Home

Videos

S 4 : Ep 88

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Davin is an expert at a lot of things, but detailing is not one of them. That might explain the lack of shine to a lot of the project cars in the Redline Rebuild Garage. The 1950 Chevrolet pickup is a prime example. It has received a lot of mechanical love over the past year, but very little in the way of cosmetics. We read your comments, and Davin decided to give the whole polishing thing a try. Not being an expert, however, the first step was calling for help. That’s where Larry Kosilla of Ammo NYC comes in.

Larry has made a living detailing cars that have lived hard lives, often years of neglect and bad storage. His expertise has turned many cars from crusty, dusty messes into show-ready pieces of art. He is certainly the man to help Davin put a shine on the Redline Rebuild Chevy pickup.

Larry and Davin talk through the process and reasoning behind the approach Larry takes to cars like this one. At the core: paint technology has evolved significantly over time, and that means you really need to know what you are dealing with in order to bring it back to life instead of destroying it. The Chevrolet appears to be wearing original paint from 1950, meaning the color coat is also the top coat of paint. There is no clear coat or protective layer, so getting too aggressive with polishing compound will burn right through to primer and metal. Already there are patches of metal popping through on this pickup, but Davin wants more shine, not more metal.

With a heavy dose of polishing compound and elbow grease, the green paint of the pickup comes back to life. Of course, there are sections where no amount of polishing is going to bring it back to showroom shine, but considering the life that this truck led prior to being towed to the Redline Rebuild Garage, it cleans up mighty nice. There are still projects on the to-do list for this truck, and if you want to see what’s next, be sure to subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to get notifications with each update that goes live.

Next episodes

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

It’s a matchup for the ages as Tom Cotter takes a break from hunting roadside treasures and helps Davin tear down the ’37 Ford racer in the Redline Garage. If there were ever a perfect project for Tom, it’s this one—for a multitude of reasons.

First off, Tom was the one who found this particular car. Years ago, as Tom was traversing the countryside prepping to write his book about barn finds, Tom stumbled upon the property of Snowball Bishop. The grounds were packed with a seemingly endless supply of interesting cars, but something about this particular race car piqued Tom’s interest. It never really left his mind, and when he returned with the Barn Find Hunter camera crew, Tom made sure to discuss the vintage racer.

A second reason is the smorgasbord of parts which comprise the car. While we call it a ’37 Ford, that is a bit misleading. The chassis is from a 1955 Chevrolet, the solid front axle is from a Ford, and there is a smattering of race-car-specific parts throughout the chassis. The “wide-five” front brakes from Franklin, for example, are not a factory piece for anything.

Which is where Davin enters the scene. Over the last 20 years, Davin honed his racing skills behind the wheel of a dirt modified race car on tracks across the Midwest. Tom is no slouch as a racing driver—he holds his SVRA racing license—but dirt tracks are new territory for him. Davin plans to leverage both his and Tom’s knowledge to create a car that does more than just look the part—it also can tear up some dirt.

With a Chrysler 440 V-8 under the hood, the racer certainly won’t be lacking for horsepower. Davin also notes that viewers have asked for a car with a slick paint job, and that wish is about to be fulfilled. The Redline Garage hasn’t had something shiny on its lifts in awhile, and it time for that to change.

Tom and Davin get the car stripped down to its most basic components; next, the heavy lifting will begin. While it doesn’t seem like there could be much left hiding on the body and chassis, Davin is sorting out a way to blast off the remaining corrosion and paint so he can complete some reinforcement and re-engineering. To see this racer return to the track, be sure to subscribe to the Hagerty YouTube channel to receive updates with each new Redline Update that goes live.

Next episodes

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Five pre-war automobiles and a travel trailer were stored for more than 40 years in a Texas barn.

Motostalgia Auctions founder Antonio Burnet tells us about the collection, which includes a 1932 Cadillac 370B V-12 Victoria Convertible, 1933 Cadillac Model 370C V-12 Town Coupe, 1938 Cadillac Series 90 V-16 Fleetwood Limousine, 1923 Milburn Electric Model 27L, 1908 REO Model G Boattail Roadster/Sedan Tonneau and a twice-used 1937 Kozy Coach Travel Trailer.

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

There are barn finds, and then there are barn finds. This, my friends, is the latter. Longtime fans of Barn Find Hunter know that Tom Cotter has turned up some unbelievable treasures in the past, but I can honestly say this very special discovery is one of the most spectacular automotive experiences I’ve ever had. Come with Tom and me into the deep woods, somewhere in the Carolinas, where a hidden motherlode of barn-find classics slumbers in scattered buildings amidst the poplars, sweetgums, and hickories.

You’d never know that down an unmarked, unpaved road lives a barn-find collection that would melt any car enthusiast’s face off. And when you meet Billy Eubanks—a friendly, soft-spoken old-timer dressed in plaid—you’d never guess he was the caretaker for an automotive goldmine easily worth several million dollars, if not more.

