Author Description

Since childhood Solano has always been fascinated with salvage and junkyards. His father would go to find parts for his car and Solano would immediately go off on his own. For him, it was like the greatest playground in the world. He would find a unique car and pretend he was driving. Then he would pull up the seats and open glove boxes, looking for treasure. Solano's father finally got tired of roaming the yards looking for him, calling out his name when he wanted to leave, so he devised a plan. He would honk his horn three times. When he did this, it meant we were ready to leave. Solano's mother would get mad because his clothes would be dirty and she had a difficult time getting the rust out from when he would brush against a really rusty car. Solano only wishes he had a camera back then to have a record of those days, but never thought about it at that age. Some people look at an old, rusty, and dented car and think what a piece of junk, but Solano sees at them differently, as he is sure others do. They have an aura about them. He would look at a vehicle that was smashed and try to guess how it got that way. What did it hit? What hit it? Some cars looked like they were just neglected and left to rot away. Some looked like they could be driven home. In 2005, Solano decided he wanted to build a junkyard model and his first attempt was pretty bad. But he kept trying and eventually he had it down to a system. He did one, then another, and before he knew it, he had a small junkyard. He kept adding more cars and trucks to it, and then he started making buildings and accessorizing the yard. Solano started with plastic 1/25 scale models and then decided to look for already damaged die cast 1/24 scale Danbury and Franklin mint, and other die cast models and would turn them into "junkers" as well. Now Solano does all scales 1/43rd and larger up to 1/12 scales, so if you like old junk cars or just old cars in general, you may like this book.