Britain's scrap yards 1965 ( from ..Look at Life ,Rank Organisation)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- the Rank Organisation was huge in Britain in the 1960s in fact I worked in one of their electronic divisions around the time this film was made. The look at life series documented British life in the sixties, a bit like Pathe I suppose.
Car dumping was a big problem in those days, I remember as a kid finding old cars in all sorts of places, great fun when you are little ,it was some years before a car breakers opened up, then sadly all the cars went there.
This video is an edit from a longer film about recycling in Britain at that time. the Look at life series is available on TH-cam from various channels.
![The British Policeman [1959]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Kw8xjagiRao/mqdefault.jpg)
Imagine finding classics like these nowadays!
O.M.G.!! That last car, a '36 Buick, still had all its hub caps, spare tire covers, and glass!! Today, that exact car would bring at least 25k, and when they were done, it was worth 25 cents. What a waste.
Its only worth 25k today because most of them ended up in a scrap yard.
because at the time it was probably the same as crushing a vauxhall corsa today, if they had saved them all then they wouldnt be worth anything now!
OD green too, it was an old US Army staff car. Left after the war I guess, then nobody cared to save it until this was filmed years later.
Back in the 1950/1960-ies this Buick was just a worthless old junk-car, people want new cars and goods, so many of good, fully functional cars, washingmachines, TV-Sets and other stuff end up at waste-disposals, in flames, the forest, rivers and so on
@@spamanator666 Those old American cars were thirsty old beasts, also if they needed spares they were well nigh impossible to get and if you could get them, bloody expensive!
One of my fathers friends had owned a scrap yard in the '50's and '60's. He used to recount how he had cut up four 4 1/2 litre vintage Bentleys because they were just worthless gas guzzlers. Todays price? About half a million £ each!
That's wot got Dai Woodham an OBE fer savin' all them steam engines.
Good job he did too
@@mikeschillinger4427 Dai Woodham was canny enough to realise that cutting up redundant coal wagons was more lucrative than going through all the asbestos disposal procedures which you have with locomotives. When a preservation society was willing to pay him scrap value for a complete loco without him having to light up a cutting gun it was a no-brainer.
mad thing is, the metal from these cars will have been recycled well over a 100 times now.
No forethought those days , those cars are priceless today .
Aye, but by reducing the number of 'em, the remainder are worth more to those who want 'em. If they'd saved 'em all they'd not be worth owt.
@@mikeschillinger4427 Thats true , but the way people treat cars not many would have lasted anyway . The latest cars these days for sale look like they triple their age .
Rust proofing has improved .....pity about the human brain
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 Perhaps its money saving methods . Stamping car panels from sheetmetal lacking certain alloys . Rust takes over and the panel has to be replaced . Like mass produced products that dont last . Just dont make it last for ever , because you will ruin your own business , even though your expertise should be tops . Happened to me , never to see another order again .
@@kreefkreefie2808 the new film if just uploaded about the mini, no rust proofing it was extra back then, most didn't bother
Good old day's a lot of classical car's that would be worth a mint today.
Not classics back then. Just 20-30 year old jalopies to be melted down for new Minis & steel I-beams. Just like how today we send a 2001 Merc to the scrappers after its workable parts have been scavenged.
Ah, even in the halcyon days 50 odd years since, chancers still dumped their crap everywhere.
Love how the fella just sets fire to the interior with petrol and a match, welders no masks or ppe, and folk just wander around under a car suspended 15 feet up in air thats about to be crushed. Stick that red one on a flat back waggon too.
Lot to be said for Health and Safety, but theres even more to be said for just knuckling down and getting on with the job in hand.
Quality of the footage is superb.
Just set it on fire 🔥 😂 oh the days when you had no rules
That was a rule and best way to do this and it was in the modern era!
Like doing business in many countries today, juging by the smog and soot, and the associated illnesses!
Those were the day's 👍... If only we'd had a big shed to store things 😭😭😭😭
The Copper on the beat didn't seem interested. Things haven't changed then in 55 years.
Only if it was on a yellow line, then it would be covered in tickets
They have, today it would say the police haven't even been down the road in months 🤣
MOTS introduced for seven year old cars in febuary 1961, from 1960 voluntary I suppose a lot of the older cars had survived the war stored in garages, yards etc. Cars were hard to buy new after the war, by 1965 loads of new , modern cars coming on the market. So rip the pre war banger.
Oh no a 1936 Buick crushed at the end, totally complete with wheels as well, i nearly cried, beautiful old American car, better than the old shit that we produced here in England
Yes that was depressing seeing that.
