Barn find stories?

Also, the Penn turnpike was essentially completed by 1957, a bit early for burying a Testa Rossa.

 

I remember hearing about a GT40 that was parked in a field of tall grass in the U.S. and there was a grass fire. I can't remember if it was rebuilt after that. Back in the day, when old race cars were just "obsolete" instead of valuable entities, people might have scrapped a car that had fire damage.

Of course the "barn find" GT40 story most recent is the guy who went to a garage/breaking yard near where FAV (Ford Advanced Vehicles) was located in the UK and recognized a GT40 tub that had been cut into two pieces. Turns out the car was the same one Bondurant had flipped on its side in the 1965 Targa Florio, an open car.

Note: you historian buffs--Ronnie Spain, the GT40 expert, had listed this car in one of his earlier GT40 registries as destroyed, so don't believe what you read.

The guy bought the car, welded it back together, had a new body made using another GT40 roadster body as a guide, and entered it at one of Lord March's events.

I kicked myself when I read the story, I was probably a few miles from the car in one of my many trips to Lodnon but neer bothered to look for it because I had believed Ronnie Spain when he said it was destroyed. I'll never believe that phrase again....one man's "destroyed" is another man's "barn find."

 

The Biggs family farm was in Clarksville, MO. The barn was large and held the family's collectible and older race and road cars. They had a very nice 1750 Alfa that they fortunately sold the week before the lightning strike. When the barn caught fire, Old Man Biggs and his oldest of three sons were only able to get the Gullwing out as it was closest to the door and a runner. That car is now owned today by a friend back East.

The fire more or less completely destroyed the 2.9 Alfa, the 225 Sport, the TR and an American Engined Special similar to a Kurtis but not sure exactly what make it was. It had a large oval section frame. After the fire, the cars were mostly forgotten until Henry Wessels and his friend Rodney Felton agreed to try and recover the cars from the Farms new owner. Wessels met with the farms owner and the remains of the two Ferraris and the 2.9 Alfa were recovered without any difficulty whatsoever.

The 2.9 was mostly complete and Felton was eventually able to completely restore the car. He fitted a new body but when we sold the car, the original body went with the car and it now lives in Austria.

Felton kept the 225 Sport frame which was complete and not damaged at all until he died. There is nothing left of the car except the frame which was still with Felton's girlfriend as of a few years ago.

The TR now lives in Germany. The frame was recovered complete with most of the suspension but no gearbox or engine. The car was restored by Felton but only the front half of the frame was used in the reconstruction. The rear part of the frame is with the owner of the car for continuity.

The TR's original engine is still with Biggs's oldest son and although a bit melted, it is still recognizable.

The story about the TR frame ending up under a highway started with Biggs's son himself many, many years ago. When he was a bit older he related that they found one of the car frames and set it aside thinking it was worth keeping. Eventually the realized nothing would ever come of it and it was chucked along with a lot of other trash down an embankment not far from the farm where eventually a road was built.

The frame however was not one of the Ferraris or the 2.9 but the American engined hot-rod.

Henry Wessels was kind enough to share all of his photos that he took the day he recovered all the cars. I used to drive the snot out of the 2.9 Alfa and even used it as a daily driver on a regular basis. I even took my son to pre-school in it one day. I also ran it one time in the Ferrari Historic Races and it smoked a TDF and 250TR amongst some of the other drum brake cars. They really are amazing machines.

Anyway, allot of people still refuse to believe thats the way it happened but it did.

Cheers,

Bill Noon

 

Not a Ferrari but worth big dollars as it turned out. This story is true but I had to make up the conversation, not remembering it verbatum after 20-odd years.

The man that told me this story was George Stauffer, a major league cheesehead and car collector in Blue Mounds, Wisc.
He had a passion for Rolls Royce so one day this guy comes up and says 'I got an old Rolls--want to see it?" And George, though his passion had switched to another marque, said "OK.
The guy brings it by, I forget it it was a Silver Cloud or Wraith but anyhow George lets him down gently "Y'now I would have bought it before but now I like them cars" and he points toward a Cobra.

Whereupon the gent says "Well, if you like Cobras, do you like GT-40s?"That's like asking a guy who likes movie stars if he would like a date with Angelique Jolie? Anyhow George says in effect "What'cha got?" And the guy says "Well, over in Paris I got a GT40." (This might have given George a moment of pause; this is, after all, in rural Wisconsin, where an exotic car is a 289 Mustang) So George calls up the world's leading expert on GT40s, Ronnie Spain and says "I need you in Paris" and they all go over there.

