Junkyard paradise
By Kristen Hampshire

Old Car City USA includes a gift shop filled with one-of-a-kind treasures and vendor-sourced souvenirs.

It’s a certifiable World’s Largest Classic Car Junkyard with 34 acres of 4,400 vehicles circa 1972 or older organized in a stack ’em, rack ’em manner along a wooded trail in White, Georgia, about 60 miles north and slightly west of Atlanta. Old Car City is a lifestyle and business as much as it is the very blood that ties “mayor” Walter Dean Lewis to the land where he was raised.


“I was born in a junkyard, and you know where I live now? In the junkyard within 200 feet of where I’m sitting now in my office,” quips Lewis, the junkyard curator of his family’s business that started during The Depression in 1931.


Old Car City Owner Walter Dean Lewis (left) makes sure the attraction’s gift shop has a mix of name-drop T-shirts as well as handmade car-themed keepsakes.
Photos: Sharon Ann Fuente

A painted board in the gift shop of mostly handmade artifacts tells the story — one that is rooted in working, scrapping, saving, doing good and finding a better way. Old Car City began as a general store. Back then, Walt Sr. started buying old cars and salvaging parts. Eventually, the family business accumulated a large collection of vehicles. Today, Old Car City is international destination that attracts visitors from all over — Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom, to name a few.


Lewis is a humble guy. The gift shop he operates gives visitors an opportunity to take home a truly Old Car City souvenir, with namedrop tees and hats available but mostly curio keepsakes that Lewis makes himself. The gift shop has truly unique souvenirs that customers can’t get anywhere else.


The Old Car City USA gift shop is just as eclectic as the 32 acres beyond its doors. “My theory on anything in the world I do is, it has to be something different. If someone else does it, I don’t want to do it,” says Lewis.



Q. What makes the gift shop different at Old Car City?

A. We make here; we don’t buy. We take Hot Wheels and put them on boxes and paint them up with an Old Car City, and we make decorations on boards or rocks so people who come here can take home a piece of Old Car City. We sell wood-painted ‘plaks’ I make by hand that have sayings like ‘Over yonder at Old Car City’ and include drawings of some of our cars. Our hand-built wooden shelves include painted pinecone people that we find in our woods here, and homemade bird houses, some of them decorated with toy cars. I’ve been drawing and doing cars all my life. But we order our T-shirts, hats and items like koozies that say ‘Photographer’s Paradise at Old Car City’ from vendors. We also sell a T-shirt with my picture on it that says, ‘Born in a Junkyard, Raised in a Junkyard.’



Q. What souvenirs seem to stand out most to people when they visit the gift shop at Old Car City?

A. I’m always coming up with ideas. A little boy in London saw my Hot Wheels — I have them all — and in another room we have here, I veneered an old car with 35,529 Hot Wheels using hot glue. You can see the shape of the car. It’s a 1957 Metropolitan Nash. In two rooms are 30,529 Hot Wheels on display. I make souvenirs like sculptures with Hot Wheels.



Q. You’re a bucket-list destination and retailer. When people book a ticket, what tips can you offer to make the most of the experience?

A. Expect to be in the woods on trails with old cars on either side. It’s not paved and the rows of cars are in line organized by GM, Ford, Chrysler and so on. We arranged them and inventoried the cars like the way we were selling parts. Wear comfy shoes. People fly in to Atlanta and rent a car to drive here, stay one or two days at the campgrounds. Once, we had a photographer who stayed for 12 days just taking pictures. There’s Wes-Man’s restaurant across the street.