This is My Dream Come True!

Since 2007,  rumors have been circulating the web with this not-so-credible (but I wish were true) story.

A New York man retired. He wanted to use his retirement money wisely, so it would last, and decided to buy a home and a few acres in Portugal. The modest farmhouse had been vacant for 15 years; the owner and wife both had died, and there were no heirs.

The house was sold to pay taxes.

There had been several lookers, but the large barn had steel doors, and they had been welded shut. Nobody wanted to go to the extra expense to see what was in the barn, and it wasn’t complimentary to the property anyway… so, nobody made an offer on the place.

The NY guy bought it at just over half of the property’s worth; moved in, and set about to tear in to the barn – curiosity was killing him. So, he and his wife bought a generator and a couple of grinders… and cut through the welds.

What was in the barn? Don’t miss it!

One can only dream for this to happen.  Maybe that’s even too optimistic for a dream.  Or, if it is real, I really DON’T believe it!  I’d need somebody like the FBI and/or the CIA to look into it first.  It’s even more so with all these rare and collectible cars.  As a contributing editor to Road & Track, Tom Cotter said, “Huge collections of cars just don’t happen.  Cars are accumulated-sometimes lovingly, sometimes not-by someone with a purpose.”  After a long time cruising the web looking for the photographer who took pictures, he was able to get this credible information from the photographer:  Manuel Menezes Morais was the photographer who clicked a lot pictures for the elusive owner in 2005.  The owner most likely lives somewhere in the Sintra region of Portugal (near Lisbon), hired Morais, scanned the pictures onto his computer, put them into an email with this fake story, and sent an email to some random unsuspecting person in the car world who then was so excited that they unknowingly started a worldwide internet hoax.

Here are all the derelict cars that Morais says are NOT for sale!  Too bad, as there are some that people would pay millions for.  Morais was able to contact the owner and ask him what his favorite car in the whole collection is.  The owner told him it was the Lancia Aurelia B24.  The owner has two.  Enjoy these derelict beauties!  That is the one good thing of looking at all these fake sites with these real cars!  They ARE REALLY cool!  My personal favorite is the 1948 BMW 507 Speedster about a third of the way down.

Sigh……  If only…