Now before the guy shows it to him he says "Now if you want the GT40 you gotta buy all the cars that are in there, including the Rolls Royces" and George agrees, still worried he's gonna see some damn replica. The guy opens the door and George sees:

5 cars, including a GT40.
Not only is it a GT40 but one much more rare than Mk. I,
as it's a Mk. II (I think only 13 chassis were laid down)
George checks the serial number and almost faints
It's the car that won LeMans in '66
But hey ,technically it's a GT40.
George buys them all.
Last I know, he still has the Mk. II.
I estimate it's worth about $4-5 million and change.


So the lesson is, if George would have denigrated the owner, blew him off at the beginning when the guy called about a Rolls, he would have never found out about the GT40.

Never mind how the seller wrested the car away from Ford. I remember after the '67 LeMans victory how Ford gave most of the Ford GTs away, at least one to Bill Harrah. To them, an old race car was just old junk that you could get a tax write-off on.

So be polite when someone offers you drek. The real treasure might be the one they didn't mention yet.

 

Horse gamblers call them long shots.
So anyway one that entertained me briefly was a Ferrari mid engined race car
that had been customized by Chinetti for illustrator Bob Peak, who did clothing ads, but maybe wanted to break through into car design.
It was a silver car and on the cover of Car & Driver.
I thought, decades later, maybe everybody forgot about the car.
I somehow deduced that the car was in Vermont or New Hampshire, some NE state with damn few people.
I called the biggest newspaper in the biggest town and those SOBs wanted $150 for a tiny display ad. My idea was to show a picture of the car and saw "REWARD for this car"
But I was too cheap to spend the money.
Several months later I see a story in a magazine, someone found the car.
I estimate it, rebodied as a 250LM or whatever chassis it was, is worth about $3-4 million.

Lesson learned: spend the ******* money.
(Excuse my French)

 

After 35 years stashed away by the owner at his inlaw barckyard garage. Owned by the Dupont bros for its first 20 years.
Now overseas and will be shown at Amelia Island 2010 - still in as found condition:

(sory a bit lazy so rather use an exsisting thread...)

http://www.alfabb.com/bb/forums/other-italian-cars/152955-after-40-years-sunlight-once-more.html

Elad

 

Not a Ferrari, but related....

1967 Fiat Dino Spider #157

Spent 27 years East of Los Angeles in a garage in the Desert area, then 2 years in a warehouse in Van Nuys.

Per original documentation:
April 27th 1978: Imported from Italy
June 11 1978 Sold at Kruse Californi Coastal Collector Car Auction Lot#403 $7400

In 1979 the engine had a catastrophic timing chain breakage, engine removed, heads and block done. All parts put in backseat and/or trunk and has been sitting since. Registration expired in 1980 and plate sticker supports this.

86,411km on the Odometer.

I called the seller, it took three days to set a day to view.
I drove to his warehouse with cash and trailer ready.

Luckily, he was very difficult to get a hold of, but persistence paid off. I called over 20 times over a 2 day period and finally got him rather than his voicemail. He was in the middle of traveling to visit family.

Starting resto in early 2010.

Regards,
Richard
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Sweet. A Fiat Dino spyder is a great little car...

 

Richard, that is very cool. Don't be shy to start your own thread on that Dino. I love thos cars!

 

I search down cars awell my latest score was a 78 911sc thats been sitting for 15 years. I know where a 308GT4 is sitting has been for at least 15 years I need to look into if the owner wants to part with it.

 

This question may, as Helen of Troy's face launched 1000 ships, start 1000 would be Harrison Fords on expeditions to find the idol's eye. Related only slightly, today by the way I was at the Art Center college of design car show looking at a gold metallic restored PF Series I cab that has been publicized in CAVALLINO, once owned by famous car designer, burned down to the frame tubes in Fallbrook CA fire, rumored to have been bought for under $100K and sold for around 900K without a stitch of restoration. I think it qualifies as a barn find even if the barn burned down. I tried to guess at the cost of the all new bodywork but the owner said it was "far north of $100K" which is I guess why it wasn't restored by the guy that found it. By the way the two numbers on cost and resale that I overheard were from the current head of Ford Advanced Design who I consider a reputatable source. Anyway to go back to the top 5 "still out there" barn finds, I'd like to hear other nominees using these two criterions:

1.)were known to exist at one time
2.) no one has much of a lead except the last country and year they were last seen in public

For example.
Car #1 (don't know name or model but there was a Ferrari bodied by some obscure
body builder that was very egg-shaped in cross section, a coupe with split windshield, raced in Mille Miglia, this may have been found

Car #2 At the Los Alamitos car shows about 20 years ago, a car show produced by Dave Robertson I saw a red Ferrari coupe fastback single 275-GTB style taillight per side, rear fender vents, two separate blade thin chrome horizontal bumperettes in back, calif. plates, the owner told me it was a "GTO" underneath. This may have been the Ulf Nordinder GTO. I asked Dave today, he says he has pictures of some of the cars at the events but I don't know if even if he found a picture that a license plate can be traced if it is over 20 years old in Calif. I would say it was the Drogo Siebenthal car (pictured here)
http://www.tybrainstorm.de/drogo/2-sieben1.html

except that it had rear fender vents a la GTO.Alas I don't remember what the front looked like.

