Barn Find Cars

I was recently watching Bangers and Cash on television This is a show that goes behind the scenes of the Yorkshire based car auction house. This time they were unearthing a MK 1 Mini Cooper S that had been left sitting neglected in a garage for years and was full of empty bottles.

Also they have auctioned a Sunbeam Lotus and Ford Escort RS Turbo that were just sitting gathering dust outside in a field.

I was in Sicily recently and on an island there I passed an abandoned and dusty Mk 1 Daewoo Matiz which amused me as it was also full of empty plastic bottles.

Wheeler Dealers has covered barn finds such as a Porsche 914 and Chasing Classic Cars has also covered cars such as a rare Mercedes gull wing that was just sitting in a garage. Even American Pickers covers rare cars  that are just sitting in fields.

Whenever I go on train journeys including my trip to Sicily I never fail to be amazed at the abandoned classic cars you spot in fields. Also on my drive to Manchester I regularly pass a classic Citroen DS that appears to have just been abandoned outside a house

Why I keep asking myself??

Apart from the Daewoo I can never understand how people can just stop using a car and  then leave it in a garage/field/garden to rot away. I suppose never having lived in a place with a big enough space to dump a car might blinker my views slightly.

I appreciate that whilst some cars might be family heirlooms and have sentimental attachments surely people must recognise the point at which a car goes from being a cherished heirloom to a rusting heap clogging up the garage or garden and feel the need to do something about it.

There are enough TV shows that cover doing up cars and the interest in keeping classics on the road rather than sitting deteriorating in barns/fields/gardens.   

So how does this fit in with driverless cars I hear you ask.

In the future will people still just leave their driverless car in a field when they move onto the next one?.

If so should the driverless car programmer build in some sort of process to deal with abandonment and if so what should it look like.

The first decision would be how long before the program kicks in (Need to factor in holiday car sitting around times.)

So this could be pre-set time for the program to kicking in such as if the car has been left standing for 6 months or another timescale that can be programmed in at the owners discretion.

Also so what happens at the pre-set 6 months point. I recently left my car at the airport for 2 weeks and the battery was nearly dead. The driverless car would still need some sort of power source to keep it ticking over and going for 6 months and then enable it to wake up and execute the abandonment program.

So what should the abandonment program do?.  I think the program should have 2 options:-

Option 1 – The owner can choose for the car to remain where it was left which could be a garage/field or garden – so we will still see abandoned cars !!

Option 2 – There could be a location like the local recycling centre where the driverless car drives itself to. It could then be registered on the recycling centre log and be kept there for a set period of time i.e. a further 6 months. The log can send the owners emails/texts and reminders about the car. After 6 months the car can then be moved and sold to another owner (all previous owner data would be wiped) or the car could be crushed.     

So returning to my earlier question “In the future will people still just leave their driverless car in a field when they move onto the next one?.” If owners do choose Option 1 then the answer is going to be yes and future TV car shows will continue to be able cover abandoned cars this time including driverless ones and possibly still find then filled  with plastic bottles.