- Obviously you can see there's something inside here.
Very, very nice truck.
It's pulling a trailer.
And oh, look at this.
Look at that.
I don't know when the last time I saw one of these.
The gentleman who owns this car
as a young guy, as a teenager, he saw this picture
and actually made it his life's goal to find that car.
And he says, if I hadn't restored this
in the last 20, 25 years
I'm not gonna restore it in the future
so he's entertaining offers on this car.
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.
Well it's another day, we're in Vermont,
and we're following up a lead.
I'm not quite sure what is there.
It's just a lead that came in over Facebook.
So, and we're also trying to race a storm that's moving in,
wanna see what we can discover
while it's still not pouring out.
So, here we go.
If you drive around New England,
Vermont in this case,
you pass barns like this every couple of miles
in the rural areas and you know,
in my mind at least,
I'm wondering what's inside those barns?
We've been invited to a barn,
I can't tell you where and I can't tell you who owns it,
but this cool vehicle's inside this barn
that I haven't seen yet.
So we're gonna pull the door open here.
So you could see, you know,
obviously you could see there's something inside here.
And that's a 36 Ford pickup truck.
It looks to be unrestored.
It's probably been painted at some point.
I can't read the inspection sticker on here,
but just a nice, old vehicle.
It's not for sale, but it is a neat truck
that's been owned by this gentleman for a long time.
It's a 36 Ford truck with 35 wheels on it.
Very, very nice truck.
Now it's pulling a trailer
and this is a 1938 Boston.
It's a speedboat.
You can see it's pretty authentic.
Under here there's a seat.
So two people could sit in the front here.
But I'm told that it's got an interesting powerplant
that we'll enjoy seeing.
So 1938, can you imagine a car lasting,
a steel car lasting from 1938 would be a big deal,
but a wooden boat lasting this long is amazing.
So this vehicle has Ford components in it.
This steering wheel is a banjo wheel,
it looks like out of a 37 Ford.
But what is intriguing to me here
is this two end carburetors coming up out of the engine bay.
And, oh, look at this.
Wow, a Ford flathead V8 60,
which was a small flathead engine that Ford built.
85 horsepower was the high horsepower, bigger motor.
And this is kind of a little jewel
that was used in cars.
I think it was a no cost option
to get better gas mileage
and I think probably 39 and 40, 41 something like that,
they only made it for a few years,
but this is an engine that's prized by midget racers.
What a sweet little device this is.
We're entering now the second barn,
I guess you call it, or building on this property.
If you remember one of the early barn find episodes
we did last year in Maine,
we found a 34 Ford Thatten, a little bit rougher than this.
This is a 35 Ford Thatton
and this is the kind of condition
you wanna find 'em in, you know.
It's got scratches on it,
the fender's pulled out a little bit,
it's got a little bit of story, a little bit of history,
it doesn't look generically perfect.
It's all here in these scratches
probably from kids jumping over to get in the back seat
or jumping out again.
A parking lot dent.
This is amazing, it is an open car.
Open cars tend to sag
and doors don't close real nicely.
Door closes pretty nicely.
That's a sweetheart.
You know I've never seen one of these in person.
I've only seen 'em in books.
This is a model A,
probably a 28 or 29 model A snowmobile.
So it has ski's in the front,
hooked up to the front suspension,
so the ski's will turn with the wheels.
And then it's got rear wheels,
okay so it's got a driven set of rear wheels
and then a coasting set of rear wheels
with a snow track around them.
Well that's a rare piece
and, here in Vermont,
I'm sure this got service in the winter
and it probably is a fun buggy to take out
and during snow storms and have a lot of fun with.
Isn't that sharp.
This is an intriguing model T.
It's a Ford Model T 1922 and it's a woody.
The body was made by York Body Company
in York, Pennsylvania and this is probably
ash wood with bass paneling inside here,
but you could see that,
for a Model T which everything was basic basic basic,
this has curved doors so not so basic,
but it's a beautiful piece of equipment.
People wonder how we come across the leads we do.
