When you love old junkyard cars and even older film cameras, as I do, combining the two just can’t go wrong. I’ve used 1910s box cameras and slightly newer twin-lens reflex cameras to capture decaying parts donors in High Plains Colorado boneyards, and now a legendary family-owned yard just south of Denver has placed better than 100 vintage machines in their regular self-service inventory.
The Ansco Memo of the late 1920s is a fascinating piece of American camera history. It was designed to shoot cheap 35mm movie film using proprietary cartridges that held 50 exposures (this at a time when most still cameras would shoot eight or 12 exposures). It was one of the earliest American cameras to use 35mm film (which, later on, was used in the 135 film that proved to be the world’s most successful film format from the 1940s through the 1990s).
Because perforated 35mm film remains easy to get and still uses the sprocket-hole spacing from early-20th-century movie film, it’s not difficult to reload Ansco Memo cartridges with new film. I’d only shot one roll on this camera before this, when I documented junkyard dashboards with it a few years back. With so many interesting old cars at Colorado Auto & Parts, I would need that big 50-exposure capacity.
These vehicles spent many years in a separate “private reserve” yard next to CAP’s regular U-Pull inventory. Starting a few years back, many interesting old vehicles from this amazing stash were auctioned off; those that didn’t sell were moved into the regular inventory. These include a couple dozen first-generation Ford Mustangs and Mercury Cougars, a 1948 Dodge Custom, a 1951 Studebaker Champion, a 1959 Princess DM4 limo, a 1958 Edsel Citation, a 1951 Kaiser Deluxe, a 1959 Citroën ID19 and so many more.
If you’re looking for a flathead engine, you’ll find a bunch here!