(country acoustic guitar music) - I'm driving around Midland, Texas. I think I'm the only guy in
town not wearing cowboy boots. We met a gentlemen the other day at lunch who just happened to,
"Is that your Woody?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "Is that your Model T Bucket?" He said, "Yeah," so we started talking. I told him what we're
looking for, and he said, "I don't really know anybody, "but give me your phone number
and I'll think about it." So, he went home and went
through his phone book. Son of a gun, he turned us on to at least four different
people that turned out to be an amazing source of contacts
for old cars, Barn Find cars. So, we're going to another one
right now, Roland's Mustangs. A guy who had a Mustang
rebuilding business, a restoration business, a parts business. But he's since closed it down and now just messes around
with cars on his own. So, I'm told he's got some inventory that he wants to get rid of. So, that's what we're gonna
go check out right now. He said be there at 10:00,
it's 10 after 10:00. So, we'll see what he's got. Here we are at Roland's. Now interesting, the Volkswagen that was at the gate
yesterday is not there today. So, a Roland, Morgan Roland he said, "Follow me, my
dad's over at the shop." This dog's saying, "I've never
seen a wooden car before." Oh yeah, this is gonna be a good day. Oh, look at this thing,
what are you kidding me? (laughs) Oh man. What a good morning, and
it hasn't even started yet. Well anyway, here we are. I guess is it called Roland's Mustangs? - Yeah, Roland's Custom
Paint, Roland's Mustang. The body shop and the Mustang store were kind of separate deals, but. - So, there's no more Mustang business. - No, we kind of changed
it to Roland's Custom now. So, we've got a little antique store that we're putting together,
and we buy and sell. Our dealer's license is Roland's Mustang. - Okay, okay. - So, anything that we
buy and sell to the public goes out on the Roland's Mustang ticket. - [Tom] So, I'm looking
right now at a fire truck, an airplane, a school bus. You're into radical stuff here. - Well, I got a lot of kids, and I want them to be
able to play on anything. - A caboose.
- Yep. - Holy mackerel. Well, if you could show us around. - Yeah. - What a great morning this is gonna be. - [Roland] I have like
I said, I got nine kids. - [Tom] Yeah yeah yeah, so
how many boys and girls? What do you got? - [Roland] I got seven boys and two girls. - [Tom] Wow, man. - So, my first five are all grown. But they're all kinda into cars. - So, are these cars for sale?
- Everything is for sale. - Everything's for sale,
you heard it here first. - They can find us on
Roland's Custom on Facebook. - Okay, so you've got
a '55 two-door wagon. '55 Chevy two-door wagon. - Yeah.
- Wow, that's a rare one. It's not a Nomad. - [Roland] No, it's just
a, what do they call those? - A Handyman or something?
- Handyman, yeah. - [Tom] And so it's got a louvered hood. - [Roland] Yeah, somebody did
a decent job on the louvers. - Three on a tree.
- That one's pretty well bare. - [Tom] Now, it's an
automatic on a column. So, is this a 150? It's got a very standard wheel. The 150s only had one
sun visor, this has two. So, no it's not. So, what would you ask
for something like that? - [Roland] That I'd like
to get $5,500 out of it. - $5,500.
- Yeah. - [Tom] Is it a pretty solid car? - [Roland] It's decent,
floors are a little rusty, but not like a lot of the stuff we see that comes from up north. - [Tom] Oh no kidding, you
got guys coming from up north down here to buy cars? - [Roland] Oh yeah, yeah we send stuff back up that way pretty regular. - [Tom] Now is this like a '54 Ford Panel? - [Roland] That is, yeah, it's a '54 or 5. I think it belonged to the
newspaper in San Angelo. - [Tom] It's a six cylinder? - [Roland] No, I think this one's a V8. - Oh yeah, it's a Y-block,
so it'll probably be a 272 or something like that. No, it's okay, oh you got it. - Okay.
