Thought I'd stumbled onto the legendary barn car. I went to our local car
club meeting; the club is cleaning up a '74 VW Bug for this summer's
charity raffle. The guy who was loaning space in his barn mentioned that
he had a old British car under a tarp in the back, had been there for
years. Remember, this is the desert Southwest USA, I thought I had really
found something. The shape said TR3. I convinced him to let me look at it.
Sad, sad sight.
Someone took an air chisel and removed the grill. No headlamps, no driving
lights. The fenders are good at the top but swiss cheese at the
bottoms. The bonnet sits askew. Battery tray is a compacted mass of
rodent droppings with little metal underneath.
Interior is rotted away. You can see concrete through the floors and it
was dark back there.
No overdrive.
He admitted that they had lifted the car into the barn with a forklift,
after it had sat outside for a long, long time. They didn't even clean the
dirt away.
Someone with a lot of love and enough money could make a car out of this
sorry mess. I gather that, even in its present state, the owner (not the
guy with the barn) is still of the opinion that its worth a lot of money.
On the positive side, that assemblage of parts makes my car look _so_ much
better.
Cliff Hansen
hansenc@flash.net
1966 TR-4A CTC 64615L (new sills and floors and finally a repaired rear
valence)
/// triumphs@autox.team.net mailing list
/// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive
|