Its on NW HWY just east of Midway by the bridge. Its on the south side. Must be at least 40 "P" cars down in there.

This is looking in the gate today.
Click to view attachment


This is from DFW maps 2005, Notice ho many more cars are there now. The drive down by the creek is full of cars now also.
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Have you tried pulling up the address in the Dallas county appraisal site? That would tell you who owns the property.

http://www.dallascad.org/SearchAddr.aspx

I plan to do that Im just trying to figure out what the place is Is it a shop or just some guy that hoards cars.

This is looking in from the bridge


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I have seen the same thing. I don't think it is a shop- most all of those entrances go to big houses...I think it is all residential.

and none are for sale.

The property is a private residence according to the Dallas-CAD.

Drove by there today and stopped outside. MAN there are a lot of cars there. Would love to go in just to see what is there!

Doug

It's odd that the city would let a private residence have all those cars stored there.
Even behind a fence.

Im trying to get ahold of James the owner of the place. We will see what happens.

Let me know if you do... I would love to go with you if you get to go in and look around.

However, starting tonight, I'm out of pocket. Headed for the great white north to see my parents.

If you get in during the holiday break.. Take lots of pictures.

Thanks, keep us in the loop.

Maybe it's Wes Hildreth's house.

Any news on this? Just wondered if you got ahold of the owner?

Never got contact whit the owner. I sent mail and left a note in the mail box. I guess he doesnt want to be bugged

Any dogs? A fence short enough for a short old guy to scale?

when I came past on the way home today the gate was open and a car was parked outside the fence. I couldnt stop I had some stuff I had to get done before 4 but next time its like that. Im stopping. Worst that can happen is he thinks Im a revenewer and shoots me

I'm with ya Grelber... I'll put on my ninja gear and bring a pound of raw meat laced with Sominex for the puppy's

I have a truck that is perfect for this mission
76 Chevy blazer 4X4 with a custom (rattle can) camo paint job
you guys help me get it running and it will take out the gates, dogs, wildabeast, insert obstacle here no problem

Break-N-Rake !!!!

YEEEE HAAAAAAAAA

Boys, boys, boys.... brute force isn't always the ONLY way to get things done

A poor, helpless female in a "broken down" 914 that just happened to come to rest in front of this guy's open gate might have a little better luck???

Go for it...........

Quit encouraging my wife to do "questionable" things with strangers....

She hangs out with enough "Strange men" here.

Every city in the USA has a place like that.
Be careful.

Mike Cooley

Betty: What did you find? (you can tell me, Clay will NEVER find our you went).

Start doing things like that and I am going to drop a handful of nuts in your door or rocker panels.. just to drive you crazy.

All the rust would absorb the sound............

Ok... but you have to PROMISE not to tell him!!!!



Well, I've driven past a couple of times and the gate's been locked tight. This last time, I moseyed by and wonder-of-wonders, the gate is hanging wide open! I do the whole coast to a stop, put the hazards on, hop out and pop the engine lid, rummage around in there for a minute (secretly disabling the car - Hey, I DO have some knowledge) , throw my hands up in disgust (somebody could've been watching from the property!) and started trudging up the so-called driveway.

I've never SEEN so many exotic cars sitting around in what is effectively somebody's yard! There were some pretty wild looking shapes under torn tarps and ratty looking car covers. I KNOW I saw some 914's sitting off a ways too... and one of them looked like it could've been PURPLE... excuse me... I mean aubergine!

After I made friends with the two dogs that had come running up and had about bowled me over; two very LARGE dogs (I wasn't going to be allowed to go ANY FURTHER until they had slobered on me suitably and had satisfied themselves that I was their kind of person); all three of us ambled up to the front door. No answer; so I wandered around to the garage-type looking area (we're talking parts and disassembled cars sitting EVERYWHERE); all the time hollering "HELLO... anybody here?". I turn the corner and this scary looking guy pops out from behind a car that is up on jackstands, about causing me to have a heart attack. I'm pretty sure the welding mask painted like some crazed monster might have had something to do with the initial shock...

He pulls off the mask and I get a good look at him.... yep, first impression was right, we're talking SCAREEEEE. He looks to be older than me, his hair was sticking out in every direction, he had on the dirtiest mechanic's overalls I've ever seen (although I could still pick out some of the Porsche patches) and his hands were incredibly torn up and dirty!

I introduced myself - he wasn't about to tell me his name, but I could hear faint traces of some accent, couldn't make out what kind, when he did finally speak. He was acting real suspicious of me at first; I had no business being there, blah, blah, blah, but I turned on the poor, defenseless female whose car quit charm and he finally agreed to look at my car. He seemed very impressed (or puzzled) by the fact that I'd made friends with the two dogs (the names engraved on their collars were "Turbo" and "Ferry") and that they hadn't barked their heads off to let him know a stranger was trespassing! I mentioned that I was driving a Porsche 914 and that I'd thought he might be able to help me because of all the cool cars he had parked around. He kind of smirked and said something along the lines of "don't you mean a Volkswagen"; I laughed and said I'd heard that joke a bunch of times but when I drive him, he feels all Porsche!