- Yeah. - [Tom] So, I guess that
was the original color. Look at that. - [Roland] Yeah, it would've
been a deep turquoise truck. - [Tom] Yeah, wow. So, what would you ask for this? I'm just asking because
somebody watching this is gonna wanna--
- Now, this one. I mean I'd like to get
5 or $6,000 out of that. - Now, if we stop and
talk about every car, we're not gonna get through this. - [Roland] No doubt. - [Tom] Now I saw that huge fire truck. Diamond T or something. - That is.
- It looks like a caricature. - Yeah, that is a 1939 American LaFrance. - [Tom] Man. - That's Midland's number three. - [Tom] No kidding. - So, number one and number
two are in the museum downtown. - So, this is the fire engine
we'll be talking about. So, tell me about what, '39? - It's a '39 American LaFrance. - It looks bigger than life.
- It's a beast, yeah. It's just amazing how big it is. It's got a V12, it's
got 9,000 miles on it. - [Tom] 9,000, all over this town. - [Roland] Yeah, it never moved. It's just hard, you just gotta pull at it. - [Tom] Look at the size of that door. - Isn't that a beast? This old man had it, and he
had it in an old junkyard on Rankin Highway about
two miles east of here. And he had a whole bunch of old cars. Well, he died.
- Oh wow. - So, his kid gives me a
call, and we go out there and we buy all the '50s stuff. And finally talked him into
selling me the fire truck. That was the last car that
we drug out of that yard. - [Tom] So, '39 is the
same year as my Woody. - Oh yeah?
- Yeah. - [Tom] All right, so
if somebody wanted this, what would you ask for it? - [Roland] That one I
got priced at $15,000. - 15,000 bucks.
- Yeah. - Now, it's got a V12?
- Yeah. - Is that like a Packard
motor or something? - I don't know, it's
like a big long motor. - [Tom] So, that's a purpose
built motor, look at that. - [Roland] Isn't that a
V12, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. - [Tom] Well, it's two
spark plugs per cylinder. So, 1, 2, 3. - [Roland] So, there's six on each side. - Six on each side.
- That'd be 12. - [Tom] I wonder how, I guess
the pistons go vertically? Man, it's not a V I don't think. - [Roland] No, you're
right, maybe it ain't a V. - [Tom] Wow. - [Roland] Maybe it's a
straight six, I don't know. (Tom and Roland laugh) I don't have any idea. I know it's got more spark
plugs than I wanna buy. - It's got a Delco Remy
voltage regulator up there. And looks like a Stromberg carburetor. - Great big carburetor.
- Yeah. Isn't that something, I have no idea. I'm gonna have to do some research now. So, I can't see, it
says American LaFrance, and I can't see where it was made. I'm gonna go home and do
some research tonight. This is one of the most spectacular
vehicles I've ever seen. - Ain't that cool?
- Yeah. So, these gauges are from New York. I don't know who made the
gauges, they say New York. So, you've had it 10 years? - [Roland] It took me 10 years to get it. - [Tom] Oh, it took
you 10 years to get it? - Yeah.
- Wow. - [Roland] I can't remember
how many years we've had it. But probably going on 10 years. - I love it, man. There's patent right there, yeah I see it. - [Roland] How about that stainless dash? - New York.
- Yeah, New York. - [Tom] What's on the
left side there, Elmira? - [Roland] Yeah, Elmira,
engineered and manufacturers. Look at that ladder comes
right up into the cab. - Yeah, I see that, yep. So, $15,000 for this.
- Yeah, yeah this year. I mean it might go up a little next year. - (laughs) They don't go down? - No, they quit going
down a long time ago. - So, is that an Anglia back there? - That is a Prefect.
- Prefect. Let's go take a look at that. So, this is a kind of car that drag racers in the '60s would've driven. - The Anglias they--
- Oh yeah. So, that's complete with
hubcaps and everything. - It had that little bit of
damage when it was wrecked, and that's when it went
to the wrecking yard. And the old man that had it died, and we bought about probably
60 cars at that auction. All of them Mustangs except this one. - Wow. - [Roland] And yeah,
we just stole this one. - So, 1.17 liters.
