- [Tom] Inside this garage is a car
that probably only a few of you have heard of.
85 built and this is the 35th one made.
- [Shelby] I've been told there's only 100 of them.
I don't know around or 100 of them that were made,
so it's pretty rare.
- So Mustang Sprints, that was a special edition.
If you're the type of person that watches
Fast and Furious, this will be
in Fast and Furious 8, this tow truck.
Hi, This is Tom Cotter.
I've been hunting down cars since I'm 12 years old
and I'm still doing it today.
Follow me in this series as we hunt down hidden classics
all across America.
(country music)
One of the viewers that watches Barn Find Hunter
episodes contacted us.
He says if that's the kinds of stuff you're looking for,
those kind of cars that are kind of forgotten
and neglected, I've got one in my garage
that you should come take a look at,
so that's why we're here in California to see
a car that is very, very rare.
I made it.
This is the owner, Carl and Cindy, Carl and Cindy.
- Officially it's still my mother's
because she is still alive at 92.
Your name?
- [Brian] Brian.
Brian.
- Wow.
- See any cars?
- [Tom] Well, I see a headlight.
So you want to move this truck out of the way
and put a trailer here?
- [Brian] Yeah.
(driving country music)
- Inside this garage is a car that probably
only a few of you have heard of, very rare car.
It was made in Spain and it's got a French body.
It's called a Pegaso, P-E-G-A-S-O.
It's a Z102, 1952, 85 built
and this is the 35th one made and this has
been sitting in this garage since 1972.
A packer dealership did work on this,
a packer dealership in Madrid Spain.
Well there's one bumper.
There it is, wow.
(clapping)
Very nice.
- Oh, Carl, look at this.
All this, all this is original back here,
the original color.
- [Carl] Really?
- [Cindy] Yeah, look, right here.
There it is a whole bunch of it.
- [Tom] Yeah, that's the original color.
That's cool.
- [Cindy] It's a pretty color.
This is a trans-axle for the car,
so the car had a V8 hemi-engine in the front
and then a drive shaft, which is over there somewhere
and then we had a trans-axle.
So the car still has the outer hubs
and the axles in place, but for some reason
the transmission was removed, so this is it,
so an aluminum case.
I think he said that there's a gear that they need to get.
Oh, yeah, this looks like it's broken right here.
You know, what would you do if you needed one of those?
You'd be in big trouble.
You'd have to have it made
and somebody could make that.
Probably somebody in California or Italy could make
it for you, but boy, you'd pay seriously for it.
Here's an intake manifold.
It was a small displacement V8.
I think he said it was 2.8 liters.
Probably had a Weber down draft two-barrel.
This is alloy.
The whole engine, the whole drive train is aluminum.
The block, the heads, intake manifold,
the trans-axle.
This is pretty heavy piece of equipment.
This is the right front suspension piece, hub,
backing plate.
You can see that the brakes were vented.
This looks like it's basket woven,
like macrame or something,
but it's actually made of lightweight,
probably aluminum, but this whole thing
is not light that's for sure.
We saw step one today, which is unearthing a car
that's been in a garage in a suburban neighborhood
since 1972, that's step one.
Step is gonna be doing a complete parts inventory,
then it goes into restoration.
Carl's gonna restore this car himself
at his garage at home.
He's already done a Pegaso.
This is the second one.
We're gonna be seeing this car soon
go into restoration.
Then we're gonna see it in magazines.
Then we're gonna see it in the Pebble Beach
on course lawn.
This is cool, an amazing looking car.
(driving country music)
We were driving this morning out of Santa Barbara.
Oh, he's home?
Boy that was handy, thank you.
Hi, Dwayne.
Oh, cool.
Well we're riding around the country
looking for old cars and I hear you've got a few.
Good.
All right, well, we'll see you probably in a half hour
to 45 minutes, something like that.
That was an interesting phone call I just had
with a gentleman who we are told a few miles from
here has got quite a few old cars in his yard,
so we're gonna go see him after we're done
visiting this place.
We're in Meiners Oaks, California,
just outside of Santa Barbara and we're very close
to the town of Ojai, which is a really cool place
and I mean this looks like a place you would
have seen in the 50s.
So this guy was named after a car.
Tell us your name.
- Shelby.
My dad named me after the Shelby Cobra
because he had a car collection and he wanted one,
but he couldn't afford it,
so he just said he named me after.
So he finally got a Shelby.
- So he got one, yeah.
(laughing)
Low mileage.
- Well, cool.
So, this is your business.
Now you just bought this business?
- [Shelby] Well, yeah.
I'm in the process of that.
And what it's gonna be called is Shelby's Classics,
so everybody's gonna think I'm probably into Mustangs
until they find out the name.
