Scrap Drives of WWII…

If you want to build your hot rod out of real Henry steel, it’s not easy to find a really nice Model A coupe or roadster body (let alone a Deuce!) as a starting point, without shelling out some serious dough. Yes, these cars are many decades old now, but they made *millions* of them, so where did they all go? If your first answer is ‘well, obviously the junkyard, dummy’, you may be right, but its also hard to underestimate how many decent 20s and 30s era cars where killed in one major event: World War II scrap metal drives.

As the War in Europe raged on, our boys overseas needed lots of steel, rubber, and tin for ammo and supplies, leading the US Government to encourage Americans at home to give up large chunks of metal they weren’t using. Hot water heaters and steel beams were nice to give, but a used Model A Ford was the perfect ‘big bang for the buck’ donation. Trucks and trains would actually pull into town and folks would bring out their surplus iron and steel of any size for the War effort. Check out this color footage of an Ashland, Kentucky scrape drive, including some beautiful pedal cars, a few skip-tooth chain bicycles, and the biggest heartbreaker of them all, a pretty clean-looking 3 window (Plymouth?) coupe body!