I wish all those cars were on the side of the roads now I would collect them for free.😂😂
wouldnt last five mins now,
I could cry about the early rare motors no more, damn shame..
A lot of beautiful cars
About five or six years ago I was working on Old Kent Road in a garage that worked on and restored old Citroen Traction Avants. We had a rotted body shell that had to go for scrap after stripping it of anything usable in the restoration of cars that have not been made since 1957. David came from the scrap yard from nearby. He cut it up with an axe! Guy was about 70 years old, too.
The days of walking into a breakers and removing the bits you want are long gone, the last time I went the parts where removed for me, health and safety no doubt.
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 Here in Toronto there are no scrap yards at all. There are places in the States that will allow it, but those are places in Arizona that have a lot of really old cars and cater to classic enthusiasts, not owners of modern cars.
Price they charge at scrappy round here ,might as well get stuff new...the days of getting a gearbox for a tenner are long gone
@@giogio4833 I used to go to a junkyard where the owner was a total crook, but he had the stuff and no one else did. I paid his high prices but I always left with something stuffed down my trousers.
They remove the parts for you and charge for their time now
I remember many years ago seeing a similar film which must have been made soon after WW2. It was shot in a scrapyard for old RAF Spitfires & Hurricanes etc. There was this guy pouring petrol over them and setting them on fire to dispose of them. Absolute sacrilege. What would they be worth today?
I've since tried to search for that piece of footage but haven't been able to find it online anywhere.
I've seen photos of B-17s and B-24s being cut up for scrap, so depressing but they were built to win the war just like the Spitfires and Hurricanes. But still, thinking of Spitfires being so cruelly treated makes me kind of sick.
I've just searched "look at life", there're dozens of them. That's this weekend's viewing taken care of, thanks.
Yes, interest ing series of films arnt they, about all aspects of life not just motoring, glad you enjoyed the film
NOOOOOOOO !!
BUICK 1936 de Luxe 😢
Nowadays they just take them while you’re still in it and driving 😬
Only in certain areas and our friends “mr Smith & Wesson” can cope with that scenario...oh and good luck!
@@theonlybuzz1969 It’s a nice idea but Smith and Wesson’s aren’t legal here so unfortunately we can’t shoot the thieves...
Reg numbers alone today would be ££££££££££, every vehicle featured would be big money today. As an owner of classic cars for the last 37yeras I could cry, but hey!! Progress has now sorted this problem............not
It was great as a young lad going to the scrap yard on a Saturday afternoon with a bag of tools and getting parts for your car! You might of also picked some copper coins in the ashtray! Then elf n safety came along and stopped it! Another liberty extinguished!!!
And that’s why a law was brought in to stop just dumping your old banger on someone’s doorstep
It's enough to make a grown man cry....
Made me a bit sick on that last one.
All the cars in that film are worth a fortune now, I didn't recognize the big one in the crusher at the end, it looked decent before it went in
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 LOOKED LIKE A 40'S CHEVY TO ME. BODY-WISE ,GOOD, AND VERY RESTORABLE TODAY.
Made me sick too....car would be worth a fortune today !
I think that's a Buick straight eight, lovely old car but at that time the fuel consumption would have been prohibitive, but more to the point spare parts would have been virtually unobtainable, you couldn't just buy a ticket and hop on a 747 like you can now.
@@MrDaiseymay It's a 1936 Buick. Today it's easy to find parts for it.
I wish I could get even one of those derelicts.
Long live my 1965 Pontiac Parisienne 2+2 hardtop coupe .
Sickening waste of cars, imagine setting fire to a scrap car today as part of its disposal routine! no PPE, how things have changed, but one thing that hasn't is human's extreme wastefulness no wonder the planet is in such a mess!
The problem in those days we where knocking out cars faster than we could dispose of them, the breakers yard as we know it was in the future, scrap cars were worthless you had to pay to dispose of a car, a great time for kids though, find a dumped car and make it even more of a wreck.
Same happend to all the Trams, old Buses, even Railway Carriages, stripped of mental, then burnt, massive fires ,and smoke everywhere.
I have a film about that exact subject, will post it in a day or so
...things haven't changed - Chinese importers of wrecks from Australia still fire the cars on the decks of cargo ships in international waters. Dioxins, aldehydes...you name it - pumped into the atmosphere every day. Burnt plastic - dumped in the sea. Outta mind, outta sight.
I'm amazed that still goes on in this so called enlightened world
I remember as a kid a funny Rag & Bone man who used to push an old handcart from street to street shouting "Yag bone.....Yag bone". For some reason he couldn't pronounce 'R'! It seemed to take Brits a long time to wake up to the idea that there was a lot of money to be made from scrap metal.
