We want to say this is the greatest barn find of all time, but this situation is less a "barn find" and more an "archaeological site" worthy of professional excavation.
In this month's copy of Town and Country magazine (which we'll be running out to buy like... now) is a story by Michael Mraz, "Wheels of Fortune" that details the epicness of what resides behind the walls of Porche Foreign Auto * in South Central LA. It's like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for classic cars...
There's an alloy bodied 300 SL (one of 29, recently one sold for $4.6 mil), half-a-dozen Lamborghini Miuras, an Iso Grifo (drool) Spyder(!!), the last surviving Horch 855 Spezial Roadster and a 1935 Mercedes-Benz Caracciola 500K that could be worth more than $10 million. And that's just what they saw and could recognize.
Porche Foreign Auto* is notoriously private. Even this story's author couldn't get in. He relied on people who have been in to write the story. Time will tell if this story helps the current owners realize the fortune they have literally rusting away in the industrial section of LA.
*Unfortunately I trusted the internet instead of the source material. The salvage yard is Porche Foreign Auto, not Porsche.
(Vintage Car Talk via Autoblog via Town and Country)
firstwagon says:
06:02 PM, 02/24/12
That's just weird.
agnh says:
06:10 PM, 02/24/12
This story has popped up on a few different sites in the last month or so. I'm sure that the owners are getting inundated with site unseen offers, but it makes you wonder what the hell they're being so private about. I mean they are a business, so why wouldn't they want to sell some of these cars.
tempesting says:
09:05 PM, 02/24/12
You mean Porche Foreign Autos? not Porsche.
greenpony says:
05:44 AM, 02/25/12
"I mean they are a business, so why wouldn't they want to sell some of these cars."
If it's a small private company, decisions of the owners may make less business sense than the decisions of, say, the board of directors of a Fortune 500 company.
huyracing says:
10:11 AM, 02/25/12
these salvage yards are like that... saw an old datsun roadster at one and the owner wouldn't sell it.