Barn Find Hunter Shows Us Our New Favorite Grocer—One Stocked with Classic Cars

“If I was a treasure hunter, I’d do like the pirates did, X marks the spot,” says Tom Cotter at the beginning of the newest episode of Barn Find Hunter. Well, Tom, we’d argue that you’ve got the treasure hunter part down pat, and this latest discovery—X and all—seems like one of your best yet.

Typically, when we think of the locations that folks pick to hole up cars that will one day become “barn finds,” we think of, well, barns. Or sheds, garages, and sometimes even trailers. But the reality is that any enclosed space can make for decent car storage, if you play your cards right.

Case in point: Paul Gentilozzi, the special star of this episode. Paul is an accomplished former Trans-Am and IMSA sports car driver who has won at the 24 Hours of Daytona. He’s a race team owner, a businessman, and above all else, an avid car collector. Paul’s collection resides not in a barn, not in some abandoned factory, but in a defunct grocery store.

And it’s here, at the grocery store, that we join Tom and Paul for a tour of an absolutely remarkable group of cars.

The action starts with a weathered second-gen Corvette in a back garage, but things really heat up when they hit the main shopping floor. After checking out Paul’s Plymouth Arrow drag car, we slide over to see an all-original 1956 Corvette formerly owned by the late Harry Neiman, one of the heirs to the Neiman-Marcus department store fortune.

Things get even . . . cooler . . . as the duo move over to the Frozen Foods aisle to see a 1967 Oldsmobile 442 W30 that spent its entire life as a race car. You wouldn’t know it based on how pristine the bodywork looks, but Paul points out that this one still has a roll cage in it. Paul walks Tom through some of the minutiae of the ’67 Olds, including laying out the remarkable amount of preservation this classic has been treated to.

Bowties more your speed? Next to that super rare Olds, Paul points out a 1968 Camaro Z/28—the only one painted orange in 1968, according to him. As impressive as that car is, the story Paul tells next about racing Magic Johnson’s father is even better.

And the stories just keep coming. You can tell Tom is having a hoot crawling all over these cars, but it’s the stories—the ones behind certain cars, the ones from Paul’s racing days—that really carry this episode. Paul has superb taste in classic cars, but his knack for storytelling might be even better. Kick back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this new Barn Find Hunter episode in its entirety below. We sure did.