Oh yes I remember them well, I once tried to give our local rag and bone my grandfather's best shirts in exchange for a gold fish, lucky my gran fought me in time, but then I was only 7 .
If I had seen this film when I was ten years old I would have lost my mind such was my obsession with 'bashed up cars'!
Yes I was like that, bashed up old bangers fascinated me shiny new ones not so much
The scene at the very end with the American car goes right through me. Most probably right hand drive. I try to see what country at the back.. on the metal country sign. It just goes to show that in those days old cars were old cars.. no sense of nostalgia.
Ah but in those days the veteran cars where the cars to have, they where the ones turning up in barns and being restored, the youngsters see cars from the eighties and nineties as collectable, and consider the real old timers as antique, fit only for museums. As they say time marches on.
The scrapyard in Waltham Cross was Jones's. Sustained many a local teenager's motoring needs over several generations. 😂
Used to go there for parts back in the sixties, about 30 mins away from me, you want what lad, oh there's one up there on the top car.
1:04 is a '53 or so Packard, then later crushing a US Army Buick Staff Car that looks probably been left there after the war. Sad stuff.
Looks Packard to me a special one for someone important it's got a sunroof? It must have had a interesting history as it was very expensive luxury car when new?
These old cars would be worth thousands now
4:19 That is just plain wrong ...
God damn you are right ! It was a straight one. But also don't forget , that it's valuable now , because thousands were scrapped . And back in a day it was an outdated pre wwii car. And people just wanted to get rid of all the reminders of that time . at least in US they used to make hot rods from old iron, thus giving us modern car culture. Brits are only famous for top gear and j. Clarkson which continue the tradition of destroying straight and rare cars XD
@@13garage._ Snaggle-toothed Idiots...
what a shame, that was a perfect car
Scrap steel at £500 a ton and it just lies there?
Oh. Hang on a minute, this film was made when they mined coal and made steel in Britain.
andrew allen
When Great Britain was great.
Just for a minute there I thought that was my first car. Wrong number plate. Mine was CHS 879. It failed and went for scrap in 1960.
Yes the MOT sent thousands to the crusher, pity
OMG i feel old , i can just remember the rag n bone mans horse n cart
100% recycling nothing wasted, history can teach today's recycler's a thing or two
Oooo the hotrodmanity!!!!
Its amazing how no one could get away with this today, and then it would sit there for atleast a day.
And then how people could take parts they wanted.
The thing is, a car like that would not last that long, it would either be burnt out, a tempted theft, or even just dragged into a scrap yard and weighed in for scrap, by some local scrap men. You cannot even leave any parts on the driveway with out, someone having a sniff at them.
Copper walks past wrecked car in the road, does nothing.
An Austin 16 I believe.
People sometimes used to bury there cars in the ground to get rid of them
But where do you put all the soil it would be a huge hole 😄
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586People used to bury motorbikes that was a bit easier😂
Back in the early eighties my brother and his wife bought a new build bungalow on a new estate, there was a bit of a mound in the back garden. My brother decided to level it only to find an Austin A35 buried in it. Cut the roof off down to the door tops, scrunch it up and bung it inside the car, level the ground off. job's a good'un!
@@jonathangriffin1120 👍👍
Thumbs Up Liked.
Thanks for your feedback
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586
You are welcome.
Scrapyards of the 60- 'Got a carb for an Anglia?' 'Yers mate- over there, 3d row and about 3 up...'
Yes usually the top one, sometimes the bottom one with four others rocking preciously as they threatend to fall on you
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 Ah! I remember those days fondly! Yep, the rocking motion was a bit off-putting!! Cheers. Leigh.
@@theoriginalwallace We often 'displaced one or two' to get to what we were after, back in the early 70's. A saturday mornings 'shopping' so much more rewarding over the 'breakers' when witin 10 years, id been spending saturday (under instructions) in a queue at Tescos...
pity those beauties would make a great restoration project . Put a huge v8 high performance
motor in it , some slicks and you have the sleeper of all sleepers .
No wonder we had fogs in the 60s and 70s
Come to think of it, we haven't had a decent fog in years
Modern recyclers pull the engine, fuel tank and transmission and then feed the rest into a shredder that uses electro magnets to separate the steel and iron from the aluminum and copper. The EPA in the states doesn't allow burning of the cars anymore so the bits of upholstery and plastics are automatically sorted as well and sent to landfills or in the rare case Biden hasn't closed a fossil fuel plant, sent there to be burned to make electricity. Pity they crushed what appeared to be a decent 1935 Plymouth.
