Dan,

I think it might boil down to tree hugger vs car collector?                    Mini Estate

Philosophical/tactical question about miniestate's photo of the panel van with the tree:

How would you go about extracting the van from the tree? Chain saw or cutting wheel?

Would you cut the tree down, risking dropping it on the van and causing ireparrable body damage?

or

Would you section the body at say the rocker panels and a-posts (bearing in mind the floor is already gone), separating the body from the tree?

(I know how I'd do it.)

The story I heard from my PO was that my car was found in a creek in Santa Cruz by the guy he got it from, sometime in the 1990's.

A tree had grown through the floor, where I don't know.  And over time the car was lifted in the air by the tree, enough for kids to go down and throw rocks at it and use it for BB practice.  So I wonder how long it would take for a tree to grow enough to do that...say 10 years minimum?

Just wish I had pictures!

Thanks guys, I just imagined they would have been in decent shape to be collected then neglected but I now see that is not usually the case, good to know.   I went back through the images and upon closer inspection I noticed way more damage on the rotting ones so yes they were a mess pre storage.

I did see the Ferrari and immediately thought - well there's $10-$20 million. 

Once you see the tires shredding one has usually waited a decade or three too long to restore.

"I just don't understand the addiction in collecting automotive works of art just to let them rot."

Often, the case is that these collections were made when the cars weren't worth anything. So, what they actually did was save them from the crusher. The first 20 or 30 years, they sit around someone's yard, because he liked them and that was enough. His friends and family probably badgered him to "get rid of that junk".

Then, the last 10 or 20 years, the old guy is dying and finally the family tries to figure out what to do with the hoard. Collectors are intrigued and a lot of the cars can now be used as restoration projects, or used to restore others.

Without that crazy guy who wouldn't scrap them at the time, they "sat there and rotted", but at least they are "there", to be recovered so many years later!

Norm

Hi Carl,

I don't know if you viewed many of the cars found there, but at least the guy that stored them had the good sense to actually enclose the Ferrari and the Maserati! (check out the short clip in the video at 2:22 mins) They faired much better than the rest of the vehicles. Pretty amazing. I wonder how many other barn fulls of gorgeous European autos are out there?                  Mini Estate

Here's the Ferrari as it was found unrestored >>>

I just don't understand the addiction in collecting automotive works of art just to let them rot, there should be an international law against it!

Wow thanks for that.  And here's a related one found in Catacombs in Naples(!)

//www.autobild.de/klassik/bilder/vergessene-oldies-in-den-katakomben-von-neapel-954818.html#bild1

For those of you that can appreciate a good 'Barn Find', here are some 60 vehicles recently discovered in France. I stumbled upon the still shots in a German collector car magazine called 'Autobild Klassik', (my former 1967 Austin Countryman Woody is going to be featured in this mag in an upcoming article on 'surf culture' that was shot on the East Shore of Oahu) Enjoy.                Mini Estate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxA5kqDwmzQ#t=19

//www.autobild.de/klassik/artikel/scheunenfund-der-superlative-sammlung-baillon-5492548.html