(rock music)
- [Host] We're at the home of Lynn Park,
whose a friend of mine,
and he's got at least a barn find Cobra or two,
and I can't say that I found them, Lynn found them,
and so we're gonna take a look
and he's got stories to tell about each one,
so really amazing to be able to find a 289 Cobra
in this day and age that people won't have just neglected
and ignored them so let's go inside and take a look.
(heavy rock music)
Wow, so I haven't seen this yet, wow!
- [Lynn] There is the Dirt Bag himself.
(laughter)
- [Host] This is authentic right here.
- That's Dirt bag just as it was found.
That car sat in a fellow's back yard for 20 years,
and I've had it the last 22 years.
Anyway, one of the Offenhauser guys bought it,
he drove it until 1974 or five,
and something quit and he doesn't remember what,
parked it in a backyard under a blue tarp and it sat.
Everybody knew it was there, people tried to buy it.
But the wife was just cranky,
she said "No way, get outta here."
A friend of ours went over there
with a suitcase full of cash and tried to buy it,
and she said "I'm not impressed with your money,
get outta here."
- [Host] Wow. - Yeah.
- [Host] How far away from here?
- Twenty miles. - Man!
Had you ever seen the car?
- [Lynn] No! I'd seen the blue tarp,
because it was outside the whole time.
- [Host] Now, it got rained on?
- [Lynn] That's why the paint's so bad,
because you know, the blue tarp it would sweat,
and then dry out, sweat, and dry out.
- [Host] Is that an original color?
- [Lynn] No, it was red, and he had Shelby paint it for him
when he bought it. - [Host] Mhmm.
So how did you luck into buying it?
- Don Lee actually smooth talked the lady into selling it!
He loaded it up on his trailer and brought it over here
and said, "Lynn, look what I got!
Let's make a race car out of it!"
I said, "Don, that's too much work."
And this is before a barn find was in,
I mean, at that point it's just a used up Cobra.
So he said, "I wanna make a race car." I said, "No way!"
I said, "Let's find a race car,
it'll be cheaper in the long run."
(murmurs agreement)
So we found one, he needed a lot of parts
for that car that I happened to have,
so I said "Okay, I got all these parts,"
he said "Okay let's make a deal."
So we traded a bunch of parts,
and I gave him some money and I got the car.
But at that point I was gonna restore the car.
No one wanted a ratty car like this.
- Yeah.
- Carol Shelby saw it, and said "Lynn!"
We were at one of the Cobra days at the Peters Museum,
and he said "Look at all these shiny cars.
No one's looking at them,
they're all over here looking at this thing!"
He said, "You ought to leave this thing alone!"
- [Host] Isn't that something?
- And I said, "You know what,
if it's good enough for Shelby, it's good enough for me!"
- [Host] What condition was it like,
like the interior of the seats, what were they like?
- [Lynn] I don't tell very many people this,
but those aren't the seats that came in the car,
they were gone. - [Host] Yeah.
- The mice had eaten them up,
so I had another pair of old seats that I put in.
But the dash is the same, the steering wheel is the same.
- [Host] Carpeting?
- Carpeting is the same.
- Tunnel cover?
- Tunnel cover, I can't remember if it was on the,
I think it was though,
because the paint under here is all cracked and horrible.
- [Host] Yeah! Now the steering wheel is the same?
- Yeah, I had to do a lot of work to it.
- [Host] I bet.
- [Lynn] Because it had de-laminated,
so I got a lot of time with glue and clamps.
- So you've had this car 20...?
- Since 1995.
- And it was sitting outside for 20...?
- 20 years, 20 or 21, nobody's real sure.
- Did they buy it new, the Offenhauser family?
- Yeah. - They bought it new!
So you're the second owner?
- They bought it new, and the worst part of that,
he doesn't remember what didn't work!
He said, "We parked it for some reason!"
- And the value of the car, did they have a garage,
could they put it in a garage?
- They would have, but it would've meant
that their '68 Chevy had to sit outside.
- Geez, man. Does it have the original motor in it?
- Oh yeah, I have never taken the original motor apart!
- Can you show it to us?
- I cranked it over to see if it would turn over,
by hand and it did, I said, "Okay, so nothing's broken."
I put a carburetor on it.
I put a water pump and a fuel pump.
- [Host] How many miles were on it?
- I think 30,000.
- [Host] When you got it? No kidding!
- Which is a lot!
For a car that's five years old essentially.
- [Host] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 38,000 now!
- It smoked like the devil,
but Marvel Mystery Oil to the rescue!
Put that in the crank case,
and it smoked less and less and less,
and now it doesn't smoke at all unless you let it sit
30 or 40 minutes and start it, you'll get a little puff,
but it needs to smoke, it's Dirt Bag!
(laughter)
- [Host] And so, that's the other barn find?
Or do you have another barn find?
- [Lynn] The orange one.
- [Host] The orange one?
Ah okay, that's a race car.
[Lynn] That is a race car with a SCCA racer
so it's not a pro racer that's all pretty,
it's a weekend warrior that got changed
with the rules every year,
you can see remnants of an old hood scoop
when the hood scoop was legal for B production.
Then all of a sudden it wasn't so they welded it up,
the flares kept getting bigger.