Car #3

Car #4

Car #5 275P 3-seater. black, brushed metal top. Maybe this is too easy to be on the list, used to be commonly seen at California events in the '70s. three seater, may have had steering wheel in the center, Supposed to have been built for Agnelli, some kind of easy to use clutch (pre-selector) as he had a game clutch leg

 

Are you talking about the Marzottos' Uovo? Mr. Niles had it a long time ago...not sure that it was ever lost; I believe its history is continuous?

http://www.elenaferrari.net/uovo01.jpg

 

I was speaking with a Ferrari parts house in Sacremento a few weeks ago and was informed they had located a 330 America which had been sitting on some soon to be regretful farmer's field for something like 21 years. Full restoration to occur. Guess there was enough to work with anyway. Know nothing more than told so if anyone else knows more please inform.

 

So that one can be crossed off the "still out there" list if someone
knows it's out there somewhere being restored or at least "found." It might be hard to maintain a list of "still out there unfound" cars.

I was thinking the function of such a list is that similar to qualifying at Indy, if another car comes in and beats your time, you're out of the field, so if anyone anywhere has heard that car on the missing five list has been found, it is no longer qualifyiies as "still out there."

I did not list the white mid-engined one off Ferrari V12 street car because I have seen that in CAVALLINO and in person so it can't have been lost again.

The 330 in Sacramento I don't think is rare enough to be considered an ultimate barn find, though it confirms my half-baked theory that sometimes rare cars can be found out in the sticks where on occasion those who experience prosparity move out to their dream farm with their toys, only to find no service/parts for hundreds of miles so when the car broke, it sat.I came across such a Ferrari in some old town in rural Nevada, maybe Gardnerville?

On the opposite extreme,in my opinion the least likely place to find an old Ferrari would be some new suburb because to the housewife moving in to a new house, there is no place for an old unfinished car; and all money is devoted to re-decorating (do I sound bitter?)

I have another theory that a good place to lookfor an old classic is an island. I base this on meeting a British racer, Colin Crabbe, who told me he went to Madagascar, checked into the best hotel and spread the word among the hotel workers he was there to buy old cars and paying rewards and soon the best cars in the island were being offered to him. It makes sense, on an island, every enthusiast knows the car is there, if they haven't bought the car, there's no buyer until an outsider comes in. I think his biggest find was in Cuba where he went to see what he thought was an XKE and found out it was a XK-SS (SN 766) with a E-type nose. Worth probably 15 times more than an E-type! Another source says he found two XKSS there. And of course us Americans aren't supposed to be going to Cuba so if there are any treasures there, we have to let the Brits pick it over first.

 

0574? Missing since August '56.

I bring this one up every now and then, seeing if there are any new members w/ info.

 

But since you didn't I devoted 5 minutes to a Google search where the website Anamera lists it as having been a F2 monoposto and then links it to
Sweden. I thought it was in Australia that a monopposto Ferrari had been rebodied as a sports car but maybe there's been more than one. The website
Anamera says "The Ferrari 500 Mondial was powered by a 2 litre 4 cylinder engine delivering 170 bph by 5000 rpm, allowing a top speed of 250 km/h. The production period was from early 1954 until August 1955. 31 cars were built, 14 by Pinin Farina, 12 were Spyders - a little version of the 375 MM - and 2 Berlinettas and 16 by Scaglietti, all as Spyders. The first 6 were Series I Spyders which were not so good looking and later they looked like the 750 Monzas, the Series II Scgalietti Spyders definetively the best looking 500 Mondials. One 500 Mondial was a Monoposto and one number was used for an engine but there was no chassis built for this engine."


When I go back to the Google listings before I open them up I come across this fragment "0574MD was a F2 Monoposto 0580MD was a Ferrari 750 Mondial Spyder with Scaglietti Series II coachwork sold to Tore Bjurstrom in Sweden, he sold it to Ulf ..." but then when I click on it it leads me to the sa,e 500 Mondial page and I can't find the rest of the reference. Anyhow I would say the place to start looking is where it was seen last.
There's also a chance that it was rebodied back to a single seater with some ugly home made body so no one recognizes it is a Ferrari.

