One of the things we like so much about the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals is that it is a perfect microcosm of our entire hobby, all captured under one roof. It’s a multi-make show that fully covers the Big Three but runs way deeper—even to Studebakers in some years. You’ll find beautifully preserved original cars and megabuck restorations. There are purely stock cars and cars from the Pure Stock Drags. Cars for sale and cars that will never be for sale. Cars with fully documented history and cars that are a total mystery. Cars you know and cars you never knew existed.
Any muscle microcosm these days has to include the ever-popular barn finds. The Barn Finds & Hidden Gems display at MCACN never ceases to amaze. Automotive Archaeologist Ryan Brutt carefully curates this corner of the show, bringing out treasures he has learned about—and often documented on his various social media platforms—during his regular travels across the country. As can happen these days, some of the cars stretch the definition of barn find a bit. There are cars that were never really lost per se but have been in storage for decades in a state of benign neglect. But Brutt also manages to dig up (and out) cars from actual barns, some still decorated with the detritus left behind by various species of vermin. Weirdly enough, this is one portion of one car show where an occasional petrified mouse just adds to the charm.
Here are some of the highlights from the Barn Finds & Hidden Gems display at MCACN 2017. Want more? The next Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals takes place November 17-18, 2018, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, right next door to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Visit mcacn.com for more show info.
To keep up with Ryan Brutt, visit his social media links: Facebook (TheAutoArchaeologist), Instagram (@theautoarcheologist), and YouTube (@AutoArcheology).
Doug Perry helped is friend Jason Ball find his dream Fathom Green COPO Camaro several years ago, so Ball returned the favor by telling Perry about this Yenko Camaro. It took almost a whole year for Perry to reach the owner, and he finally bought it just 2 1/2 weeks before bringing it to MCACN. Perry is the car’s fifth owner; the previous owner bought it in 1999 and had kept it with other cars in a pole barn. With 23,000 original miles, the Camaro “was more played with on the street than raced,” says Perry. “It was always pampered, never outside. The paint is almost all original except on the hood and the quarters where the flares were added.” At some point the motor was decked, so no numbers are visible for Perry to determine whether it’s original to the car; he does know the M21 transmission is not. The Camaro sports a Ram Rod shifter, Lakewood traction bars, Ansen Sprint wheels, and Drag Radials “that are hard as a rock,” says Perry. He plans to sort it out to race it at this year’s Super Car Reunion.
Galen Govier calls this the “Holy Grail of Dodge Darts.” Back in 1969, Car Craft magazine covered the buildup of this car over several issues and then offered it as a sweepstakes prize. Keith Black built the 340, Funny Car driver Charlie Allen did the suspension, and none other than George Barris painted it. Bill Shrewsberry raced the car before the giveaway and set an AHRA record in it. A 16-year-old kid won the car, but he never took possession, opting instead to exchange his winnings for—of all things—a Polara wagon. Tom Ellie, the car’s seventh owner, bought it at the Robert Gabeline auction in Iowa last June, after Gabeline had owned it for 26 years.
Ric Vanlerberghe (of Ric’s Restorations near Detroit) has a long history with this real-deal L78 Camaro, as it was owned by a high school friend back in the late 1970s. He crossed paths with the car again some 15 years ago, when he was asked to check out an old Camaro in a barn. “It was up against a wall, and I couldn’t get a real good view, but when I opened the hood and saw the big-block engine, I about had a heart attack right there.” Vanlerberghe worked for years to buy the car, even started collecting N.O.S. parts for a restoration, but the owner wouldn’t budge. Never did, in fact. His stepson brokered the deal with him last summer after the owner passed away. Prior to its storage the car had achieved some infamy as a local street racer; the son of a previous owner put the dent in the front fender when he hit a telephone pole trying to get away from the police. Under the Mickey Thompson valve covers and aftermarket carb is the Camaro’s born-with 375hp 396; behind it is the original M21 four-speed and rearend, although it now houses 5.13 gears. Vanlerberghe wants to restore the Camaro but may add some day two parts in a nod to its past.
According to its current owner, Cecil Montgomery, George Hurst himself took delivery of this 1970 Chrysler 300H prototype and took it back to his shop to experiment with it a bit. He tried a deep bronze poly exterior paint with white accents, didn’t like the combination, and so resprayed the car white. He also mocked up a Hurst four-speed shift lever on the automatic transmission, and added a sunroof after seeing one on a Pontiac. That roof, though, was put in after press and publicity photos were taken of the car, which is why it doesn’t show in the promotional materials. The car was partially disassembled in 1975, and Montgomery bought it in pieces about four years ago. He plans a full rotisserie restoration, and has already restored the very rare Kelsey Hayes wheels, which have magnesium centers and hoops with magnesium fronts and steel rears.
