With all the time I spend looking for interesting automotive history in car graveyards around the country (and the world), the establishment that gets the better part of my business when I need to buy parts for my own projects is Colorado Auto & Parts in Englewood, just south of my place in Denver. This yard has been owned by the same family for more than 60 years, they always have great stuff in their inventory, and the employees like to decorate the joint for holidays. This year, they set up a festive Christmas tree from items on hand.
The first thing you see when you head out to the CAP lot is this bit of ambience. The owners bought an old Texaco station—yes, the whole building— and set it up here. When a crashed pickup showed up that just fit the tree by the gas station, it was installed there as inspiration, driving-safety caution, or both.
This is the outfit that created the legendary airplane-radial-powered 1939 Plymouth pickup truck, and if you're lucky it will be parked in the office when you go to buy parts.
I've seen other boneyards with creative seasonal displays, of course. The grisly Integra-vs-zombie tableau with the graves of Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet at the Oakland, California, Pick-n-Pull was first-rate.
On the subject of junkyard-acquired Halloween decorations, I put together the infamous Junkyard Jack-O-Lantern using Suzuki Kizashi marker lights purchased at CAP.
In fact, I may have had some distant influence on junkyard Christmas tree culture. Back in 2014, a 24 Hours of Lemons team racing a Mitsubishi 3000GT at Sonoma Raceway bought a parts car 50 miles away when they blew up their engine, then announced that any teams wanting to extract whatever they wanted from the now-engineless Mitsu were free to do so.
So, in my role as wise, dignified, and incorruptible Chief Justice of the 24 Hours of Lemons Supreme Court, I decreed that black-flagged drivers would be required to extract some electrical component from the one-car Mitsubishi junkyard, hang it on a Christmas tree that some team had brought as a part of a car theme (this sort of thing happens in Lemons racing), and hook it up to power from a borrowed battery charger.
It was all very festive.
The penalty box was much more pleasant with all those Mitsubishi parts glowing warmly.
Back to CAP and Christmas 2022, it's possible that the tree itself was in the back of a dead truck that showed up in the inventory, because you just never know what will show up in a junkyard vehicle.
Most of the decorations are car emblems, but the 1960s VDO speedometer is a nice touch.
The star on top looks like a bullet-style taillight lens from a Detroit land yacht of the late 1950s or early 1960s, with a plastic radiator fan beneath.
Power for the lights comes from this battery (which is for sale, apparently) and some jumper cables. I'll bet that the boxes and wrapping paper were found inside junked cars.
CAP puts Easter eggs in parts cars for customers to find, and last Halloween the cashier put on a chicken suit. They even had an All You Can Carry sale for Black Friday this year!
