Anybody got a barn?

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For my money, living in the UK does not have many advantages over living in Thailand – other than perhaps the plethora of barns dotted around the British countryside, barns that have old cars stored in them, to be found many decades later.

I was given some copies of an interesting magazine simply called The Automobile, and each month there is a section devoted to “barn finds”, and in January this year these finds included a Healey Silverstone which had been residing in the barn for 30 years, a 1921 Dodge Brothers half-ton pick up truck, found in the basement of a dealership, where it was last known of 60 years ago and a three wheeled BSA stored in a village in England for 30 years.

Healey Silverstone

I often wonder just what kind of person parks his car in a barn and then leaves it there to be covered in chicken poop?  Don’t they at some stage think, “Oh yes, I left the Hispano Suiza in the shed down the road, I should go and start the engine, I suppose?”

The closest I ever got here was finding a 1965 Datsun 510 which had been left there in a lean-to.  Locals didn’t know how much it was likely to go for, but said they would ring when they found the owner, which they did.  Unfortunately my wife answered the phone, didn’t understand what the caller was on about, and considering it to be a wrong number, promptly hung up, only telling me a week later of the communication.

Memo to self – do not let my wife be involved with old cars in any way.