(engine starting) - Oh boy. Some people think this
is what heaven looks like and other people might think this is hell. What year is this one? - '67. - '67 E type. So, how long have you owned this? - He actually gave it to me. - So its unrestored. - Yeah. - And this, oh this is a
sun roof car, a '53 car with a sunroof, it's a pretty rare item. There seems to be a lot of
Volkswagens in this area. We're seeing them cruising around. We're seeing them in driveways. We're seeing them in parking lots. This vehicle is all stock on the outside, stock on the inside and
really has wonderful patina and a real solid body. You know, 11 grand for this,
this is a good vehicle. A cargo van, you don't see many of these. Hi, this is Tom Cotter. I've been hunting down cars
since I was 12 years old, and I'm still doing it today. Follow me in this series as we hunt down hidden classics all across America. (rhythmic guitar music) We're in New Hampshire. We're in the part of New
Hampshire that's part of a resort area near Lake Winnipesaukee. There seems to be an over
abundance of Porsches and Volksagens in this area, so
we're gonna go search out a couple that we've heard about. (door closes) I'm gonna go inside here and
tell them we're going in there. We're with Randy Courier who has a foreign car repair shop in
Holderness, New Hampshire, and he's invited us into his little stash, his collection of cars
that he owns personally, and this is a car that's
pretty intriguing. He's gonna allow us to take a look at it. What year is this one? - '67. - '67 E type Roadster. And you got a little bit of
history with this car, right? - Yes, I do. A friend of mine bought it
brand new back in '67 and it's quite a story behind him
buying the car also because he wasn't looking for this particular car. They we're trying to sell
him a black one and they finally came up with, I'll take those two, this car for him and so
he bought it brand new. I think it has 56,000 miles
on it or something like that. - So it's unrestored. - Yep, 68,000 miles. - So, this is 50 years old right now. - Yep. - Man. - Yep. - And, so, how did you wind up with it? - Well, my friend was an
attorney and we used to sell gas out front here and he drove
in one day before I knew him. And I was 15 years old and so
I went out and I was pumping gas and there was a really nice
looking lady sitting in the driver's seat and I just
said, "really nice car." He goes, "do you want to sit in it?" I said "no, I'd like
to drive it actually." So I took him for a ride
from here to Ashland, about five miles away at, you
know, a hundred miles an hour, and came back, and he said,
"You're not gonna have a license very long, son." And I said, "well I don't have one yet." - Ha ha ha! - We got to be pretty good
friends and then it turns out he knew my mother from many
years ago when they had a farm up here on Elbrook, so
Harry's a very unique guy and he's been inducted in
the hall of fame for hockey and all kinds of different
things like that too. - So, how long have you owned this? - He actually gave it to
me, but he's still alive, and I keep threatening to
restore it one of these days, but I've had it probably
30 plus years here. - I see the last time it
was registered was 1976. - Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. - Wow. - It hasn't run in a while. - Has it been stored
indoors all these years. - Yes, yep, it's always been inside. - So it's a solid car. - It is, and I actually have,
I bought all the right exhaust systems and stuff back in
the days when that stuff was available, so I have all the pieces to put this car together too. As you know, it's all about time. You can end up with thousands
of hours into these things. So I'm not sure, it really
needs a paint job, but the way these cars are going these
days, the original patina on 'em is another deal too. - Yup, just wax this up and little scars, a little rust is fine. Have you driven it, I mean,
since you have owned it? - No, it hasn't been on the
road in 20 years anyways. - Well, this is a great car. We like to show on Barn
Car Hunter complete cars, but this is a unique enough car that its worth looking at it the way it is. This is a 1953 Volkswagen Beetle. It's an oval window Beetle
which means it's got the small window in the back. '53 was a split year, so some
of the cars had oval windows, the newer ones had oval windows, the earlier ones in '53 had
a split window which is a divider right down the back of the window. This is a 1953, a very solid car. It comes out of California
