It’s not the way it used to be.
Longer ago than I care to think about (OK, four decades or so), I regularly visited a place out in Holly, MI to scrounge parts for my British sports cars. Every other time or so, when I’d go out, and come back with the part I needed, the owner (or manager) would ask me if I wanted a job. The last time I did it was in the nineties, when I went to a place on Hawthorne Blvd in Hawthorne to get a distributor for my Honda Accord, whose shaft had sheared off on the 405 in Orange County.
I actually went to a junk yard, although it was actually a Pick’n’Pull, just last year, to get a new taillight for my minivan, because it was $100 cheaper than buying a new one.
The tail-lights on my rusty old Lancia were worth more than the rest of the car, because they only made a few thousand of that body style and sold out of new replacement parts, so there was no way to get them other than by removing them from another car. Most of the rest of it was common to other body styles.
But, yeah, cars these days are reliable enough that I haven’t visited a scrap yard since the early 90s. Even then, it was just to find an alternator mounting bracket after mine snapped after twelve years.
“Automotive recycling center,” not a junkyard.
If anyone ever runs across a 2006 MINI convertible in one of those “automotive recycling centers”, give me a shout. (I’ve found MINIs. But I need the convertible-top button. Worth 3 cents, I’ll pay $5. Dealer wants to replace the entire switch assembly for $100.)