Let’s face it, there was a time in the hot rodding hobby when we just didn’t have the resources that we do today. In fact, if you really think about it, the parts catalogues that a lot of us have looked through for Mustang II rears and Detroit differentials have only been prevalent for a relatively small number of years.

Much to the dismay and disbelief of the younger generation of gearheads, there was actually a time when our “founding fathers” of hot rods had to go to what our parents and grandparents once deemed as the “Pick-A-Part.” Oh yes, the “Pick-A-Part,” the now-famous “graveyard” for gearheads where one would inevitably go to find everything from rear-view mirrors to fully-assembled, small block V8s.

But besides the junkyard of automotive antiquities, there was a whole different process that revolved around the rod-building/car-restoring process. As a matter of fact, cars like this ’59 Pontiac, spotted recently in Alberta, Canada, would’ve been, about 25-30 years ago, an absolutely perfect “parts car,” an old jalopy lying-around that one could ravage for anything from a rear bumper to an automatic transmission. Cars like this ’59 Pontiac that Jalopnik recently spotted, when this method of rodding and restoring was the method of choice, sold for practically nothing, which made it that much easier for an eager motorhead to buy a “beater” that could be used as a donor for a much cooler street or strip machine.

But again we are also talking about a time and a generation when things and people were far less “throw-away,” back when old American iron, like this Pontiac, was far more than just a “Jalopy.”