Rat poison

Don’t blame us. We’re not the ones who took the bottle of shoe polish and smeared “Rat Rod Special” across the windshield of this horribly scarred 1958 Chevrolet station wagon. We presume that this wretch, which managed to make it all the way from West Virginia to AutoFair in Charlotte atop the trailer without shaking into flakes, was once eyed for that sort of project. The popcorned fenders had a coat of primer, dating from sometime after that stuff was no longer mixed with a mortar and pestle.

A sad case, this. Specifically, this was the remains of a four-door 1958 Chevrolet Brookwood, as proclaimed on the rear doors. This was the single-taillamp wagon equivalent of the Biscayne series, from a year in which Chevrolet broke its wagons out as separate models and built about 187,000 in all. Wow, look at that rear bodywork, gobbled by rust more eagerly than Joey Chestnut attacking a tray of hot chicken wings. The seller had dropped the asking price for this, uh, project from $1,200 to $1,000 and then to best cash offer.