Before you even get to Billy’s house, cars start appearing in the woods. A headlight poking out from behind a tree here, a rusted fender breaking up the forest of green there. It’s raining hard, so near the first gaggle of cars we can hear the rain’s gentle pitter patter on the old metal. A good omen.

When we finally find Billy, he’s sitting in an armchair next to his father, Walter “Bicket” Eubanks. “I’m proud of my cars, but I learned everything about how to work on ’em from my Daddy,” Billy says, motioning to the man in the next chair. “He taught me a lot at NASCAR and dirt-track races, although he mostly worked on old school buses. I learned to weld when I was 14, and at 16 I built a ’34 hot rod with a Hemi that won its class at Charlotte Coliseum.”

The room is dimly lit, but all the shadows are full of automotive signage, trinkets, and memorabilia. There’s stained glass with the Ford blue oval, plus models, posters, and toolboxes in every corner. But center stage in this first room is a Hudson Hornet Special that the Eubanks bought new in 1957. It’s very well kept. Billy explains that he enjoys doing the restoration work himself, and remembers fondly his days teaching auto restoration at his local community college.

But once you start walking the vast, wooded property, anybody with a pair of eyes can see that as much as Billy likes restoration, he’s deep down a dedicated collector. First we see a 1929 Stutz, one of two Stutzes he owns. It’s gorgeous. Next is a 1940 Lincoln Continental with supposedly factory handmade rear fender skirts. There are Corvettes, Mopars, Jaguars, Cadillacs, and more. There is no rhyme or reason to what fills the rooms—if Billy liked it, he got it and fixed it up. Some he drove more than others, but he never got rid of his cars and never even thought about flipping them for profit.

Maybe that’s brought good fortune from the automotive powers that be. Case in point, Billy’s white ’63 split-window Corvette, which was stolen from him once. Billy wanted it back real bad, so he “prayed to the Lord to get it back to me by the weekend.” That Friday night the police in the town nearby called him up and said they’d found it in the woods and it barely ran—the thieves had apparently ripped a burnout so fierce it broke a motor mount and mangled three spark plug wires. He drove it home on five cylinders.

“I got into Chevys because they were easy to work on and get parts for, especially when I was young,” Billy recalls. “I wanted to show them boys at school I knew how to build a car.”

There are buildings and buildings full of dirty, flat-tired but generally well-kept cars at this place, and they’re parked bumper to bumper, as if he filled one structure up the best he could and just decided to start filling up the next. “You get in a rhythm liking one kind, but then you start liking something else,” Billy says. After a 440 Six Pack Charger, a lovely red Daytona (one of three he owns, all purchased because they were banned in NASCAR).

The next structure over is a garage six lanes wide and about three cars deep, filled with a totally eclectic mixture of stuff. Tom immediately gravitates to a pair of rare Fords—a ’69 Torino Talladega with a 428 and a Dan Gurney Mercury Cyclone. Nearby is a ’57 Chevy Nomad, one of several we’ll find today. Next over is a black Lincoln Mk II, another Hudson Hornet, a Chrysler 300, a ’58 Chrysler Imperial that Billy drove to high school (!!), a 1960 Rolls-Royce, a 427 Chevy Impala convertible, and more.

In a shed across the way we find a pair of Chevys, red and green, the latter a ’55 four-door with 36,000 original miles. Behind another door, two old Jaguars, also red and green, plus an E-type.

“We’re walking past stuff here that we’d normally spend an entire Barn Find Hunter episode on, salivating over it, if we found it anywhere else,” Tom says. “Really, there’s just too much to even wrap your head around. I feel guilty about not paying attention and giving credit to them all.”

It’s overwhelming, but for Billy’s wife, Carol Lee, it’s just another day. “When we first got married, he only had a car or two,” Carol Lee remembers. “After our daughter was born I was in the hospital and he came and told me to look out the window. I thought he was just so happy about our little girl, but he actually had just bought another car and it was out in the parking lot and he wanted me to see it. And my life has been like that forever more.”

It is her birthday, and she still has the kindness to show us around what she considers her husband’s life’s work. She concedes that it’s possible she could even discover a car she never knew she had—one time her grandkids counted them all, and there are more than 100 if you include everything in the woods. She takes us past another big-block Chevy convertible, a Camaro Z/28, another ’50s Chrysler, and finally a Lincoln Cosmopolitan.

We stumble upon a black ’40s Lincoln cabriolet with a great story and a trophy to prove it. Billy entered it into a car show and registered in his daughter Tammy’s name, while he hung out in the parking lot to swap car parts with all the other guys there. Sure enough, the car won its pre-war class, and they called out “Tommy Eubanks,” incorrectly, and still Tammy ran up and snatched the trophy so fast to show her dad outside that Carol Lee couldn’t even act quick enough to snap a picture.

