HIDDEN TREASURES

Have you ever wanted to discover some hidden treasures? I'll take that as a yes. Young boys especially are prone to dream of digging up a chest of Spanish gold. Many young men grow up and, yet, there is still a part of them that yearns to go along with Indiana Jones on his next adventure. Well, in the world of cars this happens more than people realize. Somebody stumbles on an immaculate 1968 Shelby GT-500KR in a barn in Tennessee, where it has been forgotten since 1975 because the young man who owned it never came back from Vietnam. A story that was recounted to me by one such discoverer around 1970 is even more amazing. As I recall, this man was a newspaper writer who had heard a story about a 1938 Mercedes 540K that supposedly had been specially built for Eva Braun by Adolph Hitler and had been driven out of Berlin in 1945 before the Russians encircled the city. As the story goes, the Army driver took the car to his farm in the country and the car was never seen again. This writer heard this story many years later and did some investigating. He eventually found the name of the driver and where he had lived. Well, he found this place, and, as it turns out, the driver was dead but his elderly wife was still living. He questioned her about the car, and, to his amazement, she said the car was still out in the barn where her husband had left it. Since she did not drive, she did not even pay any attention to it. He went to the barn and there it was. Now, this was not any ordinary Mercedes 540K. This car was very special. It was cast in one piece, only the doors, hood, and trunk lid, were added and it was all gold plated. It was made with two gas tanks so it could run on either regular gas or diesel. This car had a special gearbox with 7 forward speeds and 4 in reverse. The car had been untouched since it had been parked years earlier, the drivers' Schmeisser machine pistol was still laying on the front seat. He purchased this car from the woman and I suspect it was a bargain. Now, you might say that sounds like a good story, much like the Lost Dutchman Mine and other famous mystery treasures. Well folks, I saw this car in person. This writer was taking this car on a US tour and charging a few dollars for people to see it at each stop. This car was absolutely beautiful. I was a college student at the time and could not verify its authenticity, but, if it was a fake, it was the most expensive fake that I have ever seen. What makes this interesting now is that nobody seems to know where it is and many people say that the whole story was a fraud. Curiously, in 1942 a toy company had made a tin-plate model of this very same car. If this car ever makes it to the Barrett-Jackson Auctions you will definitely hear about it. People with a "Walter Mitty" complex, like me, dream of being in on such a discovery.

The 5 cars I have listed below are also rare to varying degrees, but mainly just plain interesting.

1) 1963 Grand Sport Corvette

This is the car every Corvette owner would "kill" to own. There were only 5 built and they all still exist. This car was created by the legendary Zora Duntov as a "Cobra Killer". Corvette wanted revenge on the stable of cars that Carrol Shelby was destroying everybody with on the racing circuits around the world. It has a 377 c.i. small block engine that produces 550 hp. The program had been started in secret by Duntov and he planned to build 125 of these beasts. Chevrolet got wind about his plans and put a stop to it, although 5 had already been built. These fabulous five did get to race and they tore up the competition. If anyone ever sells one of these, the buyer will spend millions.

2) 1956 Continental Mark II

This car was produced by the new Continental Division of Ford in 1956 and 1957. It was separate from the Lincoln Division but it did have the trademark spare tire hump on the rear deck lid. If you ever see one of these, only about 1700 were built, it looks like a luxury version of a 1956 Thunderbird. In fact, it is a lot more than that. This car had the Lincoln 368 engine (300 hp) and was practically handbuilt. It had multiple coats of paint, was hand sanded, and had 2 layers of lacquer. This car cost $10,000 which was the price of a Rolls or twice the price of a high end Cadillac at the time. Elvis and Sinatra owned one of these.

3) 1931 Bugatti - type 41 "Royale"

If you want to be noticed, and can afford it, you might want to have one of these. I warn you though, there are only 6, and any one of them will cost you millions. The Type 41 has a 12.7 Litre straight 8 engine with 3 valves per cylinder which produces about 300 hp. This car was designed by Mr. Bugatti for "royalty" but his timing was off, way off. These cars were coming out just as the Great Depression was also making its debut. The Great Depression won. Originally scheduled to make 25 of these cars starting at around $30,000 each, Bugatti only made 6 which saw the light of day and each of of these has a different body. All 6 are still in existence and one of them went for around TEN MILLION DOLLARS at auction in 1987.

4) 1965 Sunbeam Tiger

Can you say "greased lightning"? This car was under the radar (except for the police variety) when it came out and has remained so for most of humanity. It was not especially stylish or luxurious but it was and is FASSST! This car was another Carrol Shelby project for Ford that they hoped would become another success like the AC Cobra. A small 260 c.i. V8 was dropped into a Sunbeam Alpine which transformed it from a pussycat sportscar into a "Tiger" on wheels. I had the hair raising experience of riding with a fellow college student in a new '65 that belonged to a friend of his. One of my memories of my freshman year is screaming down Hillcrest Road in Dallas, Texas doing 105 mph at two in the morning (in case you didn't know Hillcrest Road is a major thoroughfare). This car turned out to be a great little sports car but it had a short life. It had been a joint venture with Rootes Group, England which made the Sunbeam and Rootes was bought by Chrysler in 1967. Chrysler took a dim view of the car having a Ford engine so they stopped any further production. The last two years of production, 1967-68, saw the introduction of the Tiger II which had the Ford 289 V8 under the hood. The 260 c.i.d, engine produced 160 hp and the 289 produced 200 hp. About 7,000 cars total were produced and they are still popular with the people in the fast lane.

5) 1920 Rolls-Royce Armoured Car

I threw this one in for fun. Normally when you hear the name Rolls-Royce you think ultimate luxury with price to match. Well, this Rolls won't pamper you but it will cause traffic in front of you to move over fast. In 1914, with World War I in progress, The Royal Naval Air Service raised a squadron of armoured cars by requisitioning all Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost chassis with their engines and had them fitted with armoured bodywork and a turret for a .303 Vickers machine gun. The 80 hp motor gave it a cruising speed of 45 mph. The 1920 pattern was a more modernized version. A good number of these cars actually saw service in World War II also.