Barn Find Hunter: A 1-of-3 Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile Gets Another Shot at Life

Tom Cotter and the Barn Find Hunter video crew have made some pretty epic discoveries over the years. Rare Porsches, Shelby Mustangs, a Ferrari or two–you know, the fun stuff. But the team’s most recent finding—a 1966 Ford F100 pickup—might just be their coolest yet.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan is world famous for its beauty, its scale, and the massive mountains of sand bluffed up against the turquoise waters of Lake Michigan. (Yes, the author is biased; he lives about 40 minutes from this treasure. No, he will not apologize.)

That rugged landscape was, and still is, a tough hike. So, just before World War II, a businessman named Louis Warnes had the bright idea to use the automobile to take tourists up and around this beautiful landscape.

These “dunesmobiles,” as they were called, came in a few different shapes throughout the years. The earliest versions were used 1930s-era Ford convertibles with balloon-style aircraft tires on them. Once those were worn out, a fleet of new 1948 Ford convertibles took over. Following those, a flock of 1956 Oldsmobile convertibles stepped in.

In the mid-sixties, as those Oldsmobiles petered out, Warnes turned to the Ford F100 pickup for the final generation of the dunesmobile. The making of these trucks is fascinating. As Cotter explains, Warnes turned to a local welding shop to chop the brand-new frames and extend the trucks roughly 24 inches. The roofs were removed to provide a more open-air feel, and then rows of seats were added in the bed to up the number of people one vehicle could haul.

Eventually, the land was turned into a national park and vehicles were banned from the sand, marking the end of this enterprise. The F100 pickups then went to Manitou Island to become maintenance vehicles for a period of time, before returning to the mainland to be sold off on the cheap.

Tom and the gang have been tracking the whereabouts of these trucks for some time. They’ve traced the history of five of the trucks from the program, and the pickup featured here is, as far as they know, the only one left with the original scripting still written on the side from 1966. Even more rare: It’s the only one they know of that had its roof welded back into place following its service in the dunes. After years of searching, asking around, and cruising Northern Michigan backroads, the team finally found it thanks to a serendipitous social media post from a new property owner in the area.

Though the F100 is a bit rough, there’s a remarkable amount of history preserved in this example. We see that the odometer inside reads 63,000-and-change miles, which Tom bets are all original. The floor wears a Monroe Shocks sign as a patch, and there’s plenty of rust forming on the tailgate. But look at that lettering along the side! Inside the glovebox, Tom finds a Michigan registration for the truck that expired in 1998—and a nice Craftsman screwdriver, among other things.

Tom then launches into an interesting thought exercise about whether or not something like this should be restored. “In every car’s life, there comes a point where it’s no longer worthy of a restoration,” he says. “It would cost you more to restore the car than it’s worth.”

But as he also notes, sometimes the dollars and cents become secondary. “People have stopped by and talked to the owner, they want to buy the doors off this thing. But that would destroy a piece of history from this area. Even though this truck is rough, and if this were just a truck—without this history and without this custom bed—if this were just a truck, it’d be worth $500 and you would not consider restoring it. But because this truck has so much local history, it’s worth more than your average truck to this region of Michigan.”

Game on.

Tom then turns to Davin Reckow, the man with the greasy hands you’ve seen in countless episodes of our Redline Rebuild series, to see if he can get the ol’ girl to turn over. As mother nature rains down in a fury, Davin sets to work on the truck’s inline-six, but not before introducing the truck’s new owner—our CEO, McKeel Hagerty.

As he’ll readily admit, McKeel has a soft spot for these dunesmobiles. “Our family story with these dunesmobiles goes back to when my dad was a kid, when he dreamed of being a dunesmobile driver in the 1948 Fords,” he explains. “My dad knew that they were going to be shutting [the dunesmobile operation] down, and we went out and went for one of the last dune rides in these. I’m going to just imagine it was this one. It’s exciting. This is a puzzle that we’ve been putting together for a long time and it’s part of our family. It’s just kind of cool to think about it.”

With McKeel’s careful assistance, Davin manages to get the engine to turn over with a fresh battery. However, there’s no spark. Into the distributor they go. The eventual diagnosis is that it needs a new coil. In the meantime, Davin invites McKeel to swap in some fresh plugs. With most of the ignition system changed, the team finally gets some spark. Fresh gas goes in from an external can and an electric pump, and voila, the sixer coughs to life. “I can’t believe it!” McKeel exclaims.

Chatting later with Tom, McKeel restates his excitement about the newest vehicle in his stable. “We’ve been looking forever for one of these, this generation of them. Well, the Barn Find Hunter team and our team, you guys worked together for years to try to find one. And who knew that it wasn’t that far away from where I live?”

“You’ll have these passing things sometimes with vehicles in your life, and when you’re a collector and you go back and start finding them again, your memories do sharpen,” he continued.

Looking ahead, McKeel plans to let the Redline Rebuild team work on the car for a bit to see what they can make of it in its current state, but then ultimately the dunesmobile will be treated to a full restoration. He talks about his family’s involvement with a Fourth of July parade that happens over in Glen Arbor, where another one of his dunesmobiles—a 1948 Ford—has been a star fixture for some time. The goal is to bring this F100 along to that parade eventually, as well as to find other ways to share this piece of northern Michigan history with as many folks as possible.

“Everything we do at Hagerty, we share with everybody,” McKeel remarks. “People will get to drive it and ride in it, and I can’t wait to pick people up from the airport in it!”

Be sure to check out the entire episode below and enjoy the loads of historical photos, additional anecdotes, and good old-fashioned wrenching.

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