Where on "Earth" would you buy a car, best and worst climate, if you had a choice.

Montana is good for early cars that were parked before they started salting the roads about 10 years ago in the larger cities. The boonie areas are still good. Wyoming is also excellent

 

There is some old iron lying around in Mexico but it it very tough to find!

Most houses have 10 foot tall walls around them so you are not going to see what people are hiding in the back yard, because the climate is so dry and the economy poor they tend to use them until there is nothing left. I am sure most rodders coukd care less about what has been modified but there i hardly a straight panel on the car from the tight streets etc.

I have a good freind that retired to Jojotolopec Mexico (in the mountains by lake Chapala just outside Guatalajara) He is an old gear head and has been down there for 5 years digging with very little luck.

 

My vote for best place is Iraq, 120 degrees zero humidity and all the sheetmetal is already sandblasted for you!

 

cars in poor shape can come from "good" climate areas , and cars in great shape can very hostile climates like minnesota..it all depends how the owner took care of it , and if they drove it in the winter. some people up here were in the habbit of stoing their good car for the winter , and driving some beater

two of the nicest original cars i have ever seen came from here...a 1940 ford deluxe sedan , and a 1946 dodge coupe..both owned by the original owners and stored winters

 

The Canadian Prairies is also a good place to get some really old cars, trucks and tractors. I live here and I've scored a 1955 Studebaker President, and I know of a lot of Tractor collectors with huge collections of 18th, 19th and 20th Century farm equipment, meaning that the land is dry enough to keep older cars and trucks solid enough to rebuild. The only hitch is the floors and field mice. When I got the Stude, it was November, with about 10 inches of snow on top. I knew it was 2 door coupe from about a half-mile away, but I didn't know if it was a Hawk or other model. The car had been parked there from 1968 to 1977. The farmer had a spare 6-volt battery, and squirted some gas into the carb, and vroom! The floor had weeds growing in at the foot pedals, but the rest was solid. The axle and front end was trapped by weeds. He needed a tractor to wiggle it out. I restored it completely in exchange for the farmer and his wife to use it for a week to re-celebrate their honeymoon of 1955! He let me use his repair quonset (heated with cranes, pit, compressors). But there's lots of cars in the fields, around barns, and along highways. Just don't push dollars around. They mainly want to share another chance to see them in all their glory! Our Prairies run from the North Dakota to Montana, but Alberta has been picked over. You'd have to concentrate between Manitoba (Central and North) and Saskatchewan (Southern, Central and North). There's train service and highways almost to the Arctic, but you wouldn't go much farther than the top of each province. Just get a receipt and all the papers you can, especially if you're taking them into the US. If you're bringing them as parts, you probably want a notarized receipt. For some reason, a lot of Canadian collectors don't even know that the Prairie provinces have a lot of real ol' iron laying around. If you're coming from the US, check out the many restoration vendors and clubs we've got here in the major cities (Winnipeg, Regina, Brandon, Saskatoon, Prince Albert.) They often know who's got what for sale around their areas. Then check out the Farmers' markets to talk to some of the farmers. You'd be surprised. These guys are humble, but they aren't millionaires for being dumb, either. Prairie farmers usually own about 10,000 to 100,000 acres of land for their grain crops. Good people, but sharp dealers. Money isn't always the price, but your word counts heavy here.

 

Underwater!
I remember seeing a car either on here or ebay, think it was a 30's or 40's sedan that had been driven into a lake early on in its life. This thing was rediculously perfect. Anything that wasnt metal had disintegrated, but all the metal was bare and like brand new.

Underwater (freshwater) = no oxidation

 

I guess without oxigen, metal wont rust. Interresting

 

all the cars that my dad and i have bought from california have been nice, as long as they didn't come from some other place before that.

 

You guys have a good point with the water.
I know there are a few loads of new cars (new when the sank) at the bottom of the great lakes. Shipments from the factory tat went down in bad weather.

Anybody have a submersible and a lot of wire cable?

 

There is probably more old cars in Southern California today than there were people in the 60's.

If you want a nice clean car, you can get them in Cali, but you will pay for it. Better deals can be had throughout the rest of the country if you look, just depends on what you are after. Not much point in buying high in California for a car bought low in the Midwest only a few years ago.

Australia seems to be one of the best places for clean old cars, the worst is probably Hawaii.

 

This thread doesn't make much sense.....I don't care where I get a car...as long as I get the one I want. Good cars, and junk cars are everywhere.

 

My car came from Florida and it has a very rust free body, but the floors are gone. My best guess is that since it rains like once a day out of the middle of nowhere in FL that the windows were left down and water ran underneath the rubber mat and rotted the floor out. I also bought a car that lived it's whole life in IL and the original owner lived in the middle of nowhere on gravel roads. The whole frame was covered in lime/mud and rotted out bad.