- Over the past couple of years
on the Barn Find Hunter series,
we've found a couple of substantial cars.
And the ones that come to mind are the Porsche Speedster
in Dallas, the Pegaso with the Saoutchik bodywork
near Santa Barbara California.
The '54 Corvette in north Georgia.
We've gotten a lead on a collection of cars
that hasn't seen the light of day since the '80s.
That sounds like it could blow
all those cars out of the water.
Not that I don't like those other cars, I love 'em,
but as far as a collection with presence and value,
and heritage, and longevity of ownership,
we're heading there right now to unearth what could be
the best Barn Find Hunter discovery we've ever had.
(upbeat rock music)
Well, here we are.
And we've beat everybody else here.
We're supposed to meet here, oh actually we're early.
1:30.
It's a nice looking garage.
It was a nice looking house, but it's just been left
to kind of go bad and now the house and the garage
are gonna be torn down, a new house will be built here.
But this is one fine neighborhood.
Doctors and lawyers and people of substance
live in this neighborhood.
Who would imagine that this garage
would contain some of the rarest sports cars in the world.
Or so I'm told.
And you can see there's leaves built up against the doors.
There's been nobody in this garage for a long time.
Here we are with a friend of the owner.
He's kind of managing where these
cars go in their next life.
They've been sitting here for, I don't know...
How long have they been sitting here?
- Since 1991.
- '91, okay.
- Apparently, according to my friend,
who I've known for a number of years,
he had a mechanic that was a personal friend of his
who was an extremely competent mechanic
and he believed, my friend believed
that this mechanic was the only person
who could possibly be qualified to take care of his cars
in the manner that they should be.
So this fella was also a motorcycle racer,
and as luck would have it, he died in an accident.
- Oh, God.
- So then my friend, he was going through a few changes
in his life and he figured, well,
maybe eventually I'll get another mechanic,
but if I don't, I'll just park the cars.
And he did and life moved on and he left them there.
So here they are, since 1991.
- Unbelievable, it's a real time capsule.
(garage door opening)
- It's a bit of a mess.
- Oh man.
This is, this is a dream.
- It is... - For a guy like me,
this is a dream.
- For me it was, I mean my friend had mentioned these cars
in passing and I didn't think he still owned them.
He said we should go have a look.
And so I pretty much did you and
I think I stood here and my chin hit my chest
and I just said my God.
(garage door opening)
- Boy there's mice living in that Cobra.
- [Warren] We have mice in there, so...
- [Tom] This is a shot we'll never see in our lives again.
Mouse nest in the back of a Cobra.
- [Warren] In the back of a Cobra.
(laughter)
- [Tom] I know about Cobras, but I don't
really know about Ferraris.
What I do know is that a 275GTB was the first Ferrari
available without wire wheels.
The standard wheels, apparently,
were solid wheels like these alloy rims.
But that's all I know, so what can you tell me about it?
- [Warren] Well, as far as I know,
this is a 275GBT2, long nose alloy coupe.
Which is with a two cam engine.
Which as I understand it is a bit unusual
because usually the alloy cars
were bought with a four cam engine
because it would be somebody who was...
A guy who would campaign the car
at least in some form of racing with the alloy.
This car was rather unusual because
it has the two cam street engine
which is not really heavily de-tuned,
but is slightly less aggressive.
But maybe makes it a little bit
more civilized for driving around town, et cetera.
So the gentleman who bought this
car had it up in Connecticut.
My friend bought this car from the original owner
for $47,000.
- [Tom] In what year?
- [Warren] About in the early 80s I believe.
- [Tom] Okay.
- [Warren] I'm gonna guess '82.
- [Tom] Okay.
- [Warren] Something like that.
And drove it down here and drove it around
sporadically for seven or eight years
and then as the aforementioned mechanic passed away,
and then the car ended up here.
But it's, I believe it's a 13,000 mile car.
Has the original vinyl, blue vinyl, not leather seats.
That sounds odd for a Ferrari,
but apparently that was normal in the day.
And everything about the car as far as I know,
literally all the parts are original as parked in 1991.
- [Tom] Man, amazing.
And you haven't tried to start this car?
- [Warren] No, my friend thought it would be a bad idea
to try to start anything, to do anything.
We just wanted to have the cars
and have you come and have a look at it
and see what you thought.
- [Tom] Because this car is dry,
it hasn't been sitting outdoors,
it doesn't sag.
The body lines are real fine.
I'm just wondering.
(door slam)
It's like a new car.
It's got beautiful blue vinyl interior.
Blue vinyl seats, blue carpeting.
And it's got 13,205.2 miles on it from new.
So '67 Ferrari just 50 years old,
13,000 miles in 50 years.
It was, yeah, I mean wow.
This is probably one of the few GTBs
with this kind of mileage and this original in the world.
So there's a couple of amazing cars in this garage.
I'm leaning against one of them.
I don't know much about Ferraris, but
fortunately I do know something about that car over there.
And it's the bright red Cobra.
So let's go take a look at that.
So this car is called a 427 Cobra.
Even though this one does not have a 427 engine.
There are several stories about why
it has a 428, but the 427 had 425 horsepower.
And the 428 had 390.
The 427 was a racing engine and it was
made to run at high RPMs for, you know,
the length of the Daytona 500 or the length
of the 24 hours of Le Mans.
So just on and on at high RPMS.
They were built to put out peak horsepower.
The 428 were built really a police interceptor type motor.
They were built for Thunderbirds.
They were built for large country
squires and things like that.
They had 390 horsepower and instead of having solid lifters,
they had hydraulic lifters and it
was just a more drivable motor.
Well, the story is that either Ford
couldn't supply all the 427s that Carroll needed
or Carroll Shelby wanted to save
several hundred dollars on each engine
and make more money in profit.
