Barn Find Hunter Unearths “King Tut’s Tomb” of Cool Classics

When you think of barn-find cars or the idea of a group of barn-finds, you tend to picture cars with similar traits, stored in one fell swoop—a cadre of muscle cars, a few malaise-era classics that have seen better days, or something like that. Tom Cotter and the Barn Find Hunter team are familiar with that sort of encounter.

But occasionally, he’ll get the chance to explore a gaggle of cars that have seemingly nothing in common. That’s what we have on hand with the latest episode.

Tom describes the caretaker of this collection as “the ultimate enthusiast,” which is quite the compliment. For more than a year, Tom had been slowly ingratiating himself with this owner, building up to asking for a shot to explore the collection. At long last, that time has come.

“My best days are when I can come to a barn-find location like this, and I’m clean, and I come home, and I’m filthy,” remarks Cotter as they prepare to head inside. Sounds just like our best days in the garage, too.

Up goes the garage door, and viola: “I bring you, a Corvette Stingray.” Of course, it’s dusty and half-buried under who knows what, but that’s just how Cotter likes them. This one has lots of custom bodywork, but Tom thinks it’s a 1964. “I usually tell by the hood,” he says, “but the hood’s modified.” After exploring the interior for a bit, they pop the hood and check out the small-block V-8 underneath.

After they’re through with the Corvette, Tom turns to a sliver of space that, if you weren’t looking closely, would appear to hold some sort of lawn equipment. But, underneath those boxes sits a real-deal race car. Tom and the gang originally think it’s a Lotus, akin to what Dan Gurney would have driven. However, it turns out to be a copy of a Lotus car created by a small shop in Madison Heights, Michigan.

Lest you think that it’s less interesting because it’s just a copy, Tom also goes on to explain that the car appeared in the Paul Newman film, Winning. Famous in its own right! The car is full of neat details, but you’ll have to watch the film to see what Tom has to say about it.

Onto a new building. First stop: The engine that would go into the race car mentioned above. We’ll let Tom walk you through the particulars, but know this: There’s mention of an eight-camshaft dragster.

From the 1960s and circle tracks, Tom jumps a few decades for his next subject. “Normally I’d walk around this car feeling what kind of car it is, but it’s just too easy to know,” Cotter starts. “It’s a 930 Porsche Turbo.” Black-on-black with just 16,175 miles on the clock.

Now, the rodents may have made some more serious advances on this one relative to that Corvette he looked at earlier. (By the way, some rodents can drive now. Just bears repeating how strange/awesome that is.) However, this one they’re able to pull out into the daylight. “Young guys would have posters [of these 911 Turbos] on their bedroom wall and dream about these things,” says Tom. “Who doesn’t love this car?”

There’s more treasure in this episode, but we’ll leave you to those discoveries. Be sure to watch the whole thing below and let us know which car you were most excited about.