Ultimate Barn Find, a Speculator's Stash, or a Clever Way to Promote a Car Sale?
There’s been some attention on the recent acquisition by a Canadian muscle car collector of what Driving.ca called “the ultimate Canadian barn find”, about 40 late model American performance cars. While the assortment of Corvettes, SRT Mopars and limited edition Fords like Harley Davidson F-150s and three Ford GTs are undoubtedly desirable, I’m not sure if the term “barn finds” applies. I’m old enough that the first time I heard “the Cobra in the barn” urban legend, it had to do with a soldier who never came back from Vietnam. I’m sure the oldest version of that story has to do with a doughboy and and a 1917 Model T or even a Union soldier and a horse drawn Studebaker wagon. Either way, a barn find to me is exactly that, a find, in Yiddish a metzia, something perhaps overlooked or abandoned and now rediscovered. I wouldn’t necessarily apply it to a business proposition that didn’t pan out.
The cars that Fort Saskatchewan building contractor Lawayne Musselwhite and his friend and business partner, motorcycle dealer Darren Boychuk bought were accumulated in a Quonset hut on a dairy farm near Lethbridge, Alberta. The wealthy owner of the farm apparently caught the car speculating bug in the late 1990s and went to his local Ford dealer with $1 million in hand, seeking a salesman’s advice on buying cars that were likely to appreciate in value. While some of the cars that were bought predated the collection, a majority of them were bought new over the past decade and many of them still have their window stickers and delivery mileage. There’s a 2006 Heritage Edition Ford GT with less than 11 miles on the odometer. Apparently they were not bought for the enjoyment of driving or even displaying them. They were bought for speculative reasons and simply stored on the hut’s dirt floor. Well, those that weren’t being abused by the dairy farm’s employees.
“It was disgusting the way they were left, covered in dust, overrun with mice and parked on dirt,” Musselwhite told Driving.ca. “It was unbelievable what the farmhands were doing to these vehicles — running new special edition pickups through the mud and across fields.”
Sight unseen, Musselwhite and Boychuck bid $1.1 million (presumably Canadian dollars) for 80% of the collection. According to Musselwhite, health issues forced the sale, though the dairy farmer retained 10 unidentified cars. While some of the cars aren’t on every enthusiast’s short list, in auction parlance I’d still say that those 40 cars were well bought.
As you’d expect with a Ford dealer involved, the list is heavy on representatives wearing the blue oval, but it’s fairly ecumenical by Detroit standards and all of the cars and trucks are collectible in one way or another. Plymouth Prowlers (4 of them!) and Harley liveried Ford pickups may not have a broad market, but they are collectible to their own niches of collectors and some of the other cars are very valuable. To begin with, there’s not a Ford GT listed for less than $220,000 on eBaymotors currently and there were three Ford GTs in the package. The 35th anniversary Z/28 Camaro and the ’03 Corvette Z06 have their fans and I’m sure that my colleague Sajeev Mehta would find the two Lincoln Mark VIIIs appealing. Both the oldest and the newest cars in the collection are Mustangs, a 1979 Indy 500 pace car edition Mustang GT and a 2012 Mustang GT California Special.
Though the cars were indeed being stored on a farm, in a barn if you will, I just can’t bring myself to calling them barn finds. They were bought as a business proposition, so I think the collection is more of a speculator’s stash than true barn finds. Others might say that it’s simply a clever way to get publicity for a sale of low mileage modern day muscle cars? What do you think?
The full list is below but if you want to buy one of them you’d better act quickly since Musselwhite said they “are flying out” of E & S Motorcycles, where they are being stored until sale. Jalopnik reader Luc.A. lives nearby and he snapped these photos. Despite the dust and mouse droppings, they look like they cleaned up well. Pics of the Ford GTs can be seen at Driving.ca.
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Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.
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"According to Musselwhite, health issues forced the sale, though the dairy farmer retained 10 unidentified cars." Sounds like mental health issues to me. Letting these cars rot and get destroyed by rodents won't appreciate their value. Not to mention, most of these cars are probably still headed toward or at the bottom of their depreciation curves. Sounds like some guy lost his mind and wound up at the car dealer too often.
I bet there are a lot of Ford GTs, SVT Mustangs, Corvette and Camaro ZR1s, Prowlers, and Vipers in storage with close to zero miles, purchased by speculators for later resale. When you factor in storage and insurance and cost of capital costs over several decades, it is almost certain that none of the speculators will ever make a penny, and they will certainly never get to enjoy these entertaining cars. Unfortunately, 30 years from now these zero-mileage cars will only be valuable because they have zero miles, which means the new owners will likely continue to store them indefinitely and they will never be used for their intended purpose until one day a flood, fire, tornado, or vandal destroys them. If you don't believe me, ask the guys who bought 1974 Cosworth Vegas, 1976 Eldorado convertibles, or 1978 Corvette Pace Cars and put them into barns, how they are doing on their investments. Cars are for driving, but generally bad investments.