Hubcap Heaven: 1939

That sidewalk grille reminded me of the time many years ago that I was scouting for parts for the 1933 Ford three-window coupe I had just bought for (drumroll) $200. In the dusty storage space above a small Bedford, Pennsylvania, Ford dealer's showroom (some showroom, I think it held two cars) I found a new still-in-the-brown-paper-factory-wrapping '33 grille, for which I paid all of $25.

You can call it a parts store, or you can call it an automotive recycling facility, or you can call it what it is--a junkyard.

Great selection, no two match !

And every one dilligently policed up from the side of the highway. The combination of cheap, pressed-steel wheels and high-pressure, bias-ply tires meant that hub caps were easily shed through excessive wheel deformation on encountering significant perturbations in the paving surface at speed -- short version, hit a pothole at 40 mph, lose a hubcap. "Re-purposers" frequently picked them up for sale to places like this, where people who belatedly discovered they'd lost a hubcap might go to get a cheap replacement. It's not unlikely that many people purchased the very hubcaps they'd lost a short time before.