- I was driving down the road looking for locations
that we could come back to
and shoot "Barn Find Hunter" episodes,
and I took a quick dart down this driveway, and said,
"Oh, a Triumph Stag."
So I drove to the end of the road,
looked around those neighborhoods down there by the water,
the ocean's right down the road,
and I said, "I'm gonna stop and talk about this Stag."
So this Stag, any Stag,
is kind of a casualty, I think.
They're great cars.
They had no real audience.
It was a car completely different
than any other Triumph that had been made before or after.
So this is a big Triumph.
It's a four-seater convertible, this top comes off.
It's got a V8 motor in it,
and the V8 is not like a Buick derivative V8 or anything.
The motor is a Triumph engine.
It's an overhead cam engine, just awkward, and odd.
It had a good exhaust note.
And people who love them are gonna be saying,
"Oh, what are you saying about my car?"
I don't mean to be negative about it,
it's just that they only lasted a little while,
and then went away,
so there was really no market for it.
So this one is a sad case.
You can see, you know, rust bubbling out here and there,
and who knows why it was parked?
It's probably 'cause that motor,
you couldn't find parts for it.
If you'll take a look inside here,
I don't wanna open the door,
but there's things living in here.
There's a pile of leaves, and acorns, and pine cones,
and stuff.
So I'm sure they're pretty thankful for barn finds.
It would take a big effort, and a lot of money,
to revive a car like this.
And if you're paying somebody to do it at $100 an hour,
you'd be upside down,
and exceed the value of the car just in labor costs.
So this is driveway sculpture.
(upbeat music)
It's funny how you meet people in the barn find world.
I was, oh, a few miles from here,
looking at an old Triumph Stag in a driveway,
and I said, "Hey, you know, I'm kinda doing this video
for 'Barn Find Hunter,'
can I use your car?"
And they said, "Man, if you want barn finds,
there's this friend Carey we've got,
here's his address."
Now, I would never would've found you on this long dirt road
at the end of a long dirt road, in Owls Head, Maine,
unless I got a lead.
So keep your ears open.
Carey, thanks for inviting us over this morning.
- Tom, great to be here,
and hello to all you viewers out there.
- If you've been watching the show for a while,
you know that most of the barn finds we find
are not in barns.
They're in parking lots,
and they're in lean-tos,
fields.
This is one of the few barns
that we've actually seen on this episode.
- [Carey] Now we can choose our entrance.
Shall we go for the big sliding door?
- [Tom] Yeah, I think so.
- Okay, here's the big reveal.
Is there a Ferrari?
Is there Maseratis?
There's Italian things,
and German things,
(door scrapes)
but let me hit the lights.
We actually have lights.
- Okay, cool.
- [Carey] I'm going over here.
(switch clicks)
Oop, there's the lights.
- All right, well let's concentrate
on the red car first here.
So last on the road in '12.
It's been off the road for 10 years.
- [Carey] I've had this one since the early nineties-
- [Tom] And what year is it?
- '77.
I was, I had Triumphs.
I had a bunch of TR6s that I was rebuilding,
and I opened a restaurant,
and I realized, "I don't have any time to rebuild this car."
My dad had one of these in the early eighties.
After driving the Triumph, I remembered, man,
the Alfa had like roll-up windows, and a five-speed,
and it was less of a pickup truck than other cars.
It was sophisticated.
And so I was looking in the local trade paper,
the local swap and sell, called "Uncle Henry's."
I put an ad in it, says, "Looking for a Alfa Romeo,"
or I was looking for a Fiat Spider.
And this guy calls me up, he says,
"I got one of those Alfa Romeos,"
and I'm like, "Okay, what's this gonna be like?"
So I go to meet the guy,
and he's got giant American cars, mid-sixties,
like Chrysler four-doors, New Yorkers, Buick Electras,
and in between all these cars is this little, teeny Alfa,
you could hardly see it.
My wife at the time, good friend and partner, Evelyn, said,
"Before you go there, Carey,
you don't always buy the first one.
And they always wind up, you sell the first one,
you buy like three more till you get what you want."
I said, "Okay, I swear to you."
And we come back and the guy says, "What do you think?"
I said, "Well, you know, I really wanna think about it."
And she's behind the guy going, "No, no, write the check.
Get the car."
I'm like, "You know, I promised some people
that I would really not buy this car."
So then we went out in the car.
She says, "What are you crazy? Buy that car."
It was like, 30, 2500 bucks or something.
This was like 1993, 2.
So I called him up and said, "Yeah, we'll take the car."
He said, "Well, best bring a truck with ya."
I'm like, "Why is that?"
"Well, the extra engine, and a stick-up pump,
and all kinds of other crap came with it."
So we drove it around for a few years.
I put a top on it, my son and I did the interior,
and my intention is
to now that I'm gonna be on TV, this is now a famous car,
so the price of it is gonna go way up.
No, I do wanna restore this one, and that one,
but what I've learned is that I cook food well,
and other people fix cars better than I do.
So that's the game.
- [Tom] So right here?
- [Carey] Ah, the Beamer.
- [Tom] So you told me this was a 1600?
- [Carey] Yeah, it's a 1600-
- But it's got 2002.
So let me just explain.
A 1600 was a 16 RCC engine in a small sedan that BMW made,
and then there was a 2002,
which was a 2 liter,
a newer model.
So why does a 1600 have a 2002 logo on it?
