Australian classic auto hoard discovered
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OK, so it’s not Pebble Beach with its high-priced Ferraris and Maybachs. But a recent ‘barn find’ of almost 300 classic and not-so-classic cars in Australia is causing a bit of a stir among collectors.
The Down Under discovery was first reported by Sports Car Market magazine, though the location is being kept secret, as is the identity of the collector. But photos that accompanied the article documented a cache of cars that probably ranks as one of the bigger finds of vintage metal in recent years.
About 200 of the cars are stored in corrugated sheds with dirt floors, so tightly jammed together that there’s no room to walk between them. The rest are parked outside in paddocks.
The cars are in various states of disrepair, although many are restorable — especially those that have been stored indoors, out of the elements. ‘The semi-arid climate is tough on paint and trim, but metal lasts forever,’ the magazine reported. ‘Consider them projects with a capital ‘P’.’
Trevor Fay, the freelancer out of Adelaide who chronicled the find, said his first look at the collection was an eye-popper.
‘I was stunned,’ Fay said. ‘I had never seen so many cars packed in so tightly. They were packed in like sardines in a tin.’
Most of the cars date from the 1940s to the 1980s, although there was a smattering of earlier vintages and long-vanished marques, such as a 1920s-era Hupmobile and a Jewett sedan from the same decade.
As might be expected given the location, the bulk of the cars are of British or Australian origin, ranging from well-known brands such as ...
... Jaguar and Rolls-Royce to names less familiar to Americans.
For example, there’s a 1950s sedan from Lanchester, a British brand launched in the 1880s that was last produced in 1955; four Humbers (including a 1945 Snipe and a 1964 Sceptre), another British carmaker, which was absorbed by Chrysler and killed off in the mid-1970s; four Holdens, one of the original Aussie automakers and a member of the GM family since the 1930s; and a flock of old sedans by Morris, another old British carmaker.
Not to mention a wide variety of Jensens, Vauxhalls, Singers and Wolseleys. There are also a few racing cars, commercial vehicles and pickup trucks.
Phil Skinner, collectible-car editor at Kelley Blue Book, did a quick back-of-the-build-sheet calculation and figured that the whole lot is worth about $1.5 million, maybe less.
‘It’s an interesting lot of vehicles, to say the least,’ Skinner said. ‘But very few of them would bring six figures in fully restored condition.’
That said, Skinner thinks the find will create quite a stir in Australia, which has an active car-collecting community.
Barn finds are legendary among car collectors, who dream of hitting upon that rare Ferrari or Duesenberg that got parked in a garage years ago and was somehow forgotten.
It’s not clear whether the anonymous Aussie intends to sell any of his hoard. He told Fay that he considered himself a preservationist and that he began storing vehicles on his property to ‘keep them from the car crusher’ and preserve them for future generations.
He said he’d like to restore some of the cars and start a museum, although given the history of the collection, I wouldn’t start lining up for tickets anytime soon.
— Martin Zimmerman
Related story: Junkyard treasures found in Oklahoma