County Puts Brakes on Collector’s Dream, Seizes 120 Junked Corvairs

For years, Jim Phillips dreamed of the day he could retire and begin restoring his collection of 120 broken-down Chevrolet Corvairs.

But on Tuesday, the 56-year-old Pomona man could only stand by and watch his dream disappear as authorities assembled a fleet of tow trucks to seize his vehicles and haul them to an impound lot.

“It’s a nightmare now,” said Phillips, still bewildered by San Bernardino County’s declaration that his precious Corvairs, stored on a vacant lot on Mission Boulevard near Montclair, were an eyesore.

Sure, the cars’ engines do not run, rust is showing through the faded paint, hoods are dented and tires are flat. But with five years of hard work, Phillips said, his collection “could have been worth a million dollars.”

And besides, he said, the vehicles were not any more unsightly than those at many neighboring establishments on a street dominated by used-car lots, heavy-equipment yards, junk businesses, cheap motels, massage parlors and adult bookstores.

Phillips had tried to hide the cars behind a bamboo fence, but officials said that was not good enough--the cars had to be inside a building, or on property that carried a conditional use permit for a car business.

Phillips said he was in a hopeless situation: He could not afford to rent a building big enough to hold his collection, nor did it seem reasonable to spend several thousand dollars to apply for a conditional-use permit when issuance of such a clearance was unlikely. Besides, he said, he does not own the lot, but merely rents the space.

So, instead of moving or applying for the permit, he fought his way through the county bureaucracy and the courts, first losing at an administrative hearing and then failing to win a Superior Court injunction.

“He had due process,” said Phyllis Brooks, supervisor of the county’s vehicle abatement program. More than a year elapsed between the county’s first notice to Phillips to remove his cars and the action to haul them away.

Brooks said outdoor storage of junked cars “is a considerable problem. It creates a public nuisance and an eyesore. It’s a breeding place for vermin and an attractive nuisance for children.”

Besides, the official said, oil could leak out of the cars and contaminate underground water.

Brooks said the ordinance abating abandoned or inoperable cars is not enforced unless a problem is brought to the county’s attention.

“When we get a complaint, we act on it,” she said.

Officials declined to say who made the complaint.

After an unsuccessful, last-minute effort by an attorney for Phillips to obtain a court order to delay proceedings for an appeal, Brooks and other county officials arrived with tow trucks Tuesday to begin removing 120 Corvair cars and pickup trucks and about 20 other vehicles.

Sheriff’s deputies stood by in case of any problems, but they were not needed.

Phillips quietly took a picture of a tow truck taking the first car away, and grumbled about the process.

“The county is sure hard-nosed,” he said.

General Motors built 1.7 million of the sporty, air-cooled, rear-engine Corvairs in the 1960s. Officials of the Corvair Society of America, which has more than 6,000 members, say they do not know how many are still on the road.

Phillips bought his first Corvair 30 years ago, long before consumer advocate Ralph Nader tagged the compact car as accident prone in his book “Unsafe at Any Speed.”

But to Phillips and other Corvair aficionados, the car has always been a joy.

“They were fun to drive. It was never a chore to go anywhere; it was always a pleasure,” Phillips said.

He liked his first Corvair so much, Phillips said, that he bought two more. And before long, people started thinking he was a collector and would bring him their Corvairs when they were ready to sell. By the late 1970s, Phillips had amassed dozens of them, which he parked beside a taco stand he owned in Pomona.

When he closed the business several years ago, Phillips moved the collection to the vacant lot on Mission Boulevard, where the cars fell into disrepair. But Phillips said it was always his intention to restore them after he retired next year from his job as a data systems technician at General Dynamics.

“I was going to sell the (three) houses I own and move to the sticks,” he said.

Instead, he said, he has lost his cars and is stuck with thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Frank Taylor, a county environmental specialist, said he told Phillips that he should pick out several of his favorite cars, save them and get rid of the rest if he could not find a place to house the entire collection. But Phillips said he had become somewhat famous for the collection and would not break it up. He managed to save one Corvair pickup truck by moving it before authorities arrived Tuesday, and said he hoped to save several other cars and trucks before they are all towed away by the county’s contractor, which was continuing the operation Wednesday.

Phillips can reclaim the impounded cars from a Fontana storage yard within the next 30 days, but it will be costly. He will have to pay towing fees of $65 per car and storage fees of $10 a day per vehicle.

Usually, Brooks said, abandoned cars are sent directly “to the crusher” at a wrecking yard after the waiting period. But an auction has been ordered if Brooks does not reclaim the cars, because the Corvairs may have special value. But Brooks said the auction will be open only to car dismantlers and the vehicles cannot be put back on the road.

“They have to be sold for scrap,” she said.

Revenue from the sale will be deducted from the bill that will be mailed to the property owner for the county’s administrative costs. In the unlikely event that the proceeds exceed the costs, the county would retain any profit.

Brooks could not estimate the bill, but she noted that administrative and legal costs have mounted as the case has progressed. Although the property owner is legally responsible, Phillips said he feels obligated as the tenant to pay.