and it's absolutely complete. The rocker panels are
solid, the floors solid, the doors are all solid. This is where the semiphores would go. A semiphore's a blinker that comes out. In Europe these little fingers
would come out and point the way you wanted to go instead of a flashing light in the back. So this is a real early car. It's got the real early dashboard. It's a solid car, it's
100 percent complete. Right now it's stripped, but
he has every piece for it except the proper motor. And he has a motor for it,
he would of included this, but this car is for sale, I don't know how much he wants for it. The floor pans are solid, so like I said, everything is right here. There's boxes and boxes of
pieces that go with the car. Here's the little taillights
that go on the back. So, these cars, when I was
a kid, you could get cars like this for five hundred bucks. Well, they're worth quite
a bit more now and there's a lot of interest. Ever since Jerry Seinfeld
sold his very, very old Beetle a few years ago on Amelia
Island for a lot of money, people's attention has been
spiked about old Beetles, and also buses and transporters. And this is a sunroof car. A '53 car with a sunroof, it's a pretty rare item. So, pretty desirable car. You can't help but see
Volkswagens when you ride around this area, we've seen them on the road. We've heard about a couple more
just a couple of miles away we're going to go check out right now. This is a 1967 VW Van. '67's got two flat windshields
separated by one piece of metal, so it was a lot
cheaper to make a vehicle with flat glass than to have compound curves. This one seems to be a deluxe one. It's got a chrome emblem on
the front a split paint job, two colors, nice trim in the
middle separating the two. And really, this thing is a time capsule. If you look inside here,
these are probably not the original seats, this is probably not the original door panel,
but it is 50 years old. If you climb inside here,
see how tight things are. Basically your legs, your
knees, are the bumpers. If you get hit in a front end
collision with something else, the big fear that people
had in this day was that they'd be killed because there's no engine to take up or chassis
to take up a collision. I had a crew cab Volkswagen,
it was a three door and I drove it around a little
bit, not much though. They're great vehicles, its very nostalgic to drive something like this. It really brings back
memories of the old days when gas was 25 or 30 cents a gallon and I have a funny story. I went to borrow my friend's, actually he's my
brother-in-law now, Bob Mead, I borrowed his Volkswagen van in high school to go out to lunch. I ran out of gas. I coasted to a gas
station across the median, into a gas station and I
had 15 cents in my pocket and I bought 15 cents
worth of gas and that was enough to get me back to
the high school parking lot. So, that tells you the gas
mileage these things got, and also the cost of gas back in the day. (door slams) This vehicle is all stock on the outside, stock on the inside and
really has wonderful patina and a real solid body. Floors are really solid on it. Where it differs from stock
is that the owner has put in a suped up motor. It's got twin carburetors. It's got a degreed fly wheel pulling. It's got a big warp kit. I don't know what the cubes
are, the CC's or the horsepower, but if its one thing
that buses always needed, was more horsepower and
now this one has it. And we have another van over here. Over here is a '68 cargo van. No windows on the sides. And the big change here is
a completely redesigned van. It's got one windshield, which
it's got compound curves. No divider in the middle,
so this is the first, the new generation of Volkswagen vans. And being a cargo van, you
don't see many of these, with no windows on the side, although this is the kind
of thing that I would say should have Porsche Racing
Team on the side of it. Probably should have
painted it light blue. It's got lots more leg room. It probably has some more
body cladding in the front to give a little more protection in the event of a collision. It had a bigger engine, I'm not sure, '68, might have been maybe '53 horsepower, but don't write nasty letters if its not. But you can see the
complete motor in there. All the air cleaner, kind of
a complex air cleaner system. Pre-heater tubes, everything's in place. So, this is a runner. You know, 11 grand for this,
