A Junkyard Friend, Final Parking Spaces, and Mercury in Retrograde

In my days of scrounging around automotive junkyards, I learned a lot. Really, between college, grad school, and across careers in the corporate world, I picked up as much worthy information about myself in the world there as I did knee-deep in metal and plastic. I am a firm believer of the virtue and benefit of pulling parts and fixing cars, with hard work and resourcefulness yielding positive results, but there was a time when I didn’t exactly talk about it. In some closed-minded corners and around watercoolers of corporate America, discussions of one’s junkyard exploits are tantamount to career suicide.

Boy, am I glad those days are behind me.

The friends I’ve made in the automotive hobby made my junkyarding easier, not to mention far more enjoyable. Over the years, I’ve needed these friends for more than just their spare set of hands. The University of Oxford’s Dr. Theodore Cosco points to research into a correlation between mental health and the size of one’s social network, suggesting that both “in-person and digital mechanisms for social connectedness can be complementary in fostering greater mental health amongst older adults.”

Not that I consider myself an “older adult,” but the tacit acceptance of such an impending fact never hurt anyone.

The high value of social networks rings true for me. If you read my long treatise on internet communities, titled Did Facebook Kill the Car Forum?, you know what a huge role community has played in my journey as an automotive hobbyist.

And, were it not for Internet car culture, I would have never met the legendary Murilee Martin, king and creator of Hagerty’s Final Parking Space series. I recently spent a week in Denver, and while there I was lucky enough to meet up with the man. We spent a few days doing what we both love so dearly—visiting junkyards. But he first had to pick me up, which he did in style.

Murilee scooped me up in his JDM Subaru Sambar van, which turned many heads in downtown Denver. My neck, however, nearly detached from my head as I tried to absorb everything in his garage—the birthplace of many car-themed junkyard boomboxes.

Sipping a cold brew with my friend in such a delightfully happy place was one of the high points in both my professional and personal life. We discussed automotive history, life as the two most senior judges in the 24 Hour of Lemons, jazz/avant-garde music, and our future plans for junkyard foraging. Since I’m a native Texan, Murilee insisted we include a stop at a Buc-ees convenience store/roadside attraction, as one location recently opened up in The Centennial State.

After showing my generous host one of Texas’ more successful exports of cultural ambassadorship, we headed to the Wyoming border for a junkyard in Cheyenne. Upon arriving, I realized that this was notone of Houston’s bustling, high-turnover scrapyards. It was a more casual place, where truly antique iron existed alongside modern metal plastic in fully depreciated form.

We were having a good time, but at my suggestion and urging he ended up gathering material for a piece at another automotive outlet on the Ford C-Max Hybrid. We both love to tell unique stories, and obscure derivatives of Ford’s Global C-Car Platform fit the bill just as well as a Ford Elite or a 1963 Chrysler Newport. I got a chance to watch the master in action.

His visual assessment of junked cars is not unlike what it takes for me to create a design-focused Vellum Venom article. First, the author must first take all necessary photos. Each image is captured with purpose, especially the one that includes the junkyard’s inventory sticker with all its relevant information on the subject matter.

Here are his tools of the trade: Murilee has a dedicated point-and-shoot camera to handle most of his photography. His toolbox is a small metal affair with just enough space for basic hand tools, because harmonic balancers or transmissions or other huge items aren’t on his radar as he hunts for the next junkyard tale of woe and despair. (I was honored, however, that he took the time to pull the 8-track player from the aforementioned Ford Elite, plus items from a Lincoln that became part of my dear Project Valentino.)

Luckily for Murilee, some of the best archeological finds imaginable are available within driving distance of his home. Colorado junkyards are indeed unique; older vehicles generally survive in the dry climate there, but they aren’t especially suitable for restoration. Why, you ask? Mostly because every non-metal surface also gets nuked in this state’s punishing sunlight. It’s only a matter of time before these machines meet the crusher, but classics in Colorado seem to get a longer reprieve than most.

During our tour of various yards, I recall actively looking for discarded cars that paralleled my fleet of aging Ford products. I also considered pulling something of modest value, just for fun, with the hopes of selling it for a profit when I’m back home in Texas.

Lucky for me, I found a 1997 Lincoln Mark VIII with its unique plastic alternator cover in near-perfect condition. I felt like a gambler that finally hit the jackpot, since this was a one-year-only bit that didn’t interchange with the older (1993-96) Mark VIIIs and was discontinued for the Mark Series’ subsequent and final year. In all likelihood, deleting a decorative engine cover made some corporate bean-counter his tidy bonus. Thus, owners of 1998 Mark VIIIs clamor for this 1997-only trim piece.

