How long will my car (parts) last?

Old-style junkyards have themselves become an endangered species, but catch a glimpse of one, and the impression it leaves is that of decay. Rows of cars, with cataract headlamps and big chrome teeth missing from their grilles, slowly sink into the earth while corrosion returns the metal to a more elemental state. While more ancient vehciles might decompose away to nothingness, modern cars are filled with materials that just won't go away. That's not to say Neff's SHO will be recognizable as any kind of automotive touchstone when it's unearthed from somewhere below Cleveland in ten centuries. What will remain of our vehicles is a mish-mash of petrochemical fodder that will surely be creatively interpreted by future archaeologists.

No metal, no leather, nothing organic will be left. Even the tires, after providing a snack for rubber-eating microbes, will then have the inner steel belting eaten away by the elements. Plastics will likely look as fresh as the day they were ejected from their molds. Seat foam, too, has shown amazing longevity in recent tests, degrading not one whit after being buried in a landfill for 700 days. Glass is pretty much the only other thing in your car that hangs around as long as the oil-based stuff, having a shelf life conservatively estimated at one million years. Wouldn't it be grand to see the window switches, headlamp clusters, and other bits and pieces artfully arranged into some kind of "artifact" that never existed? Too bad we're not going to be around to see what kind of sense future man makes of our automotive trash.

[Source: AOL Autos | Photo: Ben Merkel/Hemmings]

Share This Photo X