Rusted Hot Rods - Vintage Tin - Latest Discoveries!

The Search For Ferrous Gold Continues

By Jim Aust

Hot rodding's never-ending quest for vintage tin goes back to the days when Model Ts were just a few years old and could be had for less than a handful of loose change. The fact that the need for a magazine called Rod & Custom (originally Rods & Customs in May 1953) stems from man's affinity for rescuing older vehicles and personalizing them in a stylish fashion. Trends have come and gone many times in the last 50-plus years, but the one thing that remains the same is the starting point of a forlorn hulk found in some faraway pasture, backyard, or darkened barn. Searching for raw material itself has become both more difficult as supplies grow smaller every day and equally easier with treasures no further away than a few keystrokes on your computer. Remarkably, discovering vintage cars resting in fields and storage lots and neglected in forgotten garages is still an everyday occurrence.

Rod & Custom began documenting the hunt for vintage tin quite by chance after Tex Smith turned in a story to editor Tom Medley with some interesting extra photos on the contact sheet. Tom asked Tex, "What's this stuff?" Tex responded, "Oh, just some old junk I found." Well, Tom had Tex turn the pictures of old cars sitting in fields and behind barns into a story and Tex says those stories got the greatest response of any story he was ever part of. One story, called "Tex's Lost Tin Mine," gave vague clues of some of the resting spots and Tex says even today guys are reading the clues and still finding the tin exactly where he shot it. "The stuff is still out there," Tex says; now we just have to let him lead us on a new expedition so we can see it for ourselves (stay tuned for details!).

Later, a letter to Rod & Custom described a mythical paradise in Chandler, Kansas, of endless project material ripe for the picking. That letter led to a story in the May '68 issue of R&C about an actual automotive graveyard in, of all places, Junction City, Kansas, and then the hunt was on for more of the same. That issue also included the very first installment of the "Vintage Tin" department that would run through Rod & Custom's comings and goings, even spawning a complete "Vintage Tin" issue in December 1972. The column lasted until R&C's (not entirely) final curtain was drawn in 1973.

Nothing spikes our interest around the R&C offices more than a new vintage tin sighting, and that excitement is matched by every rodder with a fresh tetanus shot who dreams of finding their next project just over that hill waiting to be dragged home and turned into their dream ride.

We've been hearing that a lot of the tin being found now is actually in better shape than the cars from yesteryears because the latest discoveries were the cream that was packed away by people hoping to restore it someday and are now past the point of having enough time to do it (or have moved to the big garage in the sky).

We want to see and hear about your vintage tin discoveries so we can share those experiences with the rest of our readers in upcoming issues. So help give the rest of us hope that we too might luck into a find of our own and send some photos to Rod & Custom-Vintage Tin, 774 S. Placentia Ave., Placentia, CA 92870, or e-mail them to kevin.lee@sorc.com.