FIVE barns full of classic cars hidden in rural England | Barn Find Hunter - Ep. 88

- I'm going to pick up a friend from Charlotte who is going to show us a collection of

cars

that his friend owns, but his friend doesn't want them to see it. He doesn't want people to know that he has these

cars

. My friend Vernon Brandon will be joining us and we will go out together to this remote location and see what might be the most legit

barn

find

in this triple found so far. (upbeat music) Tell us what we're about to see here. - What we are going to see is a collection of about 170 cars, a fairly organized collection that is not really open to people.

In fact, we may go into some buildings today that I've been in a lot of. and over the years he helped me

find

parts for British cars in the US and I helped him find parts for his American cars here in the UK. So we have become very good friends. - We are four tenths of a mile from our location. I can't reveal where it is. We're somewhere in the UK, that's all I can say. But I'll see you inside. (upbeat music) What's behind me and in the surrounding buildings is a scene that, frankly, I didn't think we'd find in the UK.

Sometimes in the United States you'll see something like this in a farm area in Montana, but here we are in England. So Vernon and I will walk you through and tell you about some of these cars. We have a lot of work ahead of us for the rest of the day. So, Vern, why don't you lead the way? And we'll take a look at it. - Alright. - I think seeing a collection of cars that are deteriorating is sad for everyone. Like cars that are just sitting outside and rotting and the guy says, "I'll do it someday." But this is not like that, it is more of a museum.

Most of these cars will come out of here, which is just amazing. This is an effort of preservation, as opposed to an effort of deterioration. -This is due to his first car. It's a standard ten. And... - Which is a triumph. - Yes, well, Standard Triumph. The owner bought it when he was 17 years old. He drove it every day for seven years. He told us that he paid £750 for it. It was painted like this. So, it's like it was thirty-something years ago. - It has 56,000 miles. It is a standard gearbox. It's a small cart, I love it. - This is an English Ford Anglia.

A 105E Anglia. And my first car was a 1961 English Ford Anglia. So... - In the United States? - In the United States, yes. - In Charlotte. - Yes. - How old was it when you bought it? - He was about six months old. - You must be quite old? - Yes, I'm quite old. (laughs) - So this is a Ford and I have to say I've always wondered about it. Mercury had this rear window, which went back, like this. It's something like this. - I don't know why they did it. - What was the first; the egg or the chicken?

If you remember some of the Mercury Montereys that were founded at Barn Find Hunter, they had a rear window that was tilted somewhat toward the front and the rear window actually rolled down. This window does not go down, but has a similar style. So this car is one of two in this building. He is a herald. - With the Herald Coupé. - Or Coupe. Now we found on Barn Find Hunter some Heralds before, which are usually convertibles, but I have never seen this Coupe version. So that's two plus two. It has a back seat, but you can't be very comfortable. - But it is the same body as the convertible. - It is. - It just has a different top. - That gold or pumpkin-colored car. - That is a bond that we must preserve. - A van to keep... - Bond, b-o-n-d. - Oh, bond.

So Bond was... - Like the bond virus you probably know. - Yes. - But Bond was a manufacturer of fiberglass GPR cars. But he has a six-cylinder engine and a test chassis. -I don't think he can get there. Can? - You have to be like the American collectors who climb above everything. - Pickers has nothing against us today. (laughs) So I don't think I've ever seen a Bond up close. - It's a Triumph for test driving, train and chassis, engine and everything. But with a fiberglass body. - It has a Triumph chassis. - Yes, he has a Scott with a test chassis and a six-cylinder engine. - Then this must be a rocket. - It will turn out quite well. - Okay, so we have to continue along the path here, but as we walk here, over here we have a standard Atlas van, pick up. - The green one here? - And that is very, very strange. - So, what I noticed is a truck.

Okay, there are fender skirts on the front or something. It's like you can't see the front wheels. - Well, that's for kids. It is the engine that is right next to the seats. So it really is a taxi. - Oh really? What an attractive truck, with an almost art deco style and that piece that looks like a buttress. Now, one thing that is curious is a completely new NOS body. A new mini body that has never been put on a car. What a rediscovery that is. (upbeat music) - So this is a scary thought electron. There's a weird little logo here.

