(car engine revving)
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- Come on inside, there's a very rare car in here.
There's one vehicle that I sold
that I really wish I never had.
1961 Volkswagen crew cab pickup truck.
So I stop my car, I looked over the fence
and there was my old truck.
I'm Tom Cotter.
The first car I found I was 12 years old.
I'm 61 years old now and I'm still finding cars.
I can't believe you're gonna fix this car.
And in this series, you'll see that
there are still plenty of cars left.
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(car engine revving)
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I live a half mile from here.
You'd never imagine that there's treasures that are
so close to your house that you could actually walk there.
I'm willing to bet that if you're watching this program
if you took an interesting walk around your neighborhood
you could find something, maybe not as interesting
as this barn and the car inside,
but I bet you'd find something pretty cool.
I was part of a magazine story for Road and Track.
Peter Egan, an editor for Road and Track, and I drove a
AC Cobra across the United States
from California to North Carolina.
Well that story came out in 2002 and soon after I got a call
from guy named Hugh Boger who owns Boger Farms
where we are right now.
And he said I love the story, I love Cobras.
Why don't you come over to my house I'd like to show you
something I have in the barn?
Whoa, I've been passing his barn for 15 years
always wondering if there was something inside there
and it turns out there is.
So come on, take a walk with me and let's see
what he showed me that day 20 years ago.
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This is a 1963 AC Greyhound.
AC was a car company, is a car company, based in England
and you've probably heard of an AC Cobra or an AC Bristol
or an AC Ace, those are the more popular AC's.
Well this is an AC Greyhouse, it was a car that was made
for just a short period and this car's been in this barn,
well since 1968, and Hugh's father gave him this car
when he went to graduate school and he drove this car
for a number of years.
But because there's so few of these made, when he had
a brake problem and needed a new master cylinder,
he couldn't get one because they'd never made enough cars
to make spare parts.
So he couldn't get the brake master cylinder.
Well I'll put it in the barn until I can find one.
Well it hasn't left this barn since 1968,
so we're coming up on 50 years here in a couple years.
Restoration of a car like this presents a dilemma
for the person who owns it because the Hagerty Price Guide
says that a number four condition
of this car is worth $61,000.
I think this is worse than a four.
If there was such a thing as a five, it would be this.
In a restored condition the Hagerty Price Guide
says that about $132,000 is the value.
The issue becomes paying labor rates at $100 an hour
to a restoration shop, exclusive of chrome plating,
buying all the rubber you need, leather, all the materials.
You could easily exceed the value of this car
if you were going for a concourse condition.
You could exceed that in labor rates and materials.
So the thing is, to pull this outta here and put it up
on a lift and see exactly what you have.
If those chassis rails are rusted, if their perforated
with rust or they're weak,
then this car's not worth restoring.
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This is a 1916 Oldsmobile that's got a V8 engine.
1916.
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Very eclectic group of cars.
Here's a 67 Volkswagen Beetle.
There are some people that claim that this, the 67,
is the best Volkswagen Beetle.
Big old 427 side oiler.
Geez.
This is a Ford Anglia, made in England.
It's a really tiny Ford and a lot of drag racers
in the states wanted to have these to build into drag cars.
So obviously this one was done.
I dunno when it was built, what kind of engine it has.
We're in Mooresville North Carolina, this is the heart
of Nascar country, and right here we're looking
at a little piece of Nascar history.
This Ford truck is a 1975 Ford solid body hauler.
This was originally owned by the Elliott family,
Bill Elliott, 1988 Winston Cup Champion.
When he started his career it was called Melling Racing.
A guy out of Jackson Michigan decided he liked the family,
he was give them what they needed most was money,
and they wound up buying equipment,
this truck being one of them.
This truck was used as the Elliott hauler.
It hauled one single race car to tracks
all over the United States for a couple years.
You can take a look, here's a copy of the title,
Melling Racing, Dawsonville Georgia.
And you see the VIN number here ends with 25263.
Take a look inside here.
There's the VIN number 25263
Melling Racing Dawsonville Georgia.
A 1975 Ford chassis cab.
You can see inside here, I guess when they stared
to build up and inventory of vehicles,
this was vehicle number five of Melling Racing.
This was put on here in July 1992,
gives the address in Dawsonville Georgia.
This is a piece of history and if you were a Nascar fan
or a Bill Elliott fan or a Ford Racing fan,
this would be quite something to own.
It is for sale, it's $10,000, it runs.
This man's owned it since the 90's and he'd like to sell it.
It's just sitting here,
he wants to do something more productive with it.
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So a nice old Beetle, 60, hmm 65.
Now this is pretty cool.
Ford Econoline van, 62.
This is an English Ford, right?
If you look at this car it looks like a miniature 34 Ford.
If you look, everything is small on it.
The grill, the body, the wheels.
This is an old Bobby Allison Winston Cup stock car.
So this Camaro was used in the movie for Days of Thunder.
Hmm more stock cars.
31 Victoria.
So these cars go back to when I was
employed in the Nascar world.
I remember Harry Gant running the Skoal banded car.
So this 73 Charger has a 400 cubic inch engine in it.
In good condition it would go for about $15,000.
In concourse, about twice that.
