Liberace's gold Cadillac, rare BMW M5 Wagon, Mazda Cosmo and more | Barn Find Hunter - Ep. 84

raced in Florida in the '70s with a supercharged big block in the rear. oh, drag the car, drag the car, huge wheels and tires, anyway, he said, do you want to buy it? I said, well, how much do you want, because he costs four thousand dollars, like I couldn't pay you four thousand dollars, so we made a deal, I got the car without the engine and the gearbox and then I spent about nine months building it in a racing circuit with drum brakes and this is the car, this is the same car, so how good now that you've had it, no, we probably have had it. about 38 years old something like that whoa yeah man it's quite a famous car as it's basically a piece to be honest sorry but you know what it is ours it's our family car yeah it surprised everyone when it came out because the only The way to compete with the first corvettes is in dirt track style racing. so help a lever on the straight get to the corner, forget about brakes because you don't have any, just hit the gas again, everyone backs off because they think you're going to have a massive accident and this has drum brakes.

Not now, we haven't learned a lesson in a long time. Now use disc brakes on all coils. um you can see here, it works with the nine inch front right rear axle, what's the link? It's got about 465 horsepower, um, it's a budget built. car, yeah, yeah, it has two trademarks that I have on my cars, one is that I like to use a drag racing big block chevy as a tow hook and the other, which you might see a little later, has a head skull inside, but This car is almost original, except from back here and from the front, we've had one or two altercations, as we say, with railings and things like that, but you know what a great car is, I love it, so that you have another garage here, yes.

We're going to apologize for the weather but you're in England so this is my other garage and I spent quite a bit of time here okay let's walk around these cars here and see what you have here so this car here. it's my youngest son adam uh mini cooper oh which one um we're almost done restoring it but he also has a corvette he has a white 73 that I think you've seen and he has the 56 corvette so we started with a reasonably nice car, but the problem with Minnie is They're suffering from subframe rot, front and rear, bulkhead rot and everything, so a very good friend of mine, Dave Haskell, I think you'll see that at some point.

He gave it to him and he says, "Oh, not another one." Damn rusty seat anyway, so he did all the repairing. We bought all new panels. We try really hard not to buy Chinese panels because they're shit, they're rubbish, they don't fit, so it's actually better to buy British. traditional panels, so it's probably about three days to finish, but you know, don't do too much in the winter, what engines are running well, so I think it has a 1300 engine. Now you can see a nameplate on the sill that John says. Cooper now, John Cooper was a very famous guy and later in his life he would buy British Laden cars, which is mini, and he would do his conversion and then the last series of cars, I think I'm writing saying that he bought the shell. and he built the cars the way he wanted and my son spent five minutes to get this one right and I don't think he would ever sell it, you know what the purists will do, oh why did you put those wheels on them ? stands out, yeah, lovely, we're hot rodders, the hot rodders, so what do we have here?

Okay, this is actually a pretty interesting car. This is um ah

mazda

cosmo

oh you know what it is so this car here where I bought it recently. Mazda obviously made in Japan, all right hand drive, um and it was like the late 60's and what they did, they stole it or like us, you don't use the word nick, uh they stole all the ideas from other European cars, So the headlights, for example, are methacrylate headlights but they have grilles in the front, they do not receive condensation, the rear part looks a bit like a t-bird like a 56-57 t-bird that they have used as very sporty mirrors. what year is it from?

I think this one is 70. Wow, look at that now that it's restored. Here's the funniest thing: This was a nice car that went from Japan to Russia of all places. I just can't figure it out and they restored it. I have all the documentation on the grill, it's just a fabulous car, it was restored in Russia, in Russia, then I went from Russia to Paris, France, I went, I looked at it, I go, I have to own it, you have to buy it, so here It says estimated 75. to 95,000 pounds euros I think it's euros euros, okay, so how did it go with him?

I ended up paying

more

money for it and then we had to pay taxes to bring it from Russia too. I probably owe about a hundred and ten thousand dollars. for cheap car they cost 160 170 in this condition maybe 200 quid impressed, I mean the paint, the details, it's a good car, yes, and it runs well, yes, we start it, we drive it, I haven't used it for about four or five months. We run them about every three months, especially with these rotary engines, because I think the oil drains, something to do with the cylinders, you know, it's not like a normal piston engine, so I love this car, I love the shape, I love the typical.