- Yeah, it's a big one. - Look at how tiny that motor is. So, it's a little flathead. Just over one liter. So, it'd be, let's see two
liters is 122 cubic inches. So, that's 60 cubic inches. - [Roland] Yeah, like three coffee cups. (Tom and Roland laugh) - Yeah, but this is the
kinda car that drag racers back in the day would put Hemis in like all the way back here, and the driver would
be sitting back there. - [Roland] Yeah. - But this has got four hubcaps on it. What an unusual car to find in Texas. - [Roland] Yeah, it was
kind of a rare piece even in his yard. - Yep, so this has got 54,000
miles or kilometers maybe. No, probably miles 'cause the
steering wheel's on the right. But this is a Ford that
if you were in England and wanted to buy a Ford,
this was one of the options. The cars that Ford made in
England were smaller cars. So, it kinda looks like a '37
Ford, but it's probably later. It's probably a '46 or
something like that. All right so, if I wanted to buy this, what would you charge me? - [Roland] I'd have to think on that one. - [Tom] Really, okay. - [Roland] I just I've
never seen another one. I don't have any idea
what it would be worth. - They're not worth much,
but they're very unusual. - (laughs) Nothing's worth much. - Yeah. - [Roland] But if there's only
one of them that you know of might as well price it high. - [Tom] Oh yeah, okay. So, that's a... - [Roland] That's a '67, that's
a pretty strange little car. That's the first car I bought. I got that when I was 16. It was wrecked real hard on the front. I put a front clip, aprons, core support. Back when I was still gas
welding stuff together. Drove it for a couple years,
sold it, traded for it back, fixed the transmission the
kid had broke, sold it again, and my brother traded
for it and gave it to me. - [Tom] Wow. - [Roland] And it's been
sitting here ever since. But this car, power
steering, power disc brakes, air conditioning, I mean it
was loaded up for a coupe. Upper and lower consoles. Yeah, it was a neat neat car. - So, it's still got a 289. - Yeah, and I'm not 100% sure
that that didn't get changed. - [Tom] So, it's an air conditioned car. - [Roland] Yeah, it was air conditioned. - So, two-barrel, power
steering, power brakes, air conditioning, wow. Let's see what else you got. I just wanna point out
maybe a couple more. - [Roland] Sure. - Oh so yeah, you got a Bronco, huh? - [Roland] Oh yeah, there's
a couple of Broncos in here. - [Tom] That doesn't look too rough to me. - [Roland] Well, I mean
relatively speaking to some of the stuff you find up north. - [Tom] Yeah, see I'm
from New York originally. - [Roland] Yeah. - [Tom] So, it's a Bronco Sport. I'm not sure what that means. Okay, you got no doors in there, but. Oh, the doors are inside.
- Yeah, they're inside. - [Tom] Is this a complete
vehicle, it's got an engine? - [Roland] No, motors
gone, tranny's there. - [Tom] Tranny's there,
so that's automatic. It's got a torque converter. It looks like it had air
condition, doesn't it? - [Roland] Yeah, it looks
like it was aftermarket. - Okay, originally blue, yeah
it looks like it was blue. - Yeah, dark blue.
- Yeah. - [Roland] That would've
been a pretty one. - So, there's doors, these
don't look to be the doors for this because they're
a different color. - Yeah.
- But they're doors anyway. Missing a windshield. - [Roland] Seems like we
had a kid come from Austin or San Antonio looking for a Bronco. And we had four or five of them, and so we let him pick and
then the one that he picked probably needed the windshield
frame and the doors. - [Tom] Well, this would be
a good restoration candidate. For sure.
- Oh yeah. - All right so, this one,
I wanna buy this one. What would you say? - Probably $2,500.