This car has been in a movie.
This car was featured in Days of Thunder in a street racing
scene against a flame Camaro, so it probably has
a little bit of value if you're a Days of Thunder fan.
So I'm here with Buddy Cram and we're in Mooresville
North Carolina and Buddy has a very interesting
business story, as he calls it, a passion,
of building General Lee replicas and selling them
to customers around the country and around the world.
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The last guy to hold out for racing Mopars, Chyslers,
was Buddy Herrington and this is the car
he had to race, an Imperial.
It was the largest car on the circuit, it weighed a lot,
it had a lot of torque, but it had a big heavy old engine.
I felt so bad but he was the last guy to hold out
and race stock cars for Chrysler.
Richard Petty had already gone to Pontiacs by then.
It's interesting to find out that Errington family
owns this one and they're gonna restore it
in honor of the father.
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I've owned a lot of cars in my lifetime.
American cars, foreign cars, race cars, I love 'em all.
There's one vehicle that I sold
that I really wish I never had.
1961 Volkswagen crew cab pickup truck.
I was driving down this road in my truck so I was up
a little bit higher than the average vehicle
and I could look over this fence and there was no leaves
on the trees 'cause it was still winter time
and I was able to see what was a familiar old red shape.
I said, that looks familiar.
So I stopped my car, I looked over the fence,
and there was my old truck.
So we're gonna go back right now and take a look
at the truck that I used to own.
Unfortunately it's become a barn find again.
So this is a 1961 Volkswagen crew cab pickup truck.
These pickup bed sides go up and down.
I'm not gonna push 'em up
'cause I'm afraid they're gonna crack.
But they flip up so you can make it from a flat bed
into a pickup truck.
They're not very fast though, they're 40 horsepower.
Going up a hill you might have to
downshift from fourth to third.
Whenever you find an old car it's important
to search through it so carefully.
Glove box, under the seats, in the trunk, for things
that might be important as part of the restoration
and expensive to replace.
Now this just happened to be lying here.
This is the church key and you stick this in the cap
on the side and screw it and you open the gas cap door
and that's how you add fuel to it.
So that would probably be very, very difficult to find
at a flea market.
Is this for sale?
- For the right price.
- If I wanted to buy this and have a father and son project
what would you ask for it?
- Hmm I'd have to think about it.
- Okay.
Do me a favor, think about it and let me know.
Yeah I know that Chad bought this with the intention
of restoring it but he has so many restoration projects.
Life gets in the way, you know, you have a job,
you start a business, you have a family, and things,
projects like this take the back seat to real life.
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(car engine revving)
I had heard about a Shelby in Lincolnton North Carolina
for a number of years and I actually knew the guy
who owned it, Bob Ramsure.
But I'd also heard that he's not interested in selling it.
Well Bob owned a little diner in Lincolnton
and I would go there and have breakfast once in awhile
and became friends with Bob.
And so he took me to a rental house that he owned
and parked in the driveway in the backyard
was a 1967 Shelby GT 500 that he had bought
when it was a year old.
Bob bought it for his wife.
His wife drove this car for the entire 34,000 miles
on the odometer, so it's only got 34,000 miles.
When she got the real estate business she needed
to have a minivan so they put this in the backyard
and it sat there for years and years and years.
The last time this was registered on the road was 1980.
We'll pop the hood on this.
So this is the original 428 Cobra Jet Engine.
You see the proper and original air cleaner,
two four barrels mounted on an aluminum intake manifold,
Cobra manifold, and the valve covers here with Cobra Le Mans
but it's pronounced le mah.
And so those, this is all original.
Now this car is so amazingly original, it still has some of
the original tower clamps holding the heater hoses in place.
I had to replace the original heater hoses which were still
on the car and I can see that one's getting ready
to burst so I need to replace that one.
You can see that, here's a little tag hanging off the coil.
There's tags hanging off
the carburetors and the distributor.
There's the original ID plate.
I'm very reluctant to do any changes on this.
Here's the original spare tire on the 10 spoke mag.
That tire came on this car, a Goodyear Speedway E7015 tire.
I took this eight track tape deck outta here.
Who knows how many Led Zeppelin songs were playing
out of this thing, or the Beach Boys or something.
You look at the odometer it's got 34,611 miles.
And the nice thing about it is here we're in
a 50 year old car and the interior lights still light up.
I mean everything works on this car.
If you find a car that you like, come up with a value on it
and offer a fair market value to the owner.
I've found that low balling somebody gets the hair
on the back of the neck up and they don't, they might
turn you off totally and you're out of the picture.
But as I was able to do with this car by offering
a fair market value, I was able to do in 20 minutes
what people have been trying 20 years to do, is buy that
car, but they were all trying to get it for free, cheap.
I got it for what it was worth
and I feel pretty good about that.
This whole episode has been filmed within 10 miles
of where I live in North Carolina.
This car was purchased 15 miles from where I live.
We looked at lots of cars that are as close to my house
as there probably are cars close to your house.
You don't have to travel to New Mexico to find a car.
You can probably just travel across town and find them.
So next time you're on your way to get pizza or a quart
of milk, see how many cars you can find on the way home.
Happy hunting.
(car tires squealing)
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