So whatever the case is, many 427 Cobras have 428 engines.
Once Ford found out that he was substituting 428 engines
into 427 Cobras, they made him pull the motors out.
If the customer complained, wait a minute
I paid for 427, I got a 428, Ford Motor Company
made Carroll Shelby put the correct motor back in the car.
So they got what they thought they were paying for.
There were 998 Cobras made in all.
That's 289s and 427s.
The 289s, and even the earlier ones the 260s
have what they call a slab sider,
a very mild little lip on the fender.
The 427s, we see many more of,
not because they made more of them,
they only made 300 and something of these.
- [Warren] 348.
- 348, okay they made 348 427 Cobras.
The reason we see more of these is
because there are about 60,000 replicas
that are based on this car.
So you can see this car has a mild flare here.
Because the car was a beefier car.
It had a four inch diameter chassis tube
as opposed to three inch and it was made
to have bigger tires and wheels.
It has coil over suspension in all corners
instead of the old leaf spring that a 289 had.
The rear of the Cobra, 427 Cobra,
there was four different styles of rear.
And this is the street rear end.
When I'm talking about rear,
I'm talking about the body line.
So this is the most common 427.
They made a racing body which
this flare was out even further.
They made one with a lip that was kind
of a little raised lip all around here.
They made that on a few of them.
And then they made a narrow hip car
which didn't have this excess fender,
but it kind of tucked in nicely.
The kit cars that you see are often
based on either an SC or a competition Cobra.
So you see there were side pipes
and big flares and big wheels.
But in fact, street cars didn't come with side pipes
and big flares and big wheels.
They came like this.
So this is a very untouched car.
19,000 miles.
It has an under car exhaust.
So it's got dual exhaust exiting
out underneath the rear bumper.
Which believe it or not, Cobra people prefer this type
of look and sound to the side pipe version cars.
The Cobra has an aluminum body so
I can do my little trick here again,
and I know it's not gonna stick
because it's an aluminum body.
These were hand made in England by AC Car Company.
There's an emblem right here and
it says Shelby American Cobra powered
by Ford and it gives a serial number.
Cobras have several places around the car
where that serial number is hidden.
So if these cars were ever stolen and dismantled,
you could trace parts of the car
by knowing where to look and I'm gonna show you
where those pieces are right now.
On each of these hood latches, is a serial number.
One here and there's one over there.
So you've got the same serial number
that's down there is here and there.
On each of these hinges on the left and right door,
right inside underneath that plastic and inside there,
that same serial number exists.
If you were to crawl, and I'm not
gonna crawl underneath this car.
But if you were to crawl underneath the car,
that same serial number would be scraped
with an ice pick on the under side
of this transmission tunnel.
It's an aluminum panel.
As well as behind this panel right here.
If you were to crawl underneath the car,
and look in front of the rear end,
you'd see the number scratched across that panel.
And the last place that that serial number exists
is on this little trunk latch right there.
So, often, you'll find a car that has different pieces
from different cars on the same car
and you know that that car was assembled
some time because of a wreck,
or they found parts they needed in a junk yard
or they bought it from a collector.
So this is where you can tell how authentic a Cobra is
by those numbers all being in the same places.
That number also exists on the frame rail
next to the motor mounts that stamp right in the frame.
It's a four inch tube frame as opposed
to a three inch tube on the 289.
The 289 is really a flexible flyer.
It was built on an existing chassis,
but Shelby designed this Cobra to be built
to handle a huge engine.
Engine probably weighs 500 pounds.
If you look at how far back the engine is,
the engine is well behind the front axle of the car.
That meant that the transmission
went way back here, the transmission lever,
the shift lever, they couldn't get a Mustang
shift lever to work because it would be behind the driver.
So they swapped that lever around
and it kind of faces forward.
It looks awkward, but it kind of works alright.
But you know, you kind of lift the transmission.
You lift the lever up to go into second gear
and you push it down to go third
and lift it up to fourth, and it works fine.
This car, having been sitting
here a while, it has occupants.
In the glove box, that's probably
a condominium for a whole mouse family.
There's more mouse stuff going on in the back,
and I'm sure after a couple of decades of urination,
that's all that crud on top of the wheel and the tire.
And if I was brave enough, I'd dig through
to see what's in that box, but I see the correct jack
is in the corner over there.
One very rare thing about these cars are tool sets.
They had screwdriver, a pliers, and several wrenches,
couple of other pieces.
And Cobra people would give their
eye teeth for a correct tool set.
As I'm looking at the body here,
there's a real shiny, beautiful paint job
right underneath that layer of dust.
I mean, the reflections that I'm
seeing back here are perfect.
This car could be cleaned up so pretty.
It would be such a sin to restore a car like this.
This car should be kept just the way it is,
cleaned and enjoyed as the 19,000 mile car that it is.
I wrote a book about 20 years ago
called The Cobra in the Barn and that
was the first book I did about barn finding.
And the whole idea of that book was
the dream of being able to find a Cobra
in a neglected environment like this.
Whether you're a Mopar guy, or a Chevy guy,
or a Ford guy, we all dream about finding
cars in barns, but all of us would love
to find a Cobra in a barn.
This brings tears to my eyes.
This is the perfect setting with the perfect car.
I don't know if I'll ever do better
than that in this series.
(upbeat rock music)
I've been hunting for old cars
in garages since I'm 12 years old.
And I've never found a group of cars like this in my life.
A Ferrari, a Cobra, a V8 Morgan, and
a TR6 Triumph with low mileage.
This is amazing and we may never find
another collection like this again.
So maybe this should be the last
episode of Barn Find Hunter.
Well, no, I'm only kidding.
Happy hunting.
(upbeat rock music)