I know the subject of ethics on these forums has been absolutely run into the ground and groans go up every time the word is mentioned, but I'm wondering honestly - who here would trailer away a car if it was obviously going to waste with no owner to be found? I'm thinking I probably would, and the situation has actually very recently presented itself.

Next to the office at my work (a cabin rental business out in the country) there's an old '52 Studebaker Commander. It's extremely rotted and if anything would only be good to chop up further and rat rod, but I hate seeing it go completely to waste back there. There's a rental house in front of it a few hundred feet, and I've talked to the owner of the house, she said she didn't know it was back there but didn't think it was on her land anyway, and didn't know who did own it. It's also not on my boss' land, as his ends fifty feet or so away from it. I'm considering taking our old Ferguson tractor up there one day and pulling it out and bringing it home, I doubt anyone would miss it.

do it.

You need to determine, with certainty, whose land it really is on. Then you need to make every fair effort to contact them. It does belong to someone as SOMEONE owns the land it is on. There is a distinct likely-hood that they will say you can have it. Especially if they know you care enough to keep it from rotting away.

1. Figure out who it belongs to.

2. Ask them if you can have it.

If it has no VIN or other manufacturer's ID that can be researched, I say take it.

i have a camaro at my parents house that i haven't touched or seen in years, but i know its there and i plan to drive it again someday. i know its not worth much as it sits and someone might think nobody would miss it if you trailered it off but id be pretty upset if it were to turn up missing. just think of that before you take something thats not yours.

if you really want to fix up a car i think you'd be better off buying one at a junk yard for a few hundred bucks and not risk getting in trouble or pissing someone off

it reminds me of one time when me and my friend found a barn full of old army trucks that had been sitting there for ages, we asked the people across the street it they knew who owned the property, it didn't take us long to track the old man down, he lived about a mile away and he told us he had owned them since he was a teenager. he didn't really want to get rid of them at first but my friend showed enough interest that the guy eventually offered to sell him one cheap if he promised to fix it up and drive it. my friend ended up getting stationed in japan and never followed through with it

Yeah what Musket said. Sucks I know, Ive been in exactly your situation, but it would truly suck to one day get a knock at the door from the owner or the cops.

Fuck ethics. Do it. I'm just waiting for the ground to dry up to uhh.. repo a vehicle found in a collapsed barn at a house that's been empty since the mid 80's.

I think I remember seeing pics of the car in question, I highly doubt anyone will care if it's gone since it seems to have been setting in the woods since at least the 70s if not longer.

in the case of abandoned cars, you can almost always tell who owns what and 9.9 times out of 10, the people that own the property didn't know the car was there or didn't care that someone wanted it. I left that .1 time in there because a couple of summers ago, I found a Datsun 510 and 210 on the side of the road in Crown Point NY and the owner refuses to part with them.
he'd rather let them sink into the earth than let anyone with an interest do something with them.
He's old and I'm just waiting for his Connecticut ass to die.

Yeah, I hate people who refuse to sell cars, but won't do anything with them. There's a guy around my house who has two Dusters in his yard, one of them a 340, and refuses to sell them, though they just sit there and rust (and recently, have tree limbs fall on them.)

Then further up the road there's a guy who has a field full of old cars, mostly Mopars, going to waste. He'll sell parts, but never whole cars, and he adds a car or two every month.