- [Host] And so, where did you find this car?
- [Lynn] This car was in Sacramento,
a little town outside of Sacramento.
But the last time I really saw it
before I was able to buy it,
Gordon Gimbel's wife died and there was a funeral up there,
I think that was 2003 or so,
and I went over and talked to him again,
got him a bunch of parts,
he was really enthusiastic at that point
about making it run again.
So I got him all the suspension pieces
he'd need to put it back together.
Eight years later, when I went and bought it,
all the parts were laying there not touched.
- I'm looking at how the stones
beat the inside of the fenders here.
- [Lynn] Yeah. - You gotta check this out.
- This is a car that got a lot of races.
- [Host] This is aluminum body,
so when stones get chipped up from the tires,
sticky race tires might pick up stones.
Look, it's like an acne finish, geez.
Do you still race this?
- [Lynn] Yes, yeah. - [Host] Wow.
- [Lynn] And so I put the engine back together
with older parts to kind of look like it was then.
Then best part about this, the motor was not in the car.
So I said to Gary,
I said "What are we gonna do for a motor?"
He said, "We'll just go pick it up at the machine shop."
I go "How long has it been at the machine shop?"
"Oh, 40 years." - [Host] Oh geez!
- It was still there! - [Host] Really?
- Yeah. - [Host] Man!
So it runs well?
- [Lynn] It runs perfectly.
- [Host] It races well?
- [Lynn] Yeah, it really does,
this car is not the most powerful motor I've got,
but because of the roll cage,
and all the stiffness that it provides,
the car handles better than any of them.
But it is just so, everybody said,
"Well then you've gotta restore it,
you gotta at least get rid of the cage!"
I said, "No, this shows what a lot of Cobras were."
They weren't the pretty boy racers,
they were just old race cars that got used every weekend.
- [Host] So tell me, here are two Cobras you found,
how many barn find Cobras are left out there, do you figure?
Either you know about or you suspect?
- I don't know of any for sure,
everybody says "Oh I think I there's one."
A buddy of mine took to me one and yeah,
from the street in the guy's garage down there,
it looked like a Cobra but no it was an old Mercedes,
but the grill was gone and it kinda had the right shape,
but (clears throat) it wasn't.
I don't know if there's very many left,
I don't know, there's bound to be a couple.
- So now if you want one, you have to build one.
You might as well give us a tour of the one.
(laughter) - Yeah!
- You don't mind people knowing that it's?
- No, no, I don't want people to think
that I'm trying to fool them.
- Alright, so Lynn just said that there's probably not,
maybe one maybe none, barn find Cobras left.
Believe it or not, this is a brand new Cobra.
This is a brand new body,
a brand new chassis but it looks old.
Lynn has been saving parts, Cobra parts for decades,
so he built this car with old parts,
but it's actually a new aluminum body,
Kirkham body? - [Lynn] Kirkham car.
(exhales sharply)
- But, I also used some old suspension that I had,
A-arms that I had that were damaged that I repaired,
brakes that were older, people had replaced
or I had replaced on other people's cars, just old stuff.
The seat belts, they're not necessarily Cobra seat belts
but they are the same as the Cobra seat belts.
I don't want people to think that I took a lot of
original Cobra's parts that should be on an original car.
- Right.
- Ebay is loaded with this stuff.
- No kidding!
- I mean if you want a Cobra steering wheel,
you don't have to make one look,
you don't have to buy an old one.
You buy a new one and make it look old.
But this happens to be an old wheel and it isn't my favorite
but it's a good old steering wheel.
- [Host] What does this engine look like?
Geez! Looks like it's overheated!
(bewildered laughter) - [Lynn] Yeah.
- [Host] This car was a pile of components how long ago?
Two years ago or something?
[Lynn] - Two years ago. - Two years ago.
And did you put all this mud on here and stuff?
- [Lynn] Yeah, I found a mud puddle that just called to me.
(laughs loudly)
What made me, I started off, I had old tires
but they were wobbling, I drove it and I said,
"This car does not feel good to drive."
So I went down and bought a brand new set of tires,
well they look too new so I had to
find some muddy water to drive through,
so it had just rained and Angeles Crest Highway has got some
good turnouts with mud puddles in them,
so I went there and...
- People at shows you go to,
they're probably pissed off at you like crazy.
- [Lynn] Not as many as I thought would be.
- [Host] Really? (laughter)
- [Lynn] They love, I think they wish
they had thought of it themselves.
- [Host] Yeah yeah yeah, that's amazing.
So it does not have a serial number?
- [Lynn] No, it's got an AC serial number.
We start with an AC chassis and title.
- [Host] Is that right?
- [Lynn] But I don't wanna tell people what the number is.
- [Host] Okay, yep, yep.
- [Lynn] So I leave that alone.
- [Host] Well that's cool, wow.
- Mickey Thompson tie-in.
I was gonna put Mickey Thompson valve covers on it,
I said "No, I can't do that."
- [Host] What was the Mickey Thompson story to this?
- The guy that owned this knew,
Michael Goodwin is the fellow that got convicted
of having Mickey Thompson killed.
- Hah! Goodwin, now Goodwin raced this?
- Yeah.
- Did he really? - In the 60s.
- Wow!