It has an American design, yes, and this is a car that your guys who are in their 40s and 50s would buy because they remember these cars even though it is a

rare

old car, Jay Leonard has one of these, yes, but he has one of not all. it's a brave bastard oh yeah look at this tail i look like a 1960 ford just stuff yeah just stuff like the typical 60's racing interior just the details on it it's really nice a very limited production se They built 343 examples between 67 and 68, so in uh Hagerty's value guide it says here that for this car in the worst condition they have included condition number four, which is just 58 big American dollars.

In good condition number three is 71,000 Excellent condition number two is 98 great and in forecourt condition 138,000 yes I think we have done well do you think this is forecourt? Well if it was professionally cleaned, yes I think it's because it's just as nice underneath as it is on top, yes, gaps and everything actually better than it probably came out of the factory, I think so, but not in this environment, maybe in Greenwich or something, you know, yeah, it would be a nice car, yeah, what else do you have here? This car is pretty interesting okay this is um.

I actually built this about 10 or 12 years ago, it's the last proper restoration I did, so I don't know if you recognize it at all, oh yeah, and you restore it, no joke, yeah, I didn't paint it, but it pretty much did. everything else, so this is your James Bond Aston Martin DB5, so there's another story behind this one, so this is the original color they built these cars in, built in about five or six colors, built like a car racing, but

more

like a kind of gentleman's racing car it used to cost twenty thousand dollars thirty years no one wanted them yeah, what do you think they're going for now?

Its value has dropped to around £750,000, around a million dollars, that's what it's worth. Well, here's the What we decided that when we bought this car we would ditch the roll cage we would buy a new pair of leather bucket seats. We had the engine, I don't know if we've looked at it, this is something else, look at that. The beauty a little dirty, but there you go, it's a big engine, yeah, how big are those cylinders? They are huge. I don't know, I don't remember how many liters 4.3 or something like that is in Weber. One of these things is an original stainless steel exhaust, but everything comes with it.

We paid a good amount of money for it, but nothing like what it's worth. How long have you had it? Probably about 10 years. 12 years. That beauty. What a nice car. It drives wow and the entire body is hand made so we won't be using all aluminum. Do you say aluminum? No, we say alamin, you said wrong, what did you say, Illumina? I think we invented it, right? The United States invented, you invented coca. tail that's it anyway so we had a great time doing the body work and I gave it to a friend of mine who does concours work and they are charging to paint this to do the body work and paint this car forty one thousand fifty. a thousand ridiculous amounts of money, but this is all glued, not welded, so it's all glued and they are all hand formed, so what a beauty, it has wider arches in the back, um, so these have all been flared and I have had the bows. uh, a burani type wheel, a wire wheel made for them a little bit wider, those are stainless steel alloy, even the new pulls kept the stainless steel with stainless steel and didn't do anything with that job, right?

But anyway it's a great car, it's probably only been driven six seven hundred miles since it was built, it's been on the track once, so what we have here is a 993 gt2 that really is a factory race car . This car was at Daytona about 15 years ago at about 183 miles per hour. According to the bank, this is actually a very

rare

car and one of these was sold, I think, last year, a year before, for £1.7 million. I don't think they made that many of them and Porsche actually used this car. They take it to Goodwood for the revival meeting we let them go you know what the hell yeah cool you know people need to see these things one way it's a shame they sit here but they get used to it and this looks I mean if I was

find

ing out what is this Looks like another Porsche, yeah, you know, this is a

barn

fight show.

Couldn't you put rusty cars here? Well, they're dirty, that's the closest thing, so this is it, we bought this car about seven or eight years ago. This is a Japanese import um this is a 964 rs and they've messed it up so it has different wheels the suspension is different this is one of the Porsches they're cool cars you know I like the mid to late Porsches from the 70s, that's when you put a g50 box in it, just transform the car, you know, they are cool cars, the germans have a very good idea how to make cars, thanks for inviting us to your house, thank you very much,

barn

number one, bar number two, and I think.

We'll meet you at Mabel's garage Yes, yes, thank you sir, thank you very much, it's been a pleasure, cool cars, so drag race the corvette, no, this is that car in the garage, so They did a report about me and the law. At the end of the day, this was Snetterton, the guy says, does he spin wheels? I told him: will it spin? I'll tell you what to put behind the car with your camera and show you what the wheel spinner will do. So I let him pop and he was quite impressed.