And for one thing is driving a car like this.
This woody is kind of a calling card,
a conversation starter.
We were just having lunch
back in this little town called Putney, Vermont,
sitting on the porch and a man came up.
His name is Bill.
He says, you from around here?
Nope.
See you're from North Carolina.
Yep.
What are ya doing here?
Looking for old cars.
Oh, you wanna follow me?
And we're right now going to see apparently
an old Barracuda that's been in a garage for a long time.
He said, you interested in cars like that?
I said, sure.
So we're going there right now to see what it looks like.
So here we are.
We're meeting with Pauline.
We're in Putney, Vermont, is this Putney?
- Westminster.
- Westminster, Vermont, okay.
And we're gonna go take a look at a car
that is in that garage over there
so can you show me, please? - Sure, absolutely.
- And this car, I take it,
has a bit of history in your family?
- Yeah, sentimental.
My father-in-law gave it to my son when he was like 14,
I guess it is, and they restored it,
went to car shows and he's gonna be 40,
moved to Florida, couldn't take it with him,
wanted to sell it,
I couldn't that opportunity go,
so I bought it.
- [Tom] No kidding.
So you've had it for how long?
- [Pauline] I've had it myself for about a year.
- And your son had it from when he was 14.
- Yeah, and he'll be 40 this August.
- [Tom] 26 years
and how long did your father-in-law have it?
- I would say, maybe a couple years before that,
I'm not a hundred percent sure.
God, that makes me old. - So it's kinda been--
so it means 30 something years in your family.
Wow, so this is a, what year is this?
- [Pauline] 67.
- [Tom] 67 Barracuda Convertible.
I don't when the last time I saw one of these.
Nice little car.
It's got buckets and a consol, automatic on the floor,
a tachometer, can you start it for us?
- [Pauline] I can.
(engine revs)
- [Tom] Sweet, Woah.
- [Pauline] It doesn't go out with the top down usually.
- [Tom] Boy, that sounds good.
- [Pauline] Isn't that nice?
- [Tom] Well thank you for sharing this with us.
This is a blast.
Usually we come into barns in this series
and the spiderwebs, dust, and dirt floors,
and find a car that's in a very unkept condition.
Well this is probably the prettiest barn
that I've been in.
I'd love to have this in my backyard.
And it contains this car.
This is a sports car.
We're gonna try to have you guess what it is, okay?
It's small.
It has a hard top.
You see wire wheels.
And it's 13-inch wire wheels.
So this could be, could it be
a Austin-Healey Sprite?
But this is where it's gonna throw you off.
It's got a fin.
So suddenly your mind starts wondering,
what had a fin and 13-inch wire wheels.
So I'm gonna reveal it now, okay?
This is a Sunbeam Alpine.
And a Sunbeam Alpine was the smaller brother,
actually a lot more Alpines were made
than the Sunbeam Tiger.
The Tiger was the older brother
and this is the younger brother.
It's the 4-cylinder version of a Tiger.
And this was made by a company called the Rootes Group,
R-O-O-T-E-S in England.
And Rootes made cars like Hilman Minxes
and Humver Supersnipes
and Sunbeam Alpines and Sunbeam Tigers.
Ultimately Rootes Group was bought by Chrysler Corporation
and these cars were not manufactured anymore.
This is a really significant Sunbeam Alpine
in that it was a factory race car,
a works race car as they would call it.
It's got aluminum doors, aluminum hood,
aluminum trunk deck, and it's lightened all over.
This was built by the factory team
to come to run the 12 hours of Sebring in 1962.
The gentleman who owns this car
got this book as a young guy,
actually as a teenager,
and it's a classic Sunbeam book by Chris McGovern.
And it goes through the history of the Sunbeam brand
and it goes through racing history.
And as a young guy, as a teenager, he saw this picture
and said, wow I wonder where that car is today
and actually made it his life's goal to find that car.
He's owned this car for probably 25 years.
He did find it,
but this was the car,
you could see number 41 was right here.
