HOW DO PEOPLE FORGET ABOUT THESE TINGS!

"Cherry_man1" (Cherry_man1)
12/05/2014 at 14:13 • Filed to: Barn Finds

Incredible barn-find collection unearthed in France

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

HOW!? JUST HOW?!

DISCUSSION (8)

Scary__goongala! > Cherry_man1
12/05/2014 at 14:15

HA BEAT YOU TO THE PUNCH lol

In a related note, yes how one can just forget about 60 cars is hard to fathom.

davedave1111 > Cherry_man1
12/05/2014 at 14:16

They don't forget. It's a good way to drum up interest in an auction, though. Sounds like a typical example of having to wait until an old guy passes away before the kids can sell off the car(s) to which he was too attached to let go.

ETA: except for the number of cars and the quality. That's not typical at all.

Cherry_man1 > Scary__goongala!
12/05/2014 at 14:17

Oh well still I'm in shock.

Slave2anMG > Cherry_man1
12/05/2014 at 14:23

Forget? They don't 'forget'....it's just Dad's old junk or Grandad's old out there in the barn. Nobody's looked it since they play there as kids....just old junk cars.

Or the family knows what they are or thinks they know what they are and want to keep them because they were Dad's or whatever and that they plan to 'restore' them...except that they ain't got enough sense to check the oil in their Camry. So the cars just sit. I worked for a family that was this latter case...old Rolls Royce, a couple of enormous brass-era Renaults and Fiats, other stuff. Just...sitting...deteriorating.

Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow > Cherry_man1
12/05/2014 at 14:27

So the guys I'm working on a LeMons project with are big Alfa guys. They were telling me about an old French dude with a huge collection of insanely rare cars rotting away in northern France, whose property they've actually visited. At first I thought it was the same guy, but it may actually be a different one. The guy they told me about was apparently very resistant to selling anything though. He had a collection that included multiple famous LeMans cars from the time (apparently he and his dad used to do mechanical work on some of the cars). The guy I know who went there had gone to look at an Alpine-Renault A210, I believe there were two examples of the car in the collection they checked out. Unfortunately, extracting them from the bar would have proved incredibly difficult and there was a fair bit of rust and other damage.

Worst of all, the guy had a Miura sitting out in an orchard (olive I believe); one year there was a bad cold snap that killed off almost the entire orchard. One day the dude went out and saw a tree sprouting out underneath the incredibly rare Lamborghini, and instead of moving the car he decided to grab a sawzall and cut the car in half.

There's a chance it's the same guy as in this article, but I'd imagine they'd have noted the sliced Miura and LeMans cars if it was. Either way, it's a horrible tragedy.

Cherry_man1 > Slave2anMG
12/05/2014 at 14:28

those are the people I hate.

Slave2anMG > Cherry_man1
12/05/2014 at 14:33

They had a '48 Bentley sitting outside. The car had rotted to the point you could see thru the doors...without using the windows. Also had a 1950/51 Caddy hardtop coupe...a pretty unusual car from what I was told. Outside. Rotting. Eventually somebody came along and offered them basically scrap value. Hauled it off, cut it in half, used the two halves in a restaurant. Had a '48 Caddy sedan that had been sitting outside for so long that a tree grew up next to it and LIFTED the wheels off the ground on that side. But the owner, a gentle but eccentric old man, was 'going to restore them all'....

Cherry_man1 > Slave2anMG
12/05/2014 at 14:51

I hate old people like that.