-S-S,
from somebody earlier this morning.
They said these are the old car guys in town,
and so now we're going to go to Bubba's towing yard.
Hopefully, they have cool stuff we can look at
and maybe can recommend other places for us to go.
Okey-dokey, let's go take a look at some rust.
Is that a real SS?
- [Voiceover] Yes.
- [Tom] Oh, wow.
- [Guy In Red Coat] The '68 numbers matching car.
- [Tom] '68 numbers matching,
is that a big block or small block?
- [Guy In Red Coat] Small block.
- And is that Bubba's?
- [Guy In Red Coat] Yes.
- [Tom] That's got big old wheels in the back. (laughs)
- [Guy In Red Coat] Yeah.
(heavy rhythmic rock music)
I mean, I'd say a thousand bucks or less,
somewhere around there.
- You take credit card? (both laugh)
Is that a big block Chevelle?
- [Guy In Red Coat] Yes.
- [Tom] Big block Chevelle convertible, cowl induction.
- [Guy In Red Coat] Big block Chevelle convertible.
- [Tom] So, is it like, '72?
- [Guy In Red Coat] '72.
- So it would be a 502?
- [Guy In Red Coat] It's a, that one's actually a,
that's a 454 car.
The Chevelle's came with a 396 big block option
which is actually, from '69 to '72 is a technically,
a 402, 402 cubic inches.
- [Tom] Ah, okay.
- [Guy In Red Jacket] 396, they call it a 396 because
the name had been like that for so long.
- Ah, okay.
(rock vocals)
This is a 1958 Morris Minor.
You know, most car enthusiasts would walk right by this car.
It's no big deal, I've got a personal
love affair with Morris Minors, I race one.
Finding a Morris Minor in a yard like this,
usually they're rust buckets.
It's got longitudinally mounted torsion bars in the front.
That's your front suspension, instead of springs,
and they mount to the cross member,
right in the middle of the car.
Usually that cross member's so rotted that it's just broken,
and at that point, the car needs major surgery,
or a new frame.
So usually I walk by a car like this
thinking it's a rust bucket, which I did the first time.
But then I came back and it had right hand drive.
So, that's interesting.
But the problem is most right hand drive Morris Minors
come from England and they come here as rust buckets.
But this car, the A-U means Australia,
and the V-I-C means Victoria. This car's an Australian car.
And over here there's a New Zealand logo,
so this car actually sat
in very, very dry climates its whole life.
So I crawled underneath this car, the torsion bars are good,
the floors are solid, the body's good,
and all the glass is good, it's got four hubcaps on it.
What's unusual in this car, it's got semaphores,
which are these little blinkers that come out,
so it doesn't have blinkers coming out of the lights,
it's got these little fingers that stick out
and light up at the end.
Kinda comical but that's what they had in England
and in Australia.
If somebody wanted to fool around a cheap car,
these cars are bullet-proof, they're fun to drive,
they're easy to get parts for because any part
from an MG Midget will go on here,
parts from Austin Healey Sprites will work on here.
Would I own this car, yeah, I would.
Will I, probably not
'cause I'd need to find a divorce attorney.
And if Bubba would sell this at a good price,
somebody watching this should buy it.
(plucking banjo)
- [Voiceover] Last on the road, 1959.
- It looks like it's made of brass.
So this is a little French car,
you'd never see in the States.
So what are we, this is like what, a '64 maybe?
- [Voiceover] I have no idea.
- [Tom] Yeah
So little four cylinders, single barrel carburetor.
Look at all the room, I mean look at that room.
Oh, look at this.
It's the original Shell oil specifications
for the car when it was new.
Look at that, Shell Retinax, Shell Spray
and Shell Spirax.
(energetic banjo)
(car engine revs)
So this is a GMC that you'd want to give on to your son,
and it's got a big block in here now?
- Big block, 454
that was not running when I got it.
It was just trading some parts I had, got it home,
couple hours, had it running, it's definitely built.
I've always wanted a GMC front end one it's,
for every 500. - [Tom] It's beautiful.
- [Bald Guy] Chevy's they built,
they built maybe a hundred GMC's.
(plucking banjo)
- This is the best day you could have,
finding a hoard like this.
There's muscle cars, there's vintage cars,
there's race cars, just cool stuff.
So we're going to walk around through there.
I'll show you up close and personal.
(strong rhythm guitar)
Cadillac is one of the most iconic
automotive designs in history.
It's probably the largest American car ever built.
It's a '59 Cadillac and the body was actually designed
by Pininfarina in Italy.
It's ironic that Pininfarina designed small Italian cars
and they designed this boat.
Lots of Camaros here.
El Camino '70 Challenger, plum crazy 318 car.
No engine in there right now, it's got a transmission.
'69 Charger.
Unusual car, I can't remember the last time I saw one.
It's an American Motors Rebel.
It's got a 327 American Motors engine, not a GM motor.
Automatic, 2-door coupe, hard top, neat car.
That would be a neat car if you fixed up a car like that
and brought it to Cars and Coffee, you'd be the only guy
with a car like that at the Cars and Coffee.
(rock guitar)
'66 Charger, there's two of them there.
This one had a 383 from the factory.
It now is a 413, you think about that Beach Boys song,
413's really digging in, that's the motor this has
which is a big Chrysler motor.
It's got automatic on a column
and there's another '69 Charger in the corner
that has automatic on the floor.
These are all hot-rods by the way, if you look
the wheels are all drag wheels.
They're either chrome or slotted alloy wheels.
So almost everything back here is a hot rod.
This is a kinda of an emergency vehicle
that was on an airbase.
If someone got hurt, there's stretchers in the back,
and it was down in Florida.
By the way, he drove it back here,
so probably without a lot of work,
this car could be a running, driving car again.
So we looked behind this fence,
and Dan let us come back here.
You like Ford, he's got Fords.
You like Camaros, he's got those, too.
He's really a Mopar guy, he's got Chargers,
he's got a Challenger, he's got a Cadillac,
he's got Mustangs, he's got a Fairlane convertible,
he's got a '56 Chevy Sedan Delivery.
This is like a hodgepodge of car collecting,
and this is wonderful.
This yard offers something to everybody
who's into old cars.
Finding old cars, you gotta be a salesman.
You gotta talk to old mechanics,
find out where the old restorers live,
go to auto part stores, go to repair shops.
It's not always easy to find old cars,
but if you look over a fence once in awhile,
you ask the right questions,
sometimes you come across a bunch of neat cars
like we found in Savannah.
We found cars in the town of Savannah
and now we're west of Savannah.
So if you think you can't find cars in a metropolitan area
like Savannah, I've got news for you, you can.
Happy hunting.
(rocking guitar)