On the way back to my car, I casually mentioned that I thought I'd seen a few 914's sitting way off to the side, "You don't get to see many of those down here in Texas"... All he would say was that I had a good eye. We walked about another 50 feet or so, me scritchin' doggie ears as we walk, and then he grudgingly asked if I'd like to take a look at the 914's...


Oops... other duties call... more later....

MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE

Dang it Betty!!!

Getta guy all wound up, then you leave us hangin so to speak. Going to go grab a Shiner outta the garage and pour one or two whilist wait for the conclusion of this story.

Hope that wasn't a crazed ol' 914 car owner with messed up hair and dirty overall's coming back like in a bad horror flick.

Geez, talk about a cliffhanger! Waiting to hear, "The rest of the story".

(Thankfully I "can't" read the boards at work, or I woulda been wondering all day long.)

The guy I car pool with stopped in yesterday after work. It took a while for the guy to warm up to him. Dont know why he could be a twin to the dad on family guy. Anyway I was not along he told me the guys name is Arden or something along those lines. He is verrrry up tight because some one ratted him in to code enforcement and he has 2 weeks to remove all the cars. Tim said he talked to the guy for about half an hour and he has tons of kit cars a couple of twin turbos a bunch if kit cars some V8 powered VWs there is a Pantera half wedged into a garage that he stopped driving when the exhaust rusted off. there is a couple of Lambos and some other exotic stuff. He said there is a pile of engines that you have to see to believe. The guy is in a panic mode because it is his hoby and he said it may be he went over the top. He is looking for a big building he can put it in. Tim offered to help him move it or store some of it at his place out here in Murphy. The guy said he may take him up on the help. If he does Ill be there also.

That sucks! Code enforcement in the few cities I'm familiar with is "rampant". Can't seems to get anything from the cops when you need to, but there's plenty of "Sentinels" for CE...

If it doesn't look trashy, maybe some letters could have better than a non-impact. Once Code Enforcement gets ahold of something though, things can get pretty ugly. In WF, if you were cited for an "eye-sore" vehicle, it HAD to be junked in 10 days or you had drive it up to court for verificaion that it's legal and drivable. I was afraid when I had my first 914 that the city would come and cite me for it. My neighbor had a nice white Chevy P/U that he had a wreck in. He was working day and night to get it back in shape (the front end was messed up, he was replacing fenders, front clip, and doing some engine work) and even kept it tarped over. City came and said be done in 24 hours; get it out; or we're going to fine you some obscene amount a day. Another week and he would have had it finished... I read the code once when I had a vehcile stolen towed by the city (grandparent's van I was working on for them and waiting for the next pay check to finish). They can give a citation for (I forget) one or two flat tires that have been flat for more than X days.

Someone tell me which councilor to write to or call. Of course, I'd need a little more information...

The problem is that you can never tell him now about the forum - because he will be thinking we are all stalking him!

Boy, if he needs to "get rid" of some stuff, we could really help him..........


BETTY???? TELL US MORE!!!!! (and don't tell Clay, he'll drop nuts in my rockers.........if I had any.)

A keeper.

Thanks.

We don't want to hear about what you see when you walk into YOUR garage.

Keep it up, and I will disable her internet connection.. .

Then you will NEVER hear the end of the story.

If he/we find a place for him to move the cars, we should all go over en-mass and help him move and clean up. Show him that there is a Dallas enthusiast contingent that cares.

If he knows we're all good people, (which we are) he might be willing tho share the wealth...

Doug

If he takes tim up on his offer to help Ill see if he needs more help. Who all has trailers they could haul stuff on? Oh the car on the right just inside the gate is an early chevy II SS

OK Betty.. Time fore "the rest of the story"...

Doug

Sorry guys, Clay and I had a busy weekend helping his niece and her husband by doing the internet/phone and cable drops in the new house they're having built.

Where was I.... oh yeah, the guy asked me if I wanted to look at the 914's he had before we went to look at my "broken down" car out on the road...



We had to zig-zag between various cars and trees to make our way over to where the 914's were sitting (I think I ruined my shoes with the mud!). I passed some crazy looking cars! Everything from exotic sports cars I couldn't identify, to run of the mill American cars. I must say, his taste in cars is eclectic to say the very least! As we got closer, I kept walking into things because I was too busy trying to look at what we were headed for, not to mention the dogs had been "helping" by running around us in circles like Tasmanian Devils.

There were three 914's. One of them was sure enough a genuine purple.. oops, sorry again Rusty ... aubergine car! It was a total basket case though. Rusted beyond belief, sagging and getting ready to break in the middle. The car sitting behind it was in even worse shape... it might have been a red 2.0 in its previous life (it looked like it had faded to a funny looking pinkish color) before it had been rolled in a wreck. The ONLY possibly good thing you could see was that the Targa band had not collapsed in the rollover... maybe the driver made it out alive? There were no doors on both the cars so I checked the stickers on their door jambs; both said "98". I have no idea what that means - how can two different colors have the same number? I asked the guy what the history on the cars was and he said he didn't know anything about those two, they'd been bought at separate car auctions about 10 - 15 years ago. The third car was sitting off a little bit from the other two and had a fairly new looking tarp on it. It was almost completely covered in tree branches and twigs though. It looked like high winds had done a number on the trees it was parked between.

