Seeing a classic car emerge out of long-term storage is one of the greatest automotive-related things out there. But sadly enough, not all barn finds get to see daylight in one piece. Some are too rusty to be saved, while others have been left behind by their owners.
The collection you see here proves that long-term storage can become an issue without maintenance. To the point where the buildings that keep the cars safe from the elements end up doing more harm than good. Specifically, these cars are now stuck under collapsed barn roofs after three to four decades in storage.
Documented by YouTube’s “IMSTOKZE,” this classic car hoard is waiting to be rescued in an undisclosed location in the United Kingdom. Yes, there are no pre-WW2 Duesenbergs or golden-era muscle cars to talk about, but many of them are iconic European vehicles that are definitely worth saving.
Not surprisingly, the property is packed with Jaguars, including a handful of Mark 2s. Granted, these sporty saloons aren’t as valuable as other Jaguars from the era, but they do look nice, and it’s sad seeing them wasting away in a place like this. Of course, there are just as many classic Mini Coopers to look at. And while some are mundane versions of the iconic city car, our host also discovered a Countryman and even a pickup version.
Yes, Countryman wagons are still relatively easy to find (though far from cheap when in excellent condition), but pickup utility variants of the Mini are quite rare, regardless of condition. Even though Mini has offered it for more than 20 years. That’s because the company sold only 58,179 examples, which is fewer than 3,000 per year on average. Sadly, this one spent way too much time off the road, and it’s rather crusty.
If you’re a fan of Triumph cars, you’ll see quite a few gems in these collapsed barns, most notably a Spitfire and a GT6. Penned by Giovanni Michelotti, the Spitfire is one of the company’s sexiest production cars and also spawned a series of successful race-spec iterations. Triumph manufactured five versions over 18 years. The GT6 is a rarer Spitfire on steroids, featuring an inline-six engine in addition to the sleek coupe roof.
But the list of cool cars abandoned here is much longer than this. I spotted a Vanden Plas Princess, an Austin Ambassador, a Daimler Double-Six, and a Rover P6. And they all look like they haven’t been driven in about 40 years. There’s also a Hillman Hunter and a Mercedes-Benz W112. The latter is quite rare, too, as the Germans built only about 6,750 four-door sedans from 1961 to 1965.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like someone is still taking care of this property, so it’s safe to say these cars are stuck here for years to come. And that’s a shame because many of them won’t survive for long in these conditions. Check them out in the videos below, and tell me which one you would save first.