this is a good vehicle. It's got a nice paint job on it. Not perfect, it's got a
lot of orange peel in it, but just for a cargo van, this would be wonderful to
have for a little business. But a nice plain jane vehicle
that you never see these days. Oh this has got dual exhaust
coming out the sides, it's probably got some kind
of extractor header system. And you see it's got non-chrome
bumpers, non-chrome hubcaps, it's kind of a standard
commercial vehicle. Pretty sweet deal. (rhythmic rock music) I love atlases. I gotta tell ya, I like
GPS, to me, a GPS is a tool. An atlas is a pleasure to me. This is 2008, I bought it at a truck stop. It has a heavy plastic
cover and even though the pages are coming apart, its like the family bible, I
don't want to get rid of it, so I like to see where I'm
going and how I'm getting there as opposed to just getting there, which GPS does a good job of. But this way I can pick
out where I want to go and since I want to look for old cars, I don't want to take the interstate, so it looks like highway 101
and 9 going to Brattleboro is probably going to
be the best route to go through some rural areas and
through some small towns. So that's where we're gonna head now. (rhythmic rock music) We're driving down this
road 101 heading westbound, just saw a couple of interesting
cars in this guys driveway. We'll have to check it out, right? One definitely looked like a
Dunebuggy, behind the garage, I can see the headlight of it, and I don't know what those cars are, they're wrapped up
tightly, so I'm gonna go knock on the door, see what the deal is. This looks more like a Deserter,
which they were made in Marblehead, Mass, by Caldwell
Automotive I think it was. I think this is the first
Dunebuggy we've found on the Barn Find Hunter series, so
at two grand, this is a really good starting point to have
yourself a fun summer vehicle. (rhythmic rock music) Before I go on a barn-finding
adventure, I go on Facebook and just say "I'm going to this area, does anybody have any leads
that we can follow up on old cars neglected and forgotten?" So I put out a note recently
on Facebook "I'm going to New England, does anybody
know of any cars we should follow up on while we're in
town with the Hagerty crew?" And so my friend Rick Carey
responded to that and said "You know I have a friend
who recently passed away and he has a lot of projects left over he didn't get time to finish. Maybe you'd be interested in coming up and seeing those." And that's how we wound up here. - Okay! - Ha ha, you lead the way. - You're gonna make me
lead the way, alright. I have a Viper. Come down here. - Wow. Alright, what have we got here? Oh boy. (cranking) Geeze, wow! Some people think this
is what heaven looks like and other people might think this is hell. - Yeah. - Ha ha ha, geeze! This looks like a drag
race '56 Chevy Nomad. This has a straight front
axle, so this is a gasser. This is pretty darn cool. - There's no motor. - I dig gassers. Look at this, it's got
a straight front axle and slicks in the back,
geeze, how could you put any rubber down when the slick is that close to the fender lip? - Maybe you have really strong springs. - Boy, this is a Chevy Nomad. It's different than a Chevy Station Wagon would have been in the day. A Nomad was GM's attempt to
bring styling to Station Wagons. And so, it's a two-door wagon,
it's got this really nice slant B pillar, it's got
these ribs across the roof. This mox, the B pillar
right here, it's got a slanted back window with
lines on the tail gate and it was a real stylish wagon. They made a version
like this '55, '56, '57 and then even though
the name stayed around, the '58's and beyond didn't
have this classic look. What do we have back here? '61 Chevy? - '61 Impala SS, according
to the chassis number. - Uh huh, '61 Impala SS,
so is that a 348 or 283? That's a bubble top. This is the cat's meow
with a 409 in it, I think. - Yeah. - Okay, so where do we go next? So, we have a late model
VW Beetle convertible, round window super Beetle. I know these cars well. It's probably, I'm guessing,
'79, '80, I'm not sure. It seems to have a good
top, nice and tight. It seems to have a good
body, probably a repaint. Engine's in there and looks complete. The keys are in the ignition. These cars, you can get parts for them. They're easy to service, they're reliable, they're fun to drive. It's got such a nicely padded top. It's got a headliner and padding in there, that it's a good car to drive. You can drive in foul weather and you don't get wet or windy
