Scrapyards Are The Best Places For Car Nuts

Here's the scrapyard in London where I picked up a few bits for an E46

I've just come back from a trip to the scrapyard here in London. The visit should have taken no more than 30 minutes to source and retrieve a faulty lambda sensor for an E46 Touring, but instead I spent a good hour there. And not, before you assume, because I'm a simpleton with a spanner, but because I'd forgotten how much fun I have in these places.

E36 Touring sits atop its newer E46 Touring offspring

Where else do you get to poke around other peoples' cars? And where else can you climb on, pull at and take cars apart without getting arrested? It's great!

The best thing, however, is seeing cool cars that you'd probably forgotten about. In this little scrappy in London I spotted - predictably - a plethora of Fiats (including a 16V T Coupe), as well as a bunch of cool BMWs, old Mercs and Rovers as far as the eye could see.

I usually spend most of my time poking around BMWs

Then there are the people. You know the ones: scruffy, cigarette in mouth and mumbling. But they're a nice, salt-of-the-earth bunch and all have one thing in common. I reckon they're secretly just as excited as me to be there too.

If any of you guys haven't done so yet, I can't recommend scrapyards highly enough. And if you have been to a scrappy before and you too took a few snaps on your phone, I think we'd all love to see them in the comments section!