Reply #21: Sweet! [View All]

You know those 'urban legend' stories you hear about priceless cars discovered in flawless conditions in barns?

I know one that's fact...

I grew up in an agri area. There were hundreds of small farms in my town, primarily growing grapes for wine, peaches and so forth.

Around the early 70s, due in part to the spiralling cost of harvest machinery, many of the farmers formed co-ops/collectives, and maybe a dozen or so would go in on one set of harvest equipment instead of them each buying/maintaining their own machinery.

Most of these farmers had huge barns, which generally fell into disrepair once the farmer no longer used it to store equipment.

One of the farms near my house was for sale for a long time. I didn't know the owner, but he was a Reform Mennonite, much like most of the other farmers. They didn't do much socialising, so unless you were in the same church, you could go ages without getting to know your neighbours, which was no big deal. All I new about this guy was that he was over 60, grew peach trees, and that he was widowed the previous year. It was not long after his wife died that he put the farm up for sale.

It sat for ages, and finally the 'for sale' sign came down. A few weeks later, I was driving past the farmhouse in my crappy Saab 99GL, when I screeched to a halt. Something in the driveway had caught my eye, and I had to stop and double-check it. Since I was driving the crappy Saab, this was probably in the Spring of 1983.

It was a 1970 Aston Martin DBS, in BRG, w/ tan leather and wire wheels with real knock-off ears, and all in amazing shape. Having been a fan of the AMs for years, I had to investigate. The new farmer, who looked and acted exactly like the last farmer, was working in the front yard of his house, and I approached him about the car in his driveway.

He was a friendly enough old guy, and being just another Menonite farmer, the last person you'd expect to own anything as extravagant as an Aston martin.

So I asked him about the car, and this is what he said (after stating very firmly that the car was, indeed, for sale if I could give him $65,000 for it):

"I bought this place, lock stock and barrel from Mr. Klassen, who moved to Brazil to be with his son, who is a missionary, and his family. About a month ago I'm cleaning-out the old barn way in the back. It collapsed about ten years ago, and it was pretty much a wreck. Anyway, As I dug my way through the old wood and twisted metal, I seen (yes, he said "I seen") the back of this green car sticking out from under what was left of the loft. The loft collapsed on it, but the main supports kept much of the loft's weight off the car. So I figured that it must have been Mr. Klassen's son's car or something, and that it probably wasn't worth much. It looked like my own boy's Dodge Duster from the back, and I knew how worthless that was, but I hauled it out, and it turned out to be this one, that I'd never even heard of. I talked to the guy at the Texaco, and he said it was the kind of car James Bond drives and was probably pretty valuable.

"So me and Menno (the guy from the Texaco Station) pulled it out of the barn with the tractor, and had a look. It was covered in moss and dirt and the back window was cracked from something heavy falling on it, but all in all it looked like you could fix it up.

"So I figured Ol' Klassen might have just forgotten it was there, so I called him up in Brazil and told him what I found.

(just for reference at this point, Mennonites are generally pragmatic negotiators but extremely honest people, and don't like to feel they've bested someone in a deal...particularly another of the 'Bretheren'.)

"So Klassen says that yeah he knew the car was there and it was part of the deal. He tells me that he bought it for his wife in 1970, part cash and part in trade for helping a guy with a car dealership from Toronto set-up a hobby vineyard on his land. He tells me that his wife didn't like to drive it, especially in the snow, because it was too powerful. So he bought her a Matador, put the Aston Martin in the barn and just kind of forgot about it.

"So I say to him why didn't you sell it or give it to one of your kids and he says it was 'too much trouble because nobody he knew really knew what kind of car it was so why would they buy it? Where ya gonna get it fixed? England?'...

"So I found it and Menno and I pulled it out and it was pretty much what you see here, except covered in grime. the tires were all cracked and brown, but they still held air. The car wouldn't turn-over at all so we swapped-in another battery and poured some gas down the carb and she started right up! So I bought some new tires off Menno, changed all the fluids and emptied the old gas out, power-washed the car, and (pointing to the shiny car as it sat in the driveway, still with a horizontal crack running the full width of the back window) that's all it needed.

"So when I called Klassen I says well I didn't think he knew full-well what the car was worth when he sold me the farm and chattels. And I tell him I don't feel right about taking the car in that case.

"So he says that it's not worth shipping to Brazil or trying to sell it long-distance, so if I give him $4000 for it, that would be just fine. So I did, even though I thought $4000 was a little steep for a car that's thirteen years old, and that's that."



So.... after hearing this story I checked out the car, and everything he said appeared to be true; everything on the car was original. It started-up right away, idled well, and the auto tranny still engaged properly and smoothly. There were even four cracked, brittle Avon bias radials in the guy's garage. I so wanted to take his car for a spin, but the old guy still hadn't "got around to getting some plates" for it. It was a good "ten-footer", and from close-up you could see the paint was chipped, scratched and faded. The wire wheels were pretty rusted, but the new owner had brush-painted them silver (presumably) until he could get them re-plated. And the inside still smelled like fresh leather. The back seat had some cracks in the upper section, probably from being in the sun every summer since the barn collapsed. But everything else was MINT. It still had the import documents, dealer paperwork, the manual, the AM umbrellas that were standard equipment, and everything.

The odometer read 3,200 miles.

So it was true: farmer bought it, wife didn't like it, into the back 40 it went!

on edit: some pics of the same model: