Local news story about an extensive collection of over 500 collectable cars, all in working order, owned by a man in Lebanon Mo.
…and then there is this story from France:
http://news.yahoo.com/forgotten-treasure-rare-cars-goes-auction-france-095816493.html
The cars in this French collection are badly deteriorated, but the marques represented (Bugatti, Hispano Suiza, Talbot-Lago, and other esteemed names) makes the collection almost priceless!
It’s a shame they’ve been allowed to deteriorate so badly. I suspect they were in decent shape before being stuffed away like that. He could have sold just a few and afforded to have the rest stored properly, but he probably didn’t even see all the damage. They were his treasures, whatever their condition. Hoarders can be like that. Even in this state, it sounds like an incredible collection, though I’m sure most are more mundane than those they described.
Like most of us, life happened to him while he was making other plans. It’s a shame, but I’m betting there are a few more treasures hiding out there.
There’s a true story (a show was even done about it) about a garage near where Jay Keno lives that hadn’t been opened in decades. There was an old rumor of a classic car in there. For years Jay Leno made serious offers to the elderly couple for whatever contents were in the garage. Eventually they became friends, but he still never saw the contents of the garage. A few years after the husband passed away, the widow acquiesced and sold the contents of the garage to Jay. He brought a tiltbed and a TV camera, and when they opened the garage they discovered a fully intact, all original, all complete Deusenberg buried under numerous old car parts. They rolled it onto the tiltbed, brought it to Leno’s “Big Dog Garage”, and did a “sympathetic restoration” on it. It turns out that not long after the owner had bought it new, the camshaft broke and he rolled it into the garage and left it there. The TV show covered the entire process from the opening of the garage door to the “sympathetically restored” car driving through Hollywood streets.
I remember that showing that on PBS. It was great. Kept the original paint and interior…but the engine had to be rebuilt…the one thing that struck me was when he said it takes 40 man hours to adjust the valves.
Yeah, the engine had a busted camshaft and had sat since the car was new.
A Ferrari from that French treasure trove has already been auctioned for over 14 million Euros!
Now I’ve just got to find where my ancestors stored the Bugattis. Yeah, right. More likely old Ford pickups beaten up from farm use.
14M+ Euros for rust and dust?!?! Ye gods and little fishes.