Barn Find Daytona wing car — Jordan Lewis

In the same building, just around the corner, things start to get even more interesting (if you can believe it). Yes, it’s yet another Dodge Daytona, this one extensively modified with a 426 Hemi, big rear wheels and tires, and likely a drag racing pedigree. Billy explains that the previous owner took it to the Chelsea Proving Grounds in Michigan, where Chrysler to this day does its testing, and ran it to 190 mph. The owner and the Daytona were promptly kicked out and banned from the premises.

And right nearby is a sibling to the Daytona, a white Plymouth Superbird—the 43rd to roll off the production line. Just a reminder, prices for these range from $91,000–$216,000 depending on condition. Tom is confident that although the car hasn’t been started and run in a while, it wouldn’t take much to get it in fantastic shape, and it has the benefit of being totally original. My head hurts. The scale of it all is absurd.

But it doesn’t let up. A dusty Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz with the most wonderful taillights. Outside, under cover, is the actual ’41 Lincoln Continental that was shot up in The Godfather. Next to it is an Australian Ute from the mid-1950s. A super-clean Chrysler Airflow.

It. Never. Ends.

Garage with hidden treasures — Jordan Lewis

abandoned cars in the woods — Jordan Lewis

We head down to yet another building maybe a five-minute walk away, as I’m chased by a pack of tiny Pomeranian-looking dogs. They’re all bark and no bite. But they’re apparently guarding one of Billy’s favorite cars, a 1957 Dodge D500 with a high-performance Hemi engine, one four-barrel carb, and a stick-shift transmission. Bicket bought it new, and Billy eventually freshened it with new paint.

Honestly, I’m skipping over a lot here. Watch the video. Like Tom said, there’s just too much. And don’t forget to notice that in just about every building there is a complete set of tools, many made by Snap-On. But I can’t skip over the metallic blue 1968 Corvette with the Tri-Power 427, four-speed, air conditioning, power steering, power brakes, and side exhaust. This thing was optioned like crazy, and Tom confesses he’s never seen one quite like it. “How you can have cars like this and never got a speeding ticket, I have no idea,” Tom tells Billy.

There are even nicer, cleaner cars in other buildings, including three ’57 Ford Thunderbirds and several Corvettes. Most incredible among them is an L82 Corvette from 1980 that Billy bought new and then drove straight home from the dealer and has never driven again. It has 9.2 miles and all the original plastic. A few cars down is a 1971 DeTomaso Pantera with 14,500 miles. In the basement is Tom’s favorite, a very elegant Jaguar XK120 coupe in dark blue with original brown interior.

Even with an injured knee that makes it hard to get around, Billy is still busy restoring cars. He shows us (in yet another building) a ’59 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz he’s actively working on, complete with factory bucket seats, Tri-Power, and a beautiful red paint. Fair, #4-condition Eldorado Biarritzes command $101,000 and go all the way up to $260,000 for the best examples in the world. It’s absolutely massive and totally impressive and I’m still not convinced any of this is real.

“After hours and hours, I think this is the finest collection of unknown cars I’ve ever seen in my life,” Tom says. “In all the years I’ve been doing this, since I was 12 or 13, I’ve never found a collective group of cars like this. Not ones that so fit the definition of a ‘barn find’ like this. And cars that are so desirable—not just a Superbird, but #43 like Richard Petty, and not just an old Lincoln, but the one from The Godfather. Billy has a real taste for what’s great. And to think he didn’t do it for money, but just because he loved it and to preserve the cars.”

Before we leave, Billy shows us his daily driver, and Tom and I just about burst out laughing. We couldn’t have written the script of the day better if we tried. It’s a red Toyota Prius.

Next episodes

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Just another day on the road for Barn Find Hunter Tom Cotter, finding million-dollar projects. They only made 85 of these, and it needs a full restoration but it seems like most of the parts are there. Can you guess what it is?

In a nearby shop, Cotter discovers a ’41 Lincoln Continental, equipped with a Flathead V-12, and a 1950 Plymouth Suburban two-door, both California survivors. Talking with Shelby, the owner, Cotter learns of Dwayne Bower who describes himself as a guy who “doesn’t collect cars, but has never sold one.” And he isn’t interested in selling his ’57 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, Jaguar XK120, 1974 Plymouth Roadrunner GTX, the tow truck featured in The Fate of the Furious (aka Fast and the Furious 8), or any other cars now, either.

Cotter arrived in SoCal on a viewer’s tip about the million-dollar find without having any plans. It shows how much you can find just by chatting and listening to locals’ suggestions.

Tag: Barn Find

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Next episodes

You may also like

Popular videos

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Next episodes

You may also like

Popular videos

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Next episodes

You may also like

Popular videos

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Popular videos

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Next episodes

You may also like

Popular videos

Enjoy Barn Find stories, opinion, and features from across the car world - Hagerty Media

Next episodes

You may also like

Popular videos