- $2,500. - [Roland] Yeah, the
little Broncos down here are kinda silly. - [Tom] Yeah, silly all
over the country now. - Are they?
- Yeah. - Well, there you go.
- Yeah. - Maybe it'll be 35 next time.
- No no no no no. (Roland laughs) Okay, so where is this
K-Code, you have any idea? Just so I can point out where the... And I always gotta be sensitive to people. They say, "Why didn't you
talk about the Pontiac." Or, "Why didn't you talk about the Chevy." - It's all just cars to me anymore. - Yeah. All right, let me explain what this is. If you're into Mustangs,
you'll know this already. I'm gonna educate everybody else. Here's the serial number: 6RO7K. 1, 2, 3, 4, the fifth numeral is a K. That means it was a K-Code, which means it had a high performance 289. So, a standard 289 with a four-barrel I think was 225-horsepower,
does that sound right? - [Roland] Yeah. - But a K-Code was 271-horsepower. It had solid lifters,
different valve springs. The same motor they put in an AC Cobra. It was the same motor that
they started out putting in GT-350 Mustang Shelby Mustangs, but Shelby did additional
work to the heads, put a high rise aluminum manifold
with a Holley carburetor, and they got 306-horsepower
out of the same motor. But 289 Cobras, that's
exactly the motor in a Cobra. So, this car was a K-Code which
means it had dual exhausts. Most of them came with stick shifts. This one seems to have had an automatic. Now we don't know if the
K-Code motor's still in here. - No. - But the heads are off, and
that's the only way I can tell is with the spring bosses. - And you know that's one of the myths that went around for the
last probably three decades. - What's that? - Is every person that came out here wanted to have a car like
their buddies in high school 'cause he had a Hi-Po 289. I've had, I don't know, a thousand and maybe had two of these. - [Tom] Is that right? - Maybe I've seen 10 in my lifetime. You know there just weren't
that many Hi-Po 289s. - Has anybody come along and wanted to buy that serial number? - [Roland] No, not yet,
there are very few people. I mean, you're only about the third guy that knows it's here. (laughs) - Well, that's cool, wow. Well, now another million
people are gonna watch. - Well, yeah.
- (laughs) Well, that's cool. Here's an unusual car, I'm not
sure if I've ever seen one. It's a '58 Ford, '58
Ford was the first year they went to dual
headlights and these kind of odd rectangular dual taillights. What's unusual about this
is it's a two-door wagon. So, this was kind of the
equivalent of a Chevy Nomad that Ford would've made. This one must have had an interesting life because as I look inside here, I see it's got a tachometer
on the steering column. It's got a floor shift,
so it's a stick shift. It's got a clutch pedal. I see a big four-barrel manifold, so this was a hot rod at
one point in its life. It says here premium sound
performance engineered by Brown. This car probably did
some quarter mile times. Probably burned rubber
at some traffic lights earlier in its life. The shape of it, the
body looks pretty good. These fenders look like garbage. But this is certainly
worthy of restoration. By the way, you can see
there's black fuzzy interior it had at one time. It's got like those old
vans back in the '70s with shag carpet all in the inside. The whole headliner's done
in black shag carpet, yee. Well, here's an old Land Rover that I didn't see the
first time through here. These are interesting
vehicles in that they have an aluminum body, so the
body's never gonna rust. The issue though is the
chassis is made of steel, and that does rust. This has no engine, but
it's got a transmission. Depending on the shape
of the undercarriage, the chassis, and the supporting steel, this could be a worthy candidate to fix up or maybe just drop in a small block Chevy and keep it kinda ratty looking like this. Spotlight. Roof, this is that, I forget
what they call this roof. Maybe a safari roof, that
air can blow underneath here and get in the interior
to cool occupants off, but it won't allow rain in there. It's got these windows on the side. So, I guess if you were on
