When
I had the privilege of spending four months in Alaska, I took advantage of all
the sights that I possibly could. This
included the vast amount of abandoned cars that I had found. One of the towns I was in was Skagway,
Alaska. Anyone who played the old
computer game “Yukon Trail” should recognize the name. It was a gorgeous small little town of just
over 900 residents, but with a vast amount of abandoned cars.
One
house had quite a few in the yard. The
woman I approached told me she was renting the property. The owner of the house inherited the land
with the house and cars on it when his father passed away. While the cars are mostly now all junk, he
doesn’t want to get rid of them due to sentimental value. That works for me, because now I can bring
them all to you, including this 1961 Chevy Lakewood (Chevy Corvair 500
Lakewood).
This
car is pretty rare as it was only built in 1961 and 1962. I cannot confirm this is in fact a 1961, so
I’m just making an assumption here.
Anyway, this was the base Chevy station wagon as it was built off of the
cheap Corvair 500 platform. It came with
a 146
cubic inch flat six that made 86 horsepower which was located in the rear
of the car. Now apparently, that was
enough of a power to weight ratio to blast this car up and down sand
dunes. Check out the video at the end
which includes an old commercial where Chevy did just that.
This
car’s days of dune crushing though are over.
It is being completely overgrown.
This grass was well past my knees. Rust was replacing the paint; not too
aggressively surprisingly, but it was sure enough. It was also accompanied with moss, which was
very common on anything that didn’t move much in Alaska. Having been granted free range, I opened the
doors to check out the inside. It was
dusty, dirty, and musty. It also had a couple
trees growing in it.
The
original dealer badge was located on the rear of the car: Taylor and Drury
Motor Limited. I couldn’t find much
about them except for the fact that they were located in Whitehorse Yukon
Territory, which you can also figure out from the badge itself, and that Taylor
and Drury was a big business name in the area for other businesses apparently
as well.
The
dealer is long gone, and this car is fading away as well. It’s now destined to be overgrown as is sits
in Skagway, Alaska, Rotting in Style.
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