A visit to the car cemetery in Sweden

New cars kept turning up behind every bush.

BHPian Indian2003 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Yesterday, I went on a drive to the car cemetary at Båstnäs in Sweden. I stayed away from the motorway and drove on the old road. On a 90 km stretch of road, I saw about 100 cars only. I made a video there. The place is huge and one will need a few days to walk around the whole site. New cars kept turning up behind every bush. I hardly covered a quarter of the site with mosquitoes buzzing me constantly.

There were people from all over Europe there and a couple from the US. The county has pictures and a description of the junkyard in their tourist brochures. This has become a tourist attraction. The owners live on the ground themselves but a distance away from the cars.

I took it easy and stopped at a few places along the way. It was too sunny today and I will try to do another trip before the winter.

Saw this scarecrow on a sofa at the entrace to a house by the road. It had even a toilet bowl beside.

There were a few old fiat 1100s with suicide doors.

The Hanomag Matador. This was a petrol model with the Triumph engine. The diesel models used the Mercedes OM615.

Seeing a Bedford van certainly brought back old memories. They were about the only vans in Malaysia during my days there.

Only the shell was left of the VW T1

Indian2003 also shared some history on the place:

Cars were rationed in Norway after the war and one needed a permit from the government. The cars, when available, were Eastern European cars like the Moskovitch, Volga and Ifa. Only about 3-4% of applicants got the permit. From 1945 to 1951, only 11,000 permits were issued.

That is when 2 brothers and not father and son started this as a breakers yard 3 km from the Norwegian border. Norwegians drove over and dismantled the car and brought them over to Norway and put them together again. They only needed to take out the engine and the wheels to circumvent the restrictions.

There were over 2000 cars there up to the late '80s. The owners saw a value in every piece of a car. The brothers did not get on well and if one said said yes, the other said no.

I have been to this place in the '70s and bought a headlight for my Simca 1000. It was then a normal breakers yard. When I got there, I was told to find one and remove from a car.

Today, the place is owned by a son in his '70s. Like anywhere, vandals do raid the place sometimes.The latest model car I saw there was a Volvo 264 and this car was produced until from 1975 to 1982. The last car arrived there in 1988.

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