safari, you could look out there. So, that's worthy of consideration. And I wanna show you another one over here that's interesting. He has quite a few VWs. But the VWs that I'm attracted to are the ones with the small taillights, which makes it 1960 or earlier. This one has a flat steering wheel, so I say this car is
probably a 1958 or '59. And it's got 49,000 miles. Which means that's a 36-horsepower motor. Which means the block
is made of magnesium. The 40-horsepower VWs had aluminum blocks, but these earlier ones
had magnesium blocks if it is in fact a 36
which it may very well me. It should've had. And this has got the ragtop. Yeah, probably the floor's rotted out. It probably is not worth restoring. But it's complete, so if you
were restoring an old VW, this would be worth buying just for parts. As the Barn Find Hunter
host, I feel guilty walking past cars like this Gremlin. That's probably a, I don't
know, '53 or a '54 Chevy which is complete down to the
hubcaps, every piece of trim. I'm walking right by it. If that were in somebody's yard, I would spend 20 minutes
looking at that car. But the problem is there
are hundreds of cars here. I just can't spend enough time talking about this Ford Panel truck and these Ford pickup
trucks, another Panel truck. You know this show would go on for hours. So, I apologize, I just
can't spend enough time to satisfy everybody, so
I just have to do my best. So, did you build this?
- Yeah. We built it for a Halloween
project at church. They have a trunk of treats. We always do something
a little over-the-top. And so, we walked
through the yard one day, and I told the kids.... You know they're kind of
everything's rat rod now. You know everybody's all wound up. And I said they wanted to build a rat rod, so we walked through the yard and we looked at some them old four-doors. You know the old '37
Plymouth and stuff like that. And I said the only problem we build one of these little cars you know it's only three
of you get to ride in it. And I said, "Or we could
build that old bus." And it was just a box sitting
over there on the ground. - [Tom] Now what year is that box from? - We think it's '29.
- Wow. - '27, 8, 9 somewhere in there. - So, no chassis, no engine. - No nothing, I mean it
didn't have a cowl on it. We stole that cowl off an
old Chevrolet over there. (Tom and Roland laugh)
No windshield. The nice thing was the
doors were still there. So, we had to weld them up 'cause they wouldn't fold anymore. - [Tom] Oh yeah. - But we pulled it in there. And I had an old oilfield truck. A '94 F700, so it's sitting
on a three-ton truck that we cut the frame and
dropped it in the middle. - [Tom] So, that engine
was already in the frame? - [Roland] Yeah, that's all '94 Ford. - [Tom] Diesel. - You can drive it anywhere.
- Yeah, wow. - [Roland] We built it in 30 days. And we went to church for
the trunk of treats deal, and you know we had kids
hanging all out of it. Just had a blast. Well, I think we had the
driver's seat bolted down and the windshield in and nothing else. And my older boys, the ones
that helped me with it, said, "We need to go to SEMA." And I was like, "Oh yeah,
we can probably do that." You know we hadn't drove
it out of the yard yet. (Tom laughs) So, we're all talking about going to SEMA, and we looked on the
calendar one day at lunch and SEMA's like the 1st
through the 4th of November. It's like the day after Halloween. I'm like there ain't no
way, and they're like, "Oh, we can get it down." And my second son and the one
that works for me, my fifth, they're like, "Yeah, we'll get it done." - [Tom] What a great attitude. - So, I mean they're
over here till 1:00, 2:00 in the morning every night
working on this thing. And we did it, we got it
done, we brought it back. Halloween was on Monday. So, they did the church
deal on Sunday afternoon. So, we brought it back and Sunday night we worked all night and
Monday we worked all day. And we left Tuesday morning for Vegas. And it was a little sketchy, but we got to El Paso and
balanced the front tires. (Tom and Roland laugh) We got to Tucson and put a U-joint in it. But we got to Vegas and just had a blast. Drove it home, and since
then it's been to Lubbock and Dallas and went to