I walked around the aubergine and red/pinkish cars, looking at them. They both had bumpers like my car (it's a 1974). The guy played with the dogs for a couple of minutes and then said "That's about all there is to see, shouldn't we go look at your car?". I said, "what about the one under the tarp?". He kind of hemmed and hawed, said it'd be too tough to get the tarp off because of the branches, blah, blah, blah. Right about then Turbo ran up with a HUGE branch that he obviously thought would be a most wonderful stick for me to throw for him. I walked over and grabbed a stick off the tarp and threw it for the dog. I said "I would just LOVE to look at this one! Maybe we could both get the tarp off enough to see it just a little bit? I NEVER get a chance to look at many of these cars!".

The charm had been ramped up to FULL FORCE at this point! When I had walked over to get the stick to throw for Turbo... I had glanced down and saw something under the edge of the tarp. The color on the rocker panel was a bright green but the paint above the rocker was white.

I just started moving branches off the car and talked him into moving the tarp enough for me to get a good look. It was a freakin' Grasshopper... we're talking white with that bright green on the rockers with the Porsche graphic above them. I think he knew it was an unusual car but I'm pretty sure he had absolutely no idea just how rare. I've heard Clay talk about them, I've seen a Bumble Bee (Hi Pam!) and one Creamsicle in person. I couldn't see any signs of it ever having been repainted... it looked completely original in that respect. He did say it had been bought by his Dad; in fact the whole property had belonged to his Dad and he had inherited everything a little while back.

It was really "different" in a bunch of other respects too though... We had moved the tarp off of the drivers side, enough that I could open the door (the sticker said L80"E" or "L80"8" - I couldn't make it out completely) to look inside and I even popped the engine lid. It was in spectacular shape for having been sitting under a tarp! I asked him about that and he said he'd had to move it outside just recently because the garage was full of other cars.

The interior looked stock... but then it didn't (I'm not sure how to describe it).... like somebody had taken a stock interior but changed just enough things in it to suit them self. It was leather, which was nice but the sun visors had two colors on them, one side was black and the other side was tan to match the rest of the interior (kind of goofy looking if you ask me). There weren't many miles on the odometer, it was in such good shape that I tended to believe it - a little over 21,000 miles. The tach had an 8,000 rpm redline - I do know that's different from my 1.8. Left side of the dash had an oil pressure gauge and a temperature gauge. It had the cut down looking, smaller console (I forget what it's called) and there was a gas gauge and a clock in it.

The engine compartment was a complete surprise. What I could see on top kind of looked like the engine in Clay's car... but he had told me a while ago that there were only a couple of mechanically fuel injected 914's in the US? It was definitely a six which surprised me because the other two cars were 4's and that was kind of what I had been expecting with this one. The bumpers (what I could see of them) were not chromed, they were painted like the car and they were a different shape - really odd - certainly not stock. It had fender flairs too. I knocked on them and they sounded metal, not fiberglass! The top was metal too - I've never seen a 914 with the top welded on! It certainly makes sense though if you don't care about taking the top on and off. I pulled the tarp further out of the way on the front and there was an oil cooler in the middle of the front bumper. I've never seen that before! The front bumper sounded like fiberglass when I knocked on it though - bummer. I checked the VIN on it and it did start with "914" so it wasn't a conversion.

Like I said, the car just "felt" stock, like it had come from the factory that way... but somebody HAD to have made all of those changes, right? I must've said something about the oil cooler when I first saw it because the guy said it must've been somebody's race car or something like that - he wasn't sure. The car looked very straight and "unmolested" to me, so if it had been modified to race... I couldn't tell. People with more knowledge than I have would have to look at it to know for sure...

Turbo and Ferry were bored by now and the guy was getting antsy so I gave up looking at the cars and helped him cover the car back up. We made our way back to the driveway (I saw an El Camino that looked pretty cool!) and on out to my car. I popped the engine lid for him and he wiggled some wires. He found the plug wire I'd pulled off of the distributor almost immediately and put it back. I was terribly appreciative, shook his hand and finally got his name - James Landrum. He'd been pretty decent overall so I thanked him for "fixing" my car, thanked him for taking the time to show me the 914's and hopped in my car and took off.

I am going to ask Clay about that whole mechanical fuel injected engine thing though..... that was weird!

Thanks for sharing.
Great mystery story and funny too.
Turbo....sounds like Ed V's dog to me.

Cooley

edited, shorter.

for those that missed Betty's P's Adventure. Thanks again Betty.

I made a complete copy of this story and put it in my all time 914 keeper drawer.
You should too before it gets hidden deeper in the archives.
My grandson's (3 and 6) thought it was exciting and asked questions as I read BP's story to them while adlibbing and adding character voices as well as Turbo & Ferry dog noise and their dog character thinking for the thrill of the story but kept it totally Bett's story.

Cooley