- [Tom] So, if you buy this business, do you inherit
all the cars that are part of it?
- Nah, nah all the stuff belongs to George Wilson.
And then he bought this one as brand new in 1951,
- [Tom] This Suburban?
- [Shelby] Uh-huh.
- [Tom] Bought it new, do you believe that?
Now, it's a local car, it comes from
a dealership nearby I guess?
- [Shelby] I would say Ventura/Ojai probably.
- [Tom] Wow, these are rare cars.
This is a 1950 Plymouth Suburban,
which is for sale, 15,000 bucks, two-door wagon.
Not too many companies made two-door wagons
back in the 50s.
Ford did with their Ranch wagons.
Well, that's a nice car.
- [Shelby] Do you want to go back there?
- [Tom] Yeah.
I'd love to.
Tell us what we're looking at here.
- [Shelby] This is a 1941 Lincoln Continental,
which I've been told there's only 100 of them.
I don't know around or 100 of them that were made,
so it's pretty rare.
And it's the complete car.
I have the fender skirts and all that put away
because they're hard to come by.
- Oh, boy what a beauty.
Wow!
Does this run right now?
- [Shelby] Well, he has all the wiring disconnected.
When it was at his house, it ran.
- No kidding.
If you look at this engine, this is a flathead,
but instead of a flathead V8, it's got a couple
more cylinders added to the front,
so it's a V12 Lincoln.
So basically the same thing as a flathead Ford,
extended four more cylinders.
Henry Ford was the kind of business man
that never wanted to change anything.
He wanted his cars always to look similar.
He was happy with the model T forever,
but the rest of the world wanted change
and Henry Ford's son Edsel was completely
on the other side of the scale from his father.
He wanted to bring European styling and flair
to American cars, to this father's products.
So you can see this is a 1940 Lincoln Continental.
It's a beautiful car.
This looks nothing like any car of the day.
Narrow hood, beautiful swept grill.
A rather low top.
This could have looked like a custom car back in the day,
something like a George Barras or a Darren car
that was built back in the day, a one-off,
but he produced these not in mass production.
They were hand built and probably the most fabulous
American car at that time and really a benchmark
for automotive design in American automobile history.
We were just visiting Shelby's shop
in Meiners Oak, California.
Now we're driving to Ojai, the town right next door
to see about a guy that's apparently
got a lot of cars in his yard.
So, again, we just met a guy
who told us about another guy.
I can't stress it enough that this is the way
you hunt for old cars is communicating.
(groovy music)
Your name is?
- [Dwayne] Dwayne.
- Dwanye.
- [Dwayne] Bower, B-O-W-E-R.
- Bower, there we go.
- There we go.
- So we heard about coming here.
We never would have stumbled across this,
but we heard about this from another place,
Shelby's place over one town away.
- Meiners Oaks, yes, yeah.
- So what kind of business or what do you do
with all these old?
- Well, this is just a hobby really.
It's just a hobby and like I said,
I really don't collect cars, but I've never sold any.
- So how many vehicles do you think you have?
- Oh, probably 75 or so.
A lot of marked history, too.
So it's a lot of Ojai history.
- Oh, I love it.
- I just don't collect old stuff,
but a lot of history.
Thatcher school truck and this George's biggest truck.
It's a 45 Mack.
- [Tom] Well, if we could just walk around here.
- [Dwayne] Sure.
- [Tom] That's be great.
- [Dwayne] We can do that.
- Now what do we have here, we've got a big Oldsmobile.
No, this is a Pontiac.
- [Dwayne] This is a Pontiac, a 1958 Pontiac.
- Now that's an Eldorado or Berrent?
- [Dwayne] That's an Eldorado Durrette's convertible.
- [Tom] 58?
- [Dwayne] 57.
- [Tom] 57, okay.
Do you restore cars?
- [Dwayne] Oh, yeah, right here, yeah.
- [Tom] He's got a Reo, a 440 Roadrunner.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, 440 Roadrunner.
- [Tom] 440 Roadrunner, wow.
- [Dwayne] And it's a GTX.
So it's a 74 GTX that's a roadrunner.
They kind of mixed the two.
It's about their last year of really
having a 440 in it.
- Is it four speed?
- No, it's automatic because remember in the 70s
they made them pretty well got rid of
all the standard shifts,
everything had to be automatics and you know
it had like 175 horsepower.
I mean they smogged them up so back
that they wouldn't have any power.
- Isn't that sad?
- [Dwayne] Then a Reo, I think it's 17 Reo.
- So how do you find these cars.
- They kind of find me.
A friend of mine in Bakersfield says
"Hey, I just came across this old Roadrunner."