Good recycling and waste streaming is a costly and labour intensive process and they have to get the balance right with regulation to continue to keep it viable. In the 80s a raft of new regulations destroyed much of the scrap yards of my youth where I could cheaply get recycled spares to keep the older vehicles of my poverty stricken early motoring career running efficiently. At least you don’t have to “fire” them anymore as the scroats that steal them from your drive provide this valuable service to society entirely free when they have finished with them as the final insult and to thwart the forensic team.
Edd China cries as Wayne Carini grins.
2:20 Health & safety..?? 😂😂 Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do!.. These cars would be worth millions today!
The chaps using oxy-acetylene torches - all without goggles. They will have retired more or less blind, with ruined retinas and cataracts. Cataract operations were still well in the future.
@4:19 What make vehicle w. sidemounts? Was it former military paint job?
36 Buick
Jones' scrap yard at Waltham cross?
Bernie Coe,s yard potters bar was my local
Acetylene torch..... no goggles.... .such was the time... .
Yes times have certainly changed haven't they
Well they had ..plasters bandages etc in well stocked ...first aid kit ...the size of a fag packet ...and one of them had completed a course with Red cross first aid ..
At 4:20 is that a Packard they crushed??
I nearly cried :(
Ford V8 Pilot
@@dr2stroke611 No, way bigger than a Pilot
A yank I would of thought, a bit long for a pilot
No, Packards had a squarer top to the radiator grille. Possibly a '35 or '36 Dodge, which also used upright slats. Top of the range though, with those spare wheel covers. Probably worth around £40000 now in that condition.
Wow, burning out the cars, huge plumes of smoke from the machines engines. when people whine about the pollution these days maybe they need reminding of the old days
Yes the air is 100s of times cleaner now, at the time this film was made most had coal fires, the buildings in citys where black , we had lead in petrol, then there was the good old steam locos on British rail, 😃
This is what I say, the air has never been so clean and they still keep finding ways to tax us for it and generally bugger up our lives.
@0:35 Enoch Powell?
Wasn't he in the Tories then?
Powell was minister for health up to 1963
@@jackflashvintagemotoring7586 Yes, then the Unionist Party in Northern Ireland.
...Narrator sounds a little like Anthony Hopkins....!
That's what I thought.
Yep i can here the lambs now
Modern crushers 250 cars an hour
Is that sir Anthony Hopkins?
Where?
@@tomkent4656 the voice over
That’s a Tesla in 20 years
As long as that, how many battery changes will a Tesla of had in 20 years I wonder
What was the car being crushed ?
a 1936 Buick. A nice one, too. They were doing it for a demonstration for all those guys in suits standing nearby. A shame about that one.
Gentlemen 1 : 0 safety...
Give me the job at fireing I'd be good at that
Mad ! A rare glimpse into the past 🤯
I remember taking my much hated Austin Allegro to the tip to get rid of 2 sacks of Hedge trimmings. When i got back into the car to leave the car threw a conrod. I was so pissed off i just abandoned it at the tip as unwanted scrap &called a Minicab to take me home 🤣🤣🤣
I was driving my hated Chevette once, the thing semi combusted on the dual carriageway...I took the next exit, limping along...took the 3rd exit from the roundabout, down a very short lane and into the entrance of a scrap yard..A bloke came out of a Portacabin, 'ya can't leave that there'...
'Watch me' said I, as I flipped him the finger, walking away towards the bus stop.
That actually happened.
They deserved the name All Aggro. I drive a 1972 Hillman Avenger now, it's a sweet car to drive.
They should of taken all allegros straight off the production line and to the scrap yard, just cut the middle man out😆😆😆
I used to run a Bedford chevanne for business in the early 80s it had rust holes in the inner wings at 4years old, if I drove through a big puddle water would shoot out though the hole killing the engine
@@video99couk Utter DRIVEL! Only the stupid gave them that name and usually the thickos that watched Top Gear or the people that didn't look after their cars or bought an unlooked after car and then blamed the car/manufacturer when they had problems or broke down. I had a 1980 Austin Allegro 1750 TC Equipe and it was an excellent and totally reliable car as was the 1978 Allegro 1500 LE that my brother then mother owned - then again we looked after and serviced our own cars because you could not trust the garages, fast fits etc to not rip you off - another reason that cars got bad names because they were ripping people off saying that the cars needed things done when they didn't - not to mention them using cheap rubbish parts on the cars as well and then blaming the car/manufacturer when things went wrong again.