the Round Up in Austin. - [Tom] How far is Vegas from here? - [Roland] A long way, it's... - [Tom] 1,000? - [Roland] It's 1,000, I think
it's 1,000 miles exactly. - [Tom] The maiden voyage was 1,000 miles. - [Roland] Maiden voyage was
about six miles into town. And then the gas station
stop and off to Vegas. - [Tom] So, what do you
haul in the trailer? - [Roland] So, we built
this, we found this trailer on the way back from Pate last year. A buddy of mine, we thought
there wasn't nothing left of it. The bottom was all rotted off. - [Tom] But it's still got
yellow on here like a school bus. - [Roland] It was same vintage. And so, we thought we build
a trailer out of that, that'd be kinda cool. So, it sat here for about I
don't know, six, eight months. They have this art walk in Alpine. It's just an art deal. Somebody saw the bus on
the way back from El Paso, and called us and said, "Man, if you'll bring that bus
to El Paso to the art walk, "we'll pay your fuel, we'll
buy your motel, just show up." And we're like, "Yeah, I could do that." So, I told a friend of
mine that did the lettering on the bus, he's an artist. I told a friend of mine I said, "Hey, this guy's having a..." He's an old Alpine guy,
just an old desert rat. But he's an artist, and
he's the featured artist. He said so this year
they're gonna give him the whole half of the city
to invite his buddies. So, he's gonna have this
display Art in the Hood is what it was called. And so, he come up here and we pulled off, I don't know, two dozen
hoods off them old junk cars and took them down and he passed them out to all his artist friends-- - To paint.
- To paint on. - [Tom] Brilliant. - [Roland] And then he took
a bunch to the high school. So, there was one street
that just had a row of car hoods painted on. And this friend of mine painted four. And so, we thought well we
can't just go down there. So, we built the bus or the
trailer in about a week. - [Tom] So, you built
the trailer from scratch when you built the frame? - No, we actually had the old trailer, so we sandblasted it and mounted the box. And then we had this
real shiny nice bottom, and so the boy that works for me, Morgan, he's got that internet figured out. So, he gets on the internet and gets the-- - [Tom] How to rust things? - The ingredients to rust that sucker. And he got out here with a spray bottle, and in about 20 minutes we left for Alpine and that thing was brown like
it'd been there for 40 years. - So, are you gonna make a
camper out of this or something? - You know we put a little stove in there so we can hang out, we can haul stuff. - Oh, look at the back. Geez.
(Roland laughs) - Yeah, we get a little carried away. - That is a blast.
- Ain't that cool? - Yeah, whose idea was that? - Oh, that was mine.
- Man. - People get a little too
attached to their cars. So, I don't mind cutting them up. I mean, I like cars a lot, but they're more fun if
you get to play with them. - Yeah yeah yeah. So, you built this in a week. So, was it the right width for the front? - [Roland] Yeah yeah, we found a trailer that was just the right. We had some old school buses
that we were gonna crush. So, we had to break all
those panels along the bottom on the outside. So, we cut them to fit and then broke them on a sheet metal brake and fit them. And that's where the boy that
does the welding comes in. We get started, there's
no limit, he doesn't care. I mean, we'll make it work.
- Wow. - It's usually 2 o'clock
in the morning, but. Yeah so, it's a lot of fun. So, I'm gonna build a couple of rat bikes. - Motorcycles?
- Yeah, just to. I bought that Harley this
weekend at the auction. So, that's what that's
for, just silliness. - I've gotta see the helicopter. - Yeah. - Well, this has been a, let me see. We got here at, an hour and a half. - [Roland] Yeah. - It's been an amazing hour and a half. So, we met Jeff and through
him we met his family, nine kids, who all seem to
have an amazing sense of humor with school buses, a helicopter,
a caboose, an airplane, and more cars than you
can shake a stick at. Thank you so much for spending
the morning with us, man. This has been a blast.
- Good time. - Thank you, thank you.
- You bet. (engine whirring) (chatting indistinctly) (engine whirring)
