The last Land Rover I parted out came with an autographed photo of Don Ho tucked above the visor.
The last Land Rover I parted out came with an autographed photo of Don Ho tucked above the visor.
I forgot. In the same car with the $40+ in change was a bery nice Leatherman and a decent Gerber nife.
About 20 years ago a local dealership around here (Southeastern MA people will remember Silver City) had some crazy blow out sale on their used cars. They held this sale on a Saturday with radio commercials all over the place. They guaranteed one car would sell for some crazy price of $1 or something silly like that. Said dealership allowed you to line up ahead of time, and then let everyone into the yard to claim their car. A kid I was working with decided he would go and try his luck. He camped out all day Thursday, and Friday morning, and was one of the first people through the gate. He surveyed the cars, and found some crappy old 83 or so Cadillac. You know the one with the weirdly angled trunk that look like it was cut off accidentally. He laid his claim, and camped out in said car all night for the auction/sale the next day. He spent the whole night chasing people away that wanted his claim. The next day he ended up with the $1 car or whatever the deal was. The whole ordeal was crazy, and the cops were called, and told the event organizers that this would be the first and last one of these.
My coworker got this hooptie home, and over the next couple of days he found around $60 is spare change in the car. I don't think the car lasted the rest of the year for him, but he was rough on vehicles. So he was paid to take this car, but had to sleep in the parking lot of a scummy dealership for a couple of days. Hardly worth it for some E36 M3 box Caddy. But he did it, and didn't regret any of it. He also did his own tattoo's (poorly) so you know the type.
My rabbit had one page of a 1996 playboy under the spare tire mat. Hopefully just water damaged. It went with the car when I sold it.
I found bumper irons to a 1940s Hudson in my garage attic.
May have left a bag of "I swear it's just oregano" in the first aid kit of my 500SEC when it was sold.
A French fry that was probably many years old but looked like it was made yesterday.
I found a set of spare fuel injectors, and a NIB rear license plate light in the trunk of my NB when I bought it. It replaced the one broken one that was on the car.
Other than that, it was a boat load of US and Canadian change, a stack of 'Ted Strickland for Govenor' stickers and some religious comic book thing.
I found a crack pipe under the dash of a 1976 olds cutlass.
They left the optional rubber weather floor mats in the trunk of the FR-S when I bought it and didn't charge me for it.
A friend of mine found a baggie full of crack behind the glovebox of a car.
Not a car that I bought, but in a car abandoned at work, I found a VERY sturdy plastic coathanger that I still use ~10 years later, and a sealed jar of peanut butter that fed me for over a month.
At high school, a fellow student abandoned an early 70s Skylark. I grabbed a book off of the parcel shelf - paperback The Hunt for Red October. Still one of my favorite books and I give it a cover-to-cover every so often.
As for cars I have personally bought? They've always been fully cleaned out by the P.O. I did buy a car that turned out to have an ACT clutch in it, which was kind of a white elephant because that clutch killed many, many transmissions.
Syringes in a 86 Corolla SR5. I do not know what it was that they administered.
$62 in change in Rusty the Miata
A dime bag of old, dried out, unusable weed behind the tool kit in the trunk of a 535is.
A child sized Dodgers cap under the rear seat in a Mitsu Diamante.
Empty, new syringes under the seat of a '98 outback. These are handy - fill with sewing machine oil and use to lubricate model train stuff!
Several adult human teeth under the front seat of a junkyard wreck Sentra parts car. berkeleying gross.
I had forgotten about the most useful item: Like new condition OEM lead hammer in parts car MGB (used on hex nut wrench for wire wheels). Still use it after 40+ years.
My brother's accord when he bought it we found actual Hezbollah music on tape in it.
What's even more funny is that not one year later the local mosque was found to have been donating to Hezbollah since the 1960s.
A terracotta planter in the shape of a raccoon. Still filled with dirt. The strangest part was I bought the car from an unbelievably racist used car dealer. I would have spent more time poking around the car before attempting to drive it home but the guy gave me the creeps so I just bought it and left. How he acquired the car and put it up for sale without ever checking the trunk I can't imagine. Or maybe he knew it was in there and didn't care? Or maybe he was cleaning up his yard one car sale at a time?
I found the Ace of Spades playing card in the Volvo wagon I bought last year. Trans lasted about 8 months in that one.
I love car treasure.
My First car, a pair of early 80s rwd Mazda 626s Which became one. one was pretty empty, the other had 20 something dollars in change under the carpet, several used clipseal bags and a very dodgey bong made from a juice bottle under the drivers seat. Also had a pretty ratty converse T-shirt and some skate and surf mags in the boot.
I was pulling parts from a Kingswood for a mate of mine and found some tapes, they were recordings of a guys police interview. Apparently he "accidentally" shot his dad on a hunting trip
A Ute given to me by a neighbour when he moved came with some screwdrivers, change and a pretty decent tape measure that I still use.
An old Chrysler centura i got for free yeilded some rather nice mtx speakers hidden in the boot.
The Forester I bought earlier this year for my partner came from a cop. It had a pair of socks, a can of deodorant, a few bits of random children's toys, some coppied pink Floyd and doors CDs and a police name plate. He was a pretty cool. I asked him what department he was in, to Wich he replied "general duties". We then proceeded to have a chuckle about how E36 M3ty most highway cops are. When I cleaned the car and found the name plate etc a few days later, the name plate had highway patrol on it.... I let him know about the stuff id found and sheepishly thanked him for changing my view on highway guys. He laughed his ass off, said it was all good, thanked me for the laugh and being the kind of guy to let him know about the stuff he'd left in there and told me to enjoy the Floyd.
I believe that someone asked if they could recoup an 8 ball found in a Challenge car years ago 
I think police interview tape is most interesting so far! Im not sure if Im going guy who, even just finding one 10mm socket, instantly considers the car purchase redeemed no matter how ridiculous it was. But I also have a problem keeping 10mm sockets around also.
In the back of the '94 SW2 I bought, I found a Lexus First Aid kit. Simple, but a nice bonus. Also there were some "brackets for something or other... came with the car" that the seller included. They were Thule Roof Rack towers. Still mounted to my car (a different car now) ~ 8 years later.
My most recent Miata purchase yielded a crack pipe and some needles complete with burnt spoon and those tokens you get from rehab for being clean . My old 03 Malibu coughed up 287 bucks in changed after I removed the carpet, thanks coinstar
Some E36 M3ty mix cd in my old mx6.
I bought a $300 TR6 parts car that my brother and I literally dragged out of a barn. It was original but extremely rusty. But many small parts were good and the drivetrain was rebuildable. The best surprise (besides about $15 in change) was the tool stash in the trunk. There was a nice carb synchronizer, some wrenches, and some other small tools that I still use today. OTOH, the unused diaper stuck through a hole in the floor still has me baffled.
Wait – two hundred and eighty-seven DOLLARS?? Good grief. Your fuel economy must have gone up by a couple of points just by shovelling it out.
In reply to Stealthtercel:
I apparently left $120+ in change in the center console and other places of my '80 RX-7 when I gave it to a friend to scrap.
You'll need to log in to post.