I says, "Yeah, show me a picture of it," you know.
That was a few years ago when you could
buy them for 2500 bucks, you know.
- [Tom] Yeah, now this is right up my alley, boy.
- [Dwayne] Yeah.
- [Tom] XK150 or 140?
- [Dwayne] 120.
- [Tom] 120, okay.
- [Dwayne] SK120.
It's a wonderful car.
It's uncovered and getting dusty right now
because my friend, Bob Sheridan, just built
another one, a white one like this,
so as he's been assembling that,
he's been using this to compare.
- [Tom] Wow.
- [Dwawyne] It's a wonderful car.
- [Tom] And it runs well?
- [Dwayne] Oh, it runs very well, yeah.
It's been all over California and up the vintage
races up in Monterrey and all that many times
up and down the coast.
- No kidding.
Then you got a 421 Pontiac with the eight bolt wheels.
- [Dwayne] This is a tri-power four speed Pontiac, yeah.
It's a two plus two.
Yeah, two plus two.
It's kind of a mature, grown-up person's GTO
is really what it is, yeah.
- So this is a 421 cubic inch tri-power four speed
aluminum eight bolt wheel Pontiac two plus two.
- Full size Pontiac.
- That's a blast.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, it is.
- Oh, look at all these, geez.
Now this scene right here.
This is a like a fantasy to see a scene like this.
- [Dwayne] All junky in there.
- [Tom] No, really, that is amazing, yeah it is.
Wow.
Now that's a Jag 12 cylinder.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, that's a V12 four-speed.
Actually it was given to me as a totaled car
and it was totaled pretty heavily,
so I restored it years and years ago.
We used to drive it so San Francisco and San Diego
and really nice car.
- [Tom] So a V12 with a four speed,
that's kind of rare.
- [Dwayne] Somewhat, medium, yeah.
- [Tom] Boy you got a lot of projects, huh?
- [Dwayne] Oh, yeah.
- All right, so this is a movie car,
if you the type of person that watches
Fast and Furious, this will be in Fast and Furious 8,
this tow truck, interesting.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, an filmed in Cuba.
- This was shipped to Cuba?
- They flatbedded it across the United States,
put it on a boat and took it down to Cuba.
The marks are still on the windshield there.
- And so marked to Atlanta.
- Yeah, I guess, I don't know, marked to Atlanta.
- [Tom] I've been to Cuba and you can find
stuff down there.
- [Dwayne] Oh, yeah, but they could not
find any vintage tow trucks, nothing.
You know they've all been used up for parts,
needed parts for all their old cars,
that's all they have is old cars.
- Isn't that amazing?
How long was this out of your hands?
- Oh, six weeks.
And it runs like a top.
Runs, brakes, everything, so it's really,
this is Ojai's tow truck from you know the 40s,
late 40s, I think it's a 46, 47.
- [Tom] Well that's amazing stuff.
- [Dwayne] I have another barn with some
more in it, too.
- What, right here?
- Yeah, nearby.
- Geez.
- My tractor had a radiator problem.
- Another orchard tractor.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, that's an orchard tractor.
- [Tom] Boy, that's sweet.
So Mustang Sprint.
That was a special edition.
- [Dwayne] Yeah, that was a Sprint.
It was all red, white and blue from the factory.
- [Tom] It was like what, a 72?
- [Dwayne] 72 I think yeah.
- Now what about this Jaguar over here.
- That's a Mark X and the Mark X was just
in a video shot just a couple of months ago.
Big Sean is a rap singer, you've heard of
Big Sean if you listen to rap music
and the new song was Out of Love and they sang
the song in the back seat.
They wanted a luxury leather back seat
in a big black car.
I said I got one of those.
Down to Hollywood it went.
- Oh, man.
We started this morning not knowing a single car,
not a single car and we drove from Santa Barbara
up the mountain to Ojai.
Now I've been through Ojai before and it was
a cool funky town and I said well, maybe there's
something interesting in this town.
And we met Shelby and Shelby just happened
to mention, "Oh, if you're looking for old cars,
"you've got to meet my friend, Dwayne
"just a couple of miles from here."
We had no idea.
We never have stumbled across anything like this
in a normal driving around.
It's on a dirt road, it's on a dead end
and so we never would have found this place
unless we had gotten a tip from Shelby.
Well, we got that tip and we spent the last
couple of hours looking at amazing cars.
Dwayne buys these cars because he loves them.
He's made a business out of them by renting
them out to movies and rap videos and things.
An amazing place and I'm so happy we were able
to just stumble onto him.
What an amazing find.
Happy hunting.
(country music)
(tires screeching)
(country music)