Dumpster Driving: Inside the Treasures From the Los Angeles ‘Junkyard’ Car Collection

Classic car enthusiast Rudi Klein was, by all accounts, a unique character.

The German émigré lived in Los Angeles, where he opened a junkyard called Porche Foreign Auto Dismantling (with the automaker’s name misspelled to avoid litigation). Klein, who passed away in 2001, took in only high-end foreign cars, mostly Mercedes and Porsche, but also BMWs and every brand of supercar, including many very rare examples. The junkyard’s trophies included famous Grand Prix driver Rudolf Caracciola’s 1935 Mercedes 500 K Special Coupe, a rare 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Gullwing” (one of 29 with alloy bodywork), and many more.

Stacked-up Porsches are still in place for the auction.
Robin Adams/RM Sotheby’s

Most, but certainly not all, of the cars that Klein bought were crashed, burned, or otherwise derelict. A German crew managed to get into Klein’s closely guarded sanctuary, subsequently producing the unauthorised 2017 photo book Junkyard . Many other people were turned away from the gates, and Klein charged such high prices for salvaged parts that purchases were fraught. The doors remained closed after Klein’s sons, Ben and Jason, took over. But now, everything is coming into the light as RM Sotheby’s prepares to auction cars from the Klein collection on Oct. 26 in its current South Los Angeles location, including those two notable Mercedes-Benzes.

Andrew Olson, car specialist at RM Sotheby’s, said Klein’s premises have “an interesting and special atmosphere—if we moved the cars, some of that would be lost. There’s still a rack of Porsche 356s. We took them out to photograph them, but then they went back to where they were.” In Monterey last year, the auction house staged a horde of storm-damaged Ferraris as if they were still in a collapsing warehouse. Klein’s yard provides natural staging.

There’s a total of 180 cars in the sale, Olson says. Most of what was in the yard will be sold, minus some extensively burned cars and those with a current value that would not justify restoration.

The 500 K Mercedes coupe has bodywork by Sindelfingen. It is a one-of-one vehicle, still wearing its original body. The car was restored and caused a stir at the famed Pebble Beach car show in 1966 and then again in 1978. But it was parked under Klein’s ownership in 1980, fortunately under cover. “The condition is surprisingly good,” Olson says. “It’s very solid and should be a straightforward restoration.”

A roomful of Porsche 356s at Rudi Klein’s yard.
Robin Adams/RM Sotheby’s

The alloy-bodied 1955 Mercedes 300 SL was the only one delivered in black, and had once been owned by Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti. The auction house describes it as “a unique example of the most sought-after of all 300 SLs, virtually unseen for decades.” Complementing it is a 1957 300 SL Roadster that was painted Fire Engine Red from the factory, with a cream interior, and coveted Rudge wheels.

Rudolf Caracciola’s 1935 Mercedes 500 K Special Coupe is in “surprisingly good” condition.
Kegun Morkin/RM Sotheby’s photo

The 1967 Iso Grifo A3/L Spider is a prototype built by the Italian coachmaker Bertone, and is the only factory-built Grifo convertible. Klein acquired the car, with Chevrolet V8 power, reportedly from auto enthusiast and Hollywood producer Greg Garrison. According to Junkyard : “It was one of Rudi Klein’s all-time favourites, and he hoped one day to rebuild it and take part in a classic-car rally in Bavaria.”

“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”

That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.

spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”

That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.

“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”

Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”

The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.

But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.

The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.

There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.

Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.

Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.

Dumpster Driving: Inside the Treasures From the Los Angeles ‘Junkyard’ Car Collection

Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.