Perth garage find

As I get underway with tyrobenz I am conscious of the amazing "barn finds" that seem to pop up on the Internet on a monthly basis.  These stories are something that every car enthusiast gets swept away as we romanticise the rescue and restoration of such cars even though we know you would need a small Swiss bank account to do so.   The perfect example of this was shown when during a recent classic car auction a "barn find" E-type Jaguar, which was in a dreadful state, sold for more than a fully restored one. Crazy stuff!

With this is mind my own imagination was kicked into overdrive on Friday morning when my mechanic called me to say he had a customer that had a W114 250CE that had been in the garage for years and he wanted to sell it.

I quickly got on the phone and spoke to the owner and arranged to go and see the car on Saturday afternoon.  The owner lived in an affluent area of Perth and as he told me that they were the original owners of the green 1970 250CE I got increasingly excited.  10 years ago they had been offered a newer Mercedes so the 250CE was just parked up in the garage where it had been ever since.

Needless to say I didn't sleep very well on Friday night and was up bright an early on Saturday.  About 11:00am my phone beeped telling me I had a new voice message.  As I listened to the message my heart sank, the car was gone already, I was absolutely gutted!

The moral of the story, if you snooze, you loose!

On the positive side, I am confident that there are more cars like this out there. Only last year I went to the neighbouring house of a family relative having found out that he had a collection of old cars in the garage.  When I went to see them I found this sorry looking W116 280SE.  Just like the W114 250CE, this W116 had been driven home one day, parked in the garage and that is where she stayed.  In this case that was in 2003, 11 years ago.

Even though I was saddened to see the car in this state it didn't excite me enough to make me want to save it even though I know these are great cars, but who knows, I may change my mind and go back and rescue it some day in the future.  I know the owner is in no hurry to move it on.