- 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)
Incredible
Shame the owner didn't at least try to keep them somewhat clean and make an effort to keep the mice and whatever else under control.