And this is a fiberglass car. - It's another one from the same era as Bond down there. - Well. - Just another car that... - I mean, to me it looks like a buggy. It looks like a Meyers Manx or something. - When you walk in, it's very fun, because it has wooden floors. - And that's how the wooden floors came? - Yes. - I'm going to try to turn this front over to expose the drivetrain. - It's 1200 CC and it looked like... I mean, it looks like a speedboat to me. If you look at that windshield, it's very swept.

I would like to see this car. It would probably take us four weeks to get him out of here. - He has another Atlas truck there. Now he no longer has the same body. - So you can see that the engine is between the two seats if there was another seat here. And you can see the transmission behind the engine. They had to use a long extension to engage the gears. It's a... Think of a big black cobra. I had the same theory. And if you've ever seen a big black cobra, it has a gear stick pointing in the wrong direction.

There is another van. This is probably more than we will see in our lifetime. - This is the holy grail of Atlas vans. - Yes, no joke. Wow. So, this is something that speaks to me. It's a Ford Cortina 1600... it has attractively styled wheels. They look like the wheels on the Ford Cortina that we had in the United States, but they are wider than those on a Ford Cortina. It had a 1600 engine, it is a four-door. Seems to be a solid car, has good paint. You can get in this car and drive it for the weekend right now, that would be great.

Check this one out right here. This is an Opel. - Now Vaux Hall is a brand that means nothing to us in the United States. They were never imported, but it is a British brand. This is a fire Enza SL and it looks, again, different, like a fast back. Like a Mustang or Barracuda or something. Americans dominated this style of the time and Japanese car companies, British car companies and even German car companies, to some extent, are trying to mock or copy our style. So, speaking of American cars, there is one out there. This is a '56 Pontiac V8.

What model is it? Chieftain perhaps. - Starched. - It has an automatic. It has everything... - It has the hydrostatic, automatic system. - A Pontiac owners club in the United Kingdom. So isn't that something? That there is actually a Pontiac club in England. Really nice interior. Texas Life License Plate. This is a Vaux Hall and, as before entering this building, I barely knew what a Vaux Hall was. And I've seen more now than I've ever seen in my life. A Living Vaux Hall. And this is an original car. I'm looking inside. I'm looking at the body, the paint.

It has 10,440 miles. The keys are there. I look forward to driving it. What a great car. Look at this truck. Is this cool or what? - After Leyland bought Standard Triumph, they changed the name of many things. So this is just an Atlas van from the Leyland lots. - This is a beautiful vehicle. I mean, you look at the interior, the paint, the condition of the car. It has a 1,690 cc inboard engine, which is a big block. The other one we saw later had a much smaller engine. The ignition key is here on top of the engine cover.

It's probably a choke here. It's a four-speed, which probably has a long series of rods that would go behind the transmission so you can shift this. It has a Triumph steering wheel. I mean, it looks like something you'd see on a TR4 or something. I would like to drive them around the United States. This is very nice. (upbeat music) There's one back here that I wanted to show you and it's this one right here. This is an Austin truck and it was an armored vehicle. It has thick glass and you could actually put a second piece of plexiglass behind it to make it even thicker.

And just like that, this door would close. It was a very fortified door, made of heavy glass. I don't know if it was bulletproof, but it is a very heavy door, made of very heavy steel. But imagine driving this in the summer. There is no air conditioning. So, they wisely built a second gate that also had security. It had a steel fence, but a driver could feel some breeze there as well. Now they tell me that this company, when these trucks left the road, they were all crushed. They were destroyed. And that this could be the last one left.