inside like a sports car. You could put the kids in the backseat. So VW convertibles are a
really good way to have a sporty type car for minimal
money and not a big burden as far as maintenance and
repairs are concerned. Okay, so next in our selection
of unfinished projects is an engine-less shoebox
Nova, looks like a '66, '67. - '66 SS. - SS, it's got late model
Corvette wheels and it's got rack-and-pinion steering I noticed so this thing has been modified somehow. I wonder if its got an independent rear. Son of a gun, it's got a
Corvette independent rear. Four bar link suspension in the back here. Somebody did a nice job with this thing. It's got welded reinforcements
onto the unibody. Ford suspension A arms,
it's got disc brakes. It looks like traction bar mount. It's a pretty cool car. It's a Corvette in Nova clothing. That could be a neat car. Boy, just put a healthy
little 327 in there or LS. So this is a Brooklyn S1? - SV1. - SV1. - Safety Vehicle 1. - Safety Vehicle 1. And these are made by a
guy named Malcolm Bricklin who made a name in the
auto industry by bringing Subaru's into the United States
45 years ago or something. Little tiny Subaru 360's. Little tiny cars, and when
people didn't buy them, he turned them into go
carts and you could rent, he'd put them in first gear
and you could race around go cart tracks and race these Subaru's because he couldn't
sell them any other way. Then he built his own
car and this is it, SV1, out of fiberglass. You can see the problem with these cars is the fiberglass becomes delaminated and starts warping in temperature so these gull-wing doors start lifing up. Ironically, its a safety car. Supposed to have been built
with internal roll cages and very strong structure,
but if it went on its roof, I don't know a way to get out of this car because the gull-wing
doors have to come up. If its on its roof they can't come up. Funny story about
Bricklin, a friend of mine in North Carolina, Phil
Barringer, had some extra money back when these were
being built and he said to his new wife, "honey we
should go broke buying that car because its gonna be worth
so much money one day that we can't lose." So he bought the car brand new, it's got 30 miles on it still and he still has the same
wife, but he still has this car sitting in the garage and he can't get what he paid for it new 40 years ago, so they never really went anywhere. That's a pretty nice thing. These have a bad habit of rusting out. Looks like it would be a fiberglass car, but its actually metal. We can't find a number
plate on here that will give us the year of the car,
but it's probably a '74, '75, I'm not really an expert
on the years of these cars. Volkswagen things are great cars. They look like Dune
Buggies, they're really not, but they have a metal body. Most Dune Buggies are
fiberglass, this one is metal, so they are very prone to rust. This one seems to be in
amazingly good shape. It looks to have new paint
under these layers of dust. Inside here its got all the side curtains, I guess its a convertible
top and seats in here. It has an engine, which I
suppose is the original motor. It's got a VW motor and
its absolutely complete with all the air cleaners and hoses. Looks to be a good car. I would own this car. I mean, except for this
dent which probably happened during storage, the body
looks to be solid, complete and well painted all around. The Hagerty value guide
teaches us a few things about the Volkswagen Thing. I said they only made it for two years, well they made it '71 through '75, so they made it for five years. It was called the type 181 and it was an updated version of Germany's
military Kübelwagen. So if this car were in concourse condition which its far from, it
would be worth $33,700. If you think about that,
if you were to find a concourse version of this for $33,000, you could have something you
could drive onto the lawn of a car show and be proud
of for only 33 grand. Fair condition is $10,400 and
good condition is $16,800, so I'd imagine this would fall under fair condition, $10.400. If it's complete I bet it
runs, somebody would get a nice buy here for 10 grand or under. So, we've just seen what
Bob has in this garage that now his wife Jean has to sell off, but what is this I hear about another car? - Yup, there's another car up in York about another 20 minutes
drive, 15 minutes drive. - I don't even know what
it is, I don't wanna know. - Okay, we'll make it a surprise. - Alright, cool.