How does he know this is the car?
Well he did a lots of investigating about it,
but if you look at this damage right here.
This damage is right there in this photograph.
And it's actually more evident on this photograph.
He was sideswiped by a Corvette
and that Corvette is right here.
It was driven by a guy named Don Yanko.
And you've probably heard of Yanko Camaro's
and Yanko Corver's, Yanko Nova's.
Well Don Yanko made a name for himself
by racing Corvette's and the 62 Sebring race,
you could see it took off his whole left front fender here
by the headlight when he sideswiped this car
and you could see the damage right here.
Collapsed the door in, well that's been repaired
and into the quarter panel starting in the front fender
working it's way all the way back
in through here, there's bondo
that covers up that damage,
and actually pushed this driver into the hay bale
and you could see the hay around the headlight.
But this cover of Car and Driver magazine
shows the Don Yanko car at the start
and actually you can see the little green
Sunbeam Alpine back here.
Now, how do we know this is green?
Well, if we open the trunk,
here's the original factory green
that it was raced as.
It's been modified by the factory.
It's got a 26 gallon fuel tank in the middle of the car.
This was all cut out and you could see the shock absorber
poking through the trunk here.
You could see it's got a hard top on here
and it has a vent here
to exhaust out pressure
that would've built up coming in the windows
and actually that can become an air brake,
but this allowed that to release itself.
There's plexiglass rear window here
and the rear window would've held,
let's see what we have here,
this Monza gas cap.
This is a racing gas cap.
And this Monza would've mounted right here
in the plexiglass window
and there was a fuel line that went across here.
There was a story that the driver of this car,
the vent didn't work correctly, it leaked,
and he had to sit in a bucket seat filled with gasoline
for hours and hours and hours.
I'm told he couldn't sit for a couple of weeks,
that his skin got so burnt.
But he was fortunate enough when he bought this car,
20 something years ago, to get all sorts of little bits
that were fabricated by the factory.
Here's a generator cover to keep, it's a heat shield.
One of the original racing mirrors, a radot mirror.
And then here's the original
intake manifold with two downdraft Zenith carburetors.
Later on, Webber carburetors
were utilized on these cars.
Now, if you know anything about Sunbeams
these aren't the tail lights.
A Sunbeam tail light is a big tail light like that,
but these were an aftermarket tail light
that were put on so they could easily swap out the bulbs
in a night time race.
You would just take it off,
put a bulb in it, put it back on.
This way they didn't have to start taking screwdrivers
and taking the lens off, putting the bulb in.
Everything was done to make this happen quickly.
There's no engine in here.
It's got duel systems, dual charging systems,
dual ignition systems so there was a contingency plan
if one system went out during a race
mechanics could quickly switch to another system
and the car could keep going.
So there's no engine.
Ultimately these cars came with 1725 CC engines.
This one had a 1600 engine.
He doesn't have the engine, unfortunately.
He doesn't have a correct engine.
The gentleman who owns this car,
who's owned it for 20, 25 years,
has dreamed of owning it since he was a kid,
but now he's got a house and a business in Vermont
and children and daughter's in college,
another daughter who's about to go to college,
and he says, if I hadn't restored this
in the last 20, 25 years
I'm not gonna restore it in the future
so it's time for this car to go on to another owner.
So he's entertaining offers on this car.
Ultimately this car should restored to as race condition
and probably put back on a vintage racing circuit.
I'd love to see this run at a historic Sebring event,
Limerock, and raced at Laguna Seca.
So this car should go back to those places
in the same green that it was wearing
when it was an international racing star.
Technically, this car was not a barn find,
but it kind of fits the definition
of being neglected and ignored.
Although, here it's been preserved nicely
in this great garage.
It hasn't deteriorated, which is a good thing.
It was an important piece of history
that we knew about through a Facebook contact
that we just wanted you to know
there are still cars like this out there.
A historic factory race car,
sitting in a barn in rural Vermont.
You know, if this is sitting here,
what could be sitting where you are?
Happy hunting.