- Well this was a California car,
and when I bought it,
they had taken out the 1600 engine,
and put a 2002 engine in it.
So when we got it,
this is supposed to be the family car, go figure.
Needs basic rust repair,
and it needs a shave and a haircut,
and it's got,
a local guy at Autowerkes in Freeport,
before he had Autowerkes, put a five-speed in this thing.
we have a Weber 3 series radiator, 3 series brakes,
low numerical axle ratio.
So this thing cruises along at 80,
with about, you know, 2,000 rpm.
- [Tom] So this was a daily driver for you?
- Oh yeah, this was the daily driver,
except these cars are so well-balanced,
they are terrible in the snow, like terrible.
And who would wanna drive this in the snow, anyway?
She's a sweet car, and it's odd that, you know,
you don't see too many of the sunroof ones like this.
The coupe sunroofs.
- Yeah.
So this needs to be just ripped down and-
- [Carey] Yep.
- And sandblasted or dipped.
- It's actually quite solid.
Like all the shock towers,
and all the stuff are totally solid.
It's all surface,
like the front fenders, you know,
some rusting on the roof, but the thing is totally solid.
Typically, this is where these things rot out,
is around the shock towers.
- So did this drive when parked as well?
- Oh, yeah.
It was having little of a head gasket leak.
I mean, a valve cover leak, and a lot was going on,
so I said, "We'll just park it,"
and you know how those things go.
- I know. I'll get to it in a couple of weeks-
- I'll get to it.
And it gets started up from time to time,
to keep all the oil going through it, but-
- [Tom] Now what's your intention for this one?
- Well, I wanna restore this one,
put some modern air conditioning in it,
and go across the country with my son in it.
We had a trailer hitch on it.
I towed this little, teeny trailer,
with like all of our little teeny, blow-up boat
and everything,
and every Monday, we'd go off to Lake St. George,
so this is a lot of childhood memories for him-
- Oh, wow.
And so, as I remember, you have, what,
maybe one interesting, two interesting, vintage motorcycles?
- Let's go and take a look at the old Moto Guzzi. Let's go.
(upbeat music)
All right, what do we got?
Well, we have all kinds of things in here.
We have some modern ones,
but I think what you're looking for,
this one here is a Moto Guzzi,
it's a 150cc.
This one I got out of, well,
out of a barn in Appleton, Maine,
and this is their ISDT commemorative edition,
from the mid-sixties.
And the ISDT is the International Six Day Trials.
It's off-road, it's all day,
and it's not a speed event, it's a time-trial event,
and Moto Guzzi won the class,
and they made 175 of these to commemorate that.
- [Tom] That's all there are of them-
- That's all there is.
And it has all kinds of interesting features besides this.
Has things like this,
so if you have to take the wheels off and change your tire,
the thing to hold onto already,
so you can just put a backward socket,
or a wrench on, a box-end wrench,
and turn it off.
And there's interesting things like the spacer on the wheel,
same deal back here,
and the spacer is on this little, teeny chain,
so you don't lose it
when you're changing the wheel in the mud.
- [Tom] No kidding.
- [Carey] So all kinds of little tricks for the ISDT.
- [Tom] So it's got 4,074 miles.
- [Carey] Now, now, this headlight is not original
to this one.
- [Tom] Okay, okay.
- It's the original style,
but it came from the one over there,
which is a Stornello of the same vintage.
- So you got those old things in the woods.
We might as well take videos of those as well.
The '57 Chevy.
- Oh yeah, the Chevy, and the '63 Chevy out there.
So here we are in the woods.
Now there's a story behind this wagon.
- [Tom] Oh, there is? Okay.
- So the Banner family that used to live here,
since the forties into the nineties,
they used to take this car,
and drive down to the back field at night,
wait for the deer,
hit the lights,
and then they had supper.
So this one has some history here.
- Well, you guys know I love wagons,
and I would do almost anything to bring it back
a wagon from the dead, but this is dead.
This is dead, and I wouldn't touch it, but-
- [Carey] But somebody needs those door handles, Tom.
They need that taillight.
They need that bumper.
- There's a '57 Chevy convertible over there,
believe it or not.
All right, so you have a '91 Alfa as well?
- So this (zipper scrapes)
'91 Alfa 164S,
has about 50,000 miles on it.
(zipper scrapes)
- So this is a, it's a 164.
Oh, that's amazing.
- Yeah, this has the aluminum 3 liter V6.
That's like the 2.5 in the previous one.
Now this is a front-wheel drive, this one,
which is not always appreciated by the cognoscenti,
but it's the last Alfa that they sold in the States
before their recent comeback.
She's a sweet old girl.
- [Tom] Wow. So how long have you had this?
- [Carey] '97, I think I bought it-
- [Tom] And what year is it?
- [Carey] '91.
- [Tom] Five-speed.
- [Carey] Five-speed.
It's the-
- [Tom] Nice body.
Is that original paint?
- [Carey] Places.
This actually got stolen in Cape May, New Jersey.
I mean the kids that stole it drove it like a block,
and landed it on the beach,
and that was like, whatever, '98.
- [Tom] Oh, while you owned it?
- [Carey] Oh, yeah. Those punks.
- Boy.
Nice car.
So I never would've found this house, and this guy,
unless I kept my ears open
to another guy five miles from here.
So keep your ears open if you're hunting for old cars.
Happy hunting.