There is still this one, or maybe another one. Very good, you have a column change. It probably has three or four speeds on the column. And you could see the image of the vehicle here, Secure Core Limited, Armored Security Division. All painted with a brush, you can see the brush strokes there. He referred to this as axe-proof, but the steel is apparently thick enough to, I suppose, prevent someone from taking an ax and chopping up the body, stealing the money. Here are a couple of interesting cars that we don't see very often in the United States, but there is a little piece of America in this car.

It is a Rover 69 of 3.5 and three, four and

five

powers or

five

of 3.5 liters. That's because the British call them liters, but in America, back in the sixties, it was a 215 aluminum block Buick. It was a V8 developed by Buick that has a nailhead configuration like Buicks usually have. . When General Motors was done with this engine, they sold the rights, patents, and all the tooling to BMC, the British motor company. And that engine, which started in a Buick Skylarker, I think it was a Skylarker. He ended up being in Rovers and Range Rovers and TRA Triumph. -TVRS. - TVR, MGB V8, MGB GT V8 and who knows how many other vehicles that engine has ended up in.

Of course, when it came to England, they converted it to two SU carburetors instead of a two-barrel or four-barrel carburetor, which we would have in America. But I heard a funny story that General Motors wanted to buy this engine back from British Leyland and I guess they originally bought it for about a hundred grand or something. And they wanted to buy them back and the British lands and they said, "No, we'll sell you individual engines for $20,000 each." So it never happened. Here is the 3.5, here is a three-liter version. Basically the same car is a 64. It's an inline six.

Now, one thing I wanted to show you on this car, it was like a muffler. I mean, this looks like a silencer. But it is an air cleaner. It's the input for these big SU carburetors here. So the intake, the inlet, looks like a dual exhaust, it should be under the rear bumper. Straight six, both nice cars, very solid and we never see these cars in the United States. When I was a child, we saw this car from time to time. My friend Buzzy Bressler and Tommy Bressler, his mother, were driving an Austin 40, an A40. This one is...

It appears to be in semi-restored condition. It looks like it has new paint, white with black top. It is still somewhat destroyed and the interior needs carpets and seats. But this is a hot rod. I'll show you why. - Do I need to help you with that? - No, I think we're fine. Someone is putting a twin-cam Fiat with two downdraft cylinders here. It's probably a Holly or Weber type design. But this is a hot rod and how much fun it should be to drive would sound good. It would go well and replaces a small pushrod motor, sort of an anemic motor that would have been here originally. - And it wouldn't seem like he was a sleeper. - Yes, I would be asleep.

It's a nice little car. And it's A40, right? - Yes, good. That's a nice car. (upbeat music) - Okay, so we've decided that instead of going down there, we'll just watch it from the back of this old Ford Flatbed. We have an American vehicle, an Edsel, a Triumph TR7 Roadster, the sedan there. The Sedan in the photo, the light colored one. It's a Humber Super Snipe. Behind this Edsel is an MGB GT and another A40. The green truck is a Morris Minor Traveler. Woody's little car. This looks like an Austin marina right here and there's just a big pile of parts.

Hey, if you don't make it through, it's been a pleasure working with you. It's been a fantastic five years. Then you have to go from the box to the flat tire to the running board. Tighten around the mirror, toward the fender that folds. On the bumper. See what I do for you. I mean, all of you sitting in your living room right now, watching this, remember, like three months ago, I was doing this for you.Now here, this is a new, never used NOS body tub, as we call it new and old, for a Morris Traveler.

A Morris Woody wagon. A miniature Woody car. You could take this and build a wooden backrest for it. Or similarly, if it had a frame under which this one doesn't, it could become a four-door station wagon, van, or sedan. So, a very versatile platform. I wish I had that in the US because Morris doesn't have a real chassis. It's bent tin and has torsion bars for suspensions that bolt to a 10 story stand and it just rots away. So if you see a minor Morris sitting in someone's yard and the front end drooping, like it slammed shut.

It's not slammed shut, the can has rotted. It is a very expensive job to rebuild it. So having a new one like this would be the answer to many people's prayers if they were restoring a Morris. It is a Vaux Hall Bedford Rover, which was a mobile caravan. This top was hinged and raised. So I guess this roof window became a side window. There's like a small countertop there as a kitchen. There is a bathtub that could have been a sink. And you'd open the back door right here and a tent would fall down so your legs would stick out.

