YouTube explorers are increasingly focused on finding fields and barns full of old cars, which is great for the rest of us who can’t spend our waking hours peering into overgrown backyards. Now, sometimes, these “finds” are over-hyped as the urban explorers are not really car enthusiasts and therefore think anything old, rusty, and/or dusty is a major discovery. This video here on YouTube is from a guy named The Bearded Explorer, and he has made some exciting finds in the past. This one is sort of middle of the road, as most of the cars are very ordinary, but there’s one very exciting discovery towards the end that the explorers find locked away in an outbuilding. This Audi 100 is an interesting find but not a particularly desirable one, but I’m sure someone would rather see it in their garage than rotting away.
This is a later production Ford Cortina, certainly a far cry from the days of partnering with Lotus to create one of the more desirable two-door sedans to come out of the 60s. This car is like many on the property, which is to say completely rotten to the point that the panels are falling off the body. The cars here are by and large economy models, and certainly not the kind of vehicle you’d restore. But it’s always fascinating to see where certain vehicles have been locked away, and somehow forgotten for decades. The explorers never determine who the property belongs to or why these essentially junk vehicles are stored there, but it’s safe to say they’ve been forgotten.
This is one of the more interesting finds from the property, as it’s a model known as a Chrysler Avenger that was a European-market offering. The estate body reminds me of the domestic Ford Pinto Cruising wagon from that era in which we made wagons that were compact in size, which made for an economical car that still had plenty of utility. The Avenger doesn’t look too bad from this vantage point, but the floors are surely gone and you can see plenty of rot at the edge of the tailgate. The inspection stickers and “AA” emblem indicates it saw plenty of road-going use before being forgotten on this derelict property.
This is the find you always hope to discover on a property like this. It’s a Land Rover Defender 110, and the plastic wrapped on the side-view mirrors suggests it’s a time warp specimen. The explorers excitedly crowd around the window, trying to get the camera to zoom through the glass to show how minty fresh this Land Rover is. The thick coating of dust reinforces that there’s not much action around this overgrown property these days, but it sure seems odd to leave a very valuable truck such as this in the middle of all those junk cars. What do you think the story is? Would you leave a truck like this to rot?
The Audi 100 aka 5000 is cool as well and the Landy. The other cars however ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
This Audi is the model that put the unknown brand on 60 Minutes if I recall. Something about brake pedal too small or close to accelerator pedal and transmission selection. Why we now to press the brake pedal to select a gear.
Hillman Avenger estate’s a rare bird these days.
Wasn’t the Avenger sold in the US as a Plymouth Cricket?
Indeed it was, and not fondly remembered these days. The wagon was only imported at the end of the 72 model year and it is believed that only about 150 were sold stateside making them impossibly rare since these cars were disposed of pretty quickly. Meanwhile the restoration on my Cricket sedan proceeds…….
UK “Classic Car” Collection ? Seriously ? Of all the possible cars ever built and found, this is what gets print space ?
Burger,
The term “Classis Car” in the UK has a different connotation than it does in America. It’s more like the generic words “vintage car”.
At what point does the term “POS” or “turd” become applicable ?
A turd is a turd, regardless of year of manufacture ! 😜