So in my list of "famous cars still lost" I would list it like this

"0574 Formula 2 car reportedly rebodied as two seater by Scaglietti, last seen in
Sweden in ___."

and rank it as no. 2 or 3 until a more interesting listing comes along and bumps it down the list.

There is a website called http://www.ferrarimondial.net/category/ferrari-owners-club/
that seems to have a lot of files, I would check that out.
but the real way to find it if Sweden is the last place it was seen is to join the Swedish Ferrari club , buy the old club magazines and find the car linked with an owner. Hey, nobody said looking for treasure would be easy...

 

You refer to the 3-seater owned at the time by Bud Keeney. 2 were built with the other one owned by Lou Chinetti. Although I don't know off hand where the ex-Keeney car is now it is likely to be well known.

Jeff

 

Thanks for the snide comment. We have been looking for 0574 for over 20 years - and, yes, it has occurred to us to check the internet. Although Anamera has some accurate information, that is not always the case. For example the tech data is wrong at least regarding: ignition, clutch, ratios, front tires, curb weight, chassis type, 0534, 0574 and 0576. The 0576 error comes from my dad's Cavallino article in 1990 which was his first published effort at the research on the Series II 500 Mondials. A lot of the information on the internet simply quotes previously-performed historical research which has not always stood the test of time.

The story on 0574 is slightly more complicated. We have the Assembly Data Sheets describing the car with both a 750 Monza (tipo 105) motor and with a replacement 2 liter Mondial (tipo 110) motor which was sold to Sbraci as a 500 Mondial. He raced a 500 Mondial in Italy quite a few times in 1955 and '56. The first race is at Mugello, on June 5th 1955. The last known run by Sbraci was at at Pescara 8/19/56. We do have a copyrighted photo of Sbraci at the '56 Coppa della Consuma on 22 April 1956, and it clearly is a Scaglietti bodied 500 Mondial Series II. The confusion arises because of a car in the Biscoretti Museum in Torino, Italy. The car is an early formula car bearing chassis serial 0188F. Installed in the car is a four cylinder motor with the crankcase stamped 0574 carrying the expected internal motor number 11M which is correct for the tipo 111 motors. The cylinder head attached to the motor is not a tipo 111 cylinder head as it has a narrow valve included angle head, and it carries four single throat Weber Carburetors tipo 45DOE serials 19,1,70 and 48. All of the four cylinder motors have identical motor mount location making substitutions very simple. So the mystery today is "Where is the chassis 0574?"

Let me say this loud and clear for internet researchers; the chassis 0574MD was never a Formula 2 monoposto.

About 5 years ago here on F-chat vintage a member was allegedly going to south Italy to look at a "long missing 500 Mondial." There was never anything after that and I do not remember the posters identity.

 

The trail is very old here, going back to some racing event several decades ago.
I heard part of the problem in Italy is that, when an old car is unearthed, you have to pay all the taxes for all the years it was off the road, unlike in Calif. where you can say it was not being driven for X number of years and get those years knocked off the bill. That accounts for some barn finders still finding cars in Italy that have been in the barn 30, 40 , 60 years because no one wanted to pay the taxes due when it's brought out into the sunlight.
I never used this method of finding a car but there are people called "skip tracers" looking for deadbeat borrowers, maybe if you give them a name and a city and a year, they can start looking for that person. The fee might be nominal. And the person might be well known in their own area. For instance, I have a 60 year old magazine showing this Filipino playboy with his hand built Alfa (something like a '54) and when I went to the Phillipines, all I had to do was mention his name and he was well known in the community, so there a 60-year old lead was not hard to find.

 

Bryan,
Where did the idea that it was a monoposto come from? I have also seen references (on the intarweb) of a 574F, and the implication is that it was a Formula 2 car. I wonder if this is being confused with Swaters monoposto (0188? 0288?).
Alex

Edited: Sorry, Bryan, you had the entire answer in your post. I realized it when I re-read it.

 

B. Keeney's old car is in Northern NJ, in a wherehouse FILLED with a ton of *****in' old-and significant-Ferraris...

 

this thread makes me sick, I have to read it and take breaks.......lol

 

That "off the road" gambit has faded, as govenrments become ever more cash strapped.

You pay licensing fees here from the "last current tag".....

Death and taxes, baby!!

 

A little bump for a great thread .....

 

I wonder if that's the one that used to belong to a relative of my dad's... My dad thinks the car left the country following the Carnation Revolution, but can't confirm this. I know absolutely nothing about the car, unfortunately.