So this is for one or two people. What a wonderful use of utility and design, really great. And then there was a bunk bed option somehow, I guess outside so the kids would sleep there too. That's how you would tour the UK, maybe back in the day. Here is an interesting car. It's a Vaux Hall again, Viva Brabham. And this is a special edition to commemorate Jack Brabham, formula one world champion. It's probably just a decal kit and maybe has some dual carburetors or something, but it appears to be cherry. If you look at the paint and if it is the original paint stripe, it appears to have very low mileage.

It appears to be in very good condition. It has a cool looking steering wheel with Brabham horn button. It has an attractive shift knob with a Brabham button and has 25,000 miles. Which I consider original. The seats look in good condition. Blue interior, blue exterior. It's got a couple of gauges down there, a tachometer. Now here we have a couple of opals. These used to be available in the United States in the past, manufactured by General Motors. I guess what we mainly see these days is the Opal GTS, a cool little Corvette-looking sports car. These are Opal Cadets and this is a Notchback sedan with quick reverse.

And these used to be available in the United States. You could have bought them at a Buick dealer. I was looking at this. This is really difficult. Now a Volkswagen van is in fashion. It has these windows with blinds. It has a nice interior. It seems they have lowered it. It has the entire back upholstered with this type of button tufted interior. A left-hand drive car, so it probably came from there, as they say here in Europe. So this probably came from Germany or France, Italy, somewhere that had left-hand drive. Take a look at those wheels.

So this thing was knocked down flat and they put a narrow torsion beam in there to make it look like it's buried in there. But this looks very good. You may have heard me refer to Volkswagen vans before about the cracked windshield. This is a split windshield. This is a flat piece of glass and a flat piece of glass separated by this body structure here. The newer ones have a kind of piece of glass with bubbles. There is a trendy Volkswagen van and here is a trendy Volkswagen beetle. Two tones. I wouldn't be surprised if they were built by the same guy, because they had the same treatment, same seat covers, two tone engine, hot wheels, folding front end.

And this one is right-hand drive. This was a UK car. Sliding roof. (upbeat music) - This is a unique type of tractor. You can almost ask why he didn't want him, but he's a TE 20 something like Ferguson. I don't know which one it was at first, but it has a Land Rover Discovery TDI diesel engine anyway. Which means it probably makes about 15 times more horsepower than the original engine that was in this thing. And we have to finish it. The radiators need to be mounted around and the owner will extend the hood on these Fergusons and make it look more like a Ferguson.

But it probably attracts something here. I'd probably tear these

barn

s down if you wanted. - Does this have a turbocharger? - Yes, it is TDI diesel. - A turbocharged diesel. So this is a hot rod tractor, man. - Yes. - Fresh. I can't express how special it was to be invited to this facility because it is completely closed to the public. Nobody knows it's here. No one is invited to come back here and it was only because Vernon is good friends with the owner that we got permission to come back here. So Vern, thank you very much. - Thank you. - This guy arrived a day early from Charlotte and took a train a couple of hours to meet us here.

We picked it up and it has been amazing. So I want to thank Vernon and the owner that he's there and I can't reveal who he is, but he's a really good guy. And he knows these cars and loves them. I said, if I took all these cars and you said you could get one back, what would be said? I couldn't decide. They all mean a lot to me. That is very beautiful. Happy hunting. We come to the end of an incredible week in the UK. We've toured all over the United States, but this is our first time overseas.

And it's been just amazing. The people we have met and the cars we see are interesting. Although I saw a lot more American cars than I could believe, it has been an incredible journey. I hope we come back and I hope that if you live here, you know that you have a lot of

hidden

, hard to find cars. If you don't live here, if you come from the United States. If you're coming on vacation and spending a couple of days, meet some locals and see what you can find. Happy hunting. (upbeat music)