“Old Deadeye” was lettered on the side of this 1969 COPO Camaro RS when it was raced in the late 1960s. According to current owner Mike Spray, it was purchased new by a Maryland construction company and raced by the son of the company’s owner. Spray said it was “the winningest Camaro in the area,” but the son, who was a “19 or 20-year-old kid, partied a lot, so the dad took it away and sold it.” The car sat for decades in North Carolina. “It was a big fish, but nobody had the tackle.” Nobody, that is, until Mike Kaiser of Arizona Muscle Cars came along. Spray bought it from him about a year ago. The engine is not original but is built around a date-code correct block, which is perfect for Spray, as he’s driving the car. A restoration is not planned.
Ryan Degenhardt is just the third owner of this 1968 Hemi Super Bee, which was a street racer in the St. Louis area before it was stolen in 1971. It was eventually recovered—without its Hemi driveline—but after the original owner had been paid for the loss. So a local repair shop bought it, put a 318 in it, and drove it. “They never relicensed it,” says Degenhardt, “probably drove it on dealer tags, and when they were done they just shoved it in the back of their shop.” A friend bought it in 1996 and had it until Degenhardt bought it in 2015. Degenhardt plans a driver-quality resto on the car, which wears a set of Spyder wheels. “They’re sort of a Recall wheel knockoff made by Motor Wheel,” says Degenhardt, who owns eight sets of the rare aftermarket rims.
Little Joe was a very-early-build 1970 Buick GS that was delivered to race team owner Tom Rose in September 1969. It was part of Rose’s stable until the team disbanded in 1974, when Mark Busher bought it “and gave it a second life,” says current owner Larry Aldrich. Busher raced it into the early 1980s then parked it, and Aldrich bought it in 2003. That’s when Little Joe started its third racing life, running until 2008 when Aldrich “went in a different direction with my cars” and parked it. It has been in his barn ever since. The fiberglass front end, one of just three sets made, replaced the stock front fenders and hood in the early 1970s. Aldrich says the car was a test mule for Buick engineers at the time and had a “real badass” Stage 2 race motor with early Stage 2 head castings. Those heads are still in the car, now sitting atop a 464ci Electra block and helping it make about 710 hp, he estimates. The odometer shows just 1,636 miles, clocked (let’s all say it together) “a quarter-mile at a time.”
Katie Boerschinger’s parents were the second owners of this 360-powered 1974 ’Cuda, which brought both her and her brother home from the hospital after they were born. Katie’s parents parked the car in 1984 when they bought a more family-friendly Fury; and when the couple divorced, her mom got the ’Cuda, which went into storage for another four years. When it came time for Katie to learn how to drive, she had her eyes on a Mustang, but her mom offered her the ’Cuda, and she has been in love ever since. “I’m learning about it,” Katie says. “I want to make it pretty and shiny and fast.” It’s already a runner, as Katie drove it to Chicago from Delafield, Wisconsin—a rarity for any car in Ryan’s display.
Ever heard of a Savage GT? Neither had we until we talked to Jim Rhinehart at MCACN, who brought the car to the show for owner Bill Sefton. A Milwaukee company called Auto Craft prototyped the Savage GT in 1967, with plans to turn a Barracuda into a real road handler. It modified the suspension, sat the car on fat Dunlop radials, installed a roll bar, and changed the look of the car with a new front end, fiberglass hood, and ’glass decklid with a spoiler. It was to be offered with Mopar V-8s ranging from a 340 to a 440 (this was a 340 model). The cost was “a couple thousand more than a stock Barracuda,” says Rhinehart. But production didn’t begin until 1969, so close to the E-Body’s introduction that the cars immediately looked dated. Just 13 were made, and six are known to exist, Rhinehart says; this one was pulled out of a Wisconsin field in 2006.
Bill Sefton had two rare Mopars in the Barn Finds display. The second was this 1972 Demon, with a Mr. Norm’s supercharger mounted to its 340. Jim Rhinehart told us he first heard about the car back in 1991 when a friend called on a Sunday morning and told him the car was listed for sale in the Chicago Tribune. That friend bought the car and took it back to Colorado, where he sold it for a Lil Red Express pickup truck. Rhinehart found it and had it shipped back, “but I didn’t realize how bad it was,” he admits. It had been hit in the right rear and has new rear sheetmetal now. Sefton at one time owned five of these Mr. Norm’s Demons, and he still has two N.O.S Mr. Norm’s supercharger kits.
Kevin Mackay says his 1960 gasser-style Corvette has 36,000 “hardcore” miles on it. He traced its history back to 1962, when it was a white and black street-racing Vette with a fuelie motor. A later owner put it through its gasser transformation in 1966, with a straight front axle, a narrowed grille, metalflake bronze and gold paint, and a 396/TH400 swap out of a buddy’s drag-race Camaro. That owner parked the car in the 1970s until it changed hands in 2008; Mackay bought it in 2014. “It’s a real time capsule,” he says, “and it runs and drives. I just changed the fluids and the battery and it started right up. It’s more valuable as a nostalgia piece than a restored car.”
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