Murilee took my word for it, and handed me his tools. It was worth every ounce of effort to snag, clean, and stuff that cover between my clothes in my carry-on luggage. (Upon closer inspection, someone pre-yanked the part but didn’t actually take it. You snooze, you lose!)

Once I got this cover home, I priced it well under what speculators charge on eBay, posted it to Facebook Marketplace, and made an 8x profit on my initial investment in less than 12 hours. If only all my personal investments could yield such an impressive return, as such a rapid pace.

The success emboldened me to dabble further into Murilee Martin’s shoes. Why don’t I do my own Final Parking Space article? Join me, won’t you?

Sajeev And The 2002 Mercury Sable Platinum Edition

Murilee Martin usually starts these missives off with the history of the vehicle in question. Easy for me, as I am a huge fan of the Mercury Sable, to the point I message my friends with the intentionally misspelled word “SABUL” in ALL CAPS whenever an example pops up online or in area junkyards.

So the 1986 SABUL (sorry, force of habit) Mercury Sable was a near-luxury sedan with radical styling: it boasted a glass C-pillar, a full-width light bar, and a shockingly curvaceous interior design. Even better, the design only somewhat resembled the similarly radical Ford Taurus on which it was based. The formula worked, as nearly 700,000 Sables were sold in its first generation (1986–91). These good times didn’t last, however, as the Sable became more like its Taurus sibling over time. Sales slowly slumped to non-existence.

By 2002, the Sable devolved into a perfectly boring and mediocre form of transport. The original was a hit and even drew Bette Midler‘s legal team into the fray, but this devolution couldn’t generate a blip on a retail buyer’s radar. Fleet buyers might beg to differ, and perhaps this particular Sable we found in the yard fared better, as it’s the crème de la crème Platinum Edition. Only the highest-performing, low-level territory manager could pry these keys out of a fleet manager’s grip.

Aside from the Platinum Edition fender emblem that promised far more overall bling than Mercury provided, external upgrades were limited to a set of fog lights and turbine alloy wheels. Only one such wheel remains on this abused example found in a Wyoming junkyard.

Around 2002, all Sables offered leather seats as standard equipment, which was a smart way for Ford to differentiate the car from the even more milquetoast 2000-07 Taurus sold at a nearby Blue Oval dealer. That forced the Platinum to up its game with perforated leather seat inserts. Unfortunately, the feature that made the Platinum once shine is now thoroughly parched, shrinking in the dry heat.

Since you can’t spell “platinum” without plastic and aluminum, Mercury treated this Sable’s dashboard and center console to a fake platinum finish. While Detroit’s special editions since the Malaise Era’s fascination with Broughams were generally cheesy, the formula feels almost hopeless in an era of all-road CUVs and leather-clad Camry XLEs.

But that’s the least of this Sable’s problems, as body damage and a lack of replacement headlights seemingly necessitated a conversion to the 2000-07 Taurus passenger side headlight seen here. It’s clear this high-end (as it were) Mercury had a tough life in the almost 146,000 miles it covered on this earth.

Not that the fourth generation Sable was a bad car—the optional Duratec V-6 still had an impressive 200 horsepower and the gearbox received the internal upgrades it so desperately needed in the previous millennia. But Ford made it clear it was neglecting many of its cars at this point, focusing on both trucks and the business nuances of the ill-fated Premier Automotive Group.

Perhaps the Sable never had a chance, nor did the Mercury brand once Ford went global with Premier. But it still would have been nice to see company fleets with Platinum Edition Sables sporting actual metal bits in their interiors, at least to mirror the real wood used in some steering wheel rims.

I pondered this Mercury destiny-that-never-was with Murilee by my side, and it took him by surprise. I am known for my love of Malaise and Rad-era Ford products, and that passion bleeds over to the final years of Lincoln-Mercury. Making a Platinum Edition SABUL (sorry, again) Sable with real bling, always was, maybe, just a foolish dream.

My time in Colorado reminded me that if you’re gonna pull parts, it’s fun to bring a friend. Doing so gives an extra perspective in addition to another pair of hands. You might ponder something novel, hopefully an idea that’s irreverent enough to get a few giggles from a buddy. If you’re really lucky, you’ll see life in a different light. One that makes the path to that inevitable final parking space all the more interesting.