Beyond Barn Finds The Baroness And The Mercedes

BARN FIND! There are no two more exciting words for car collectors the world over! And there's an incredible hunt going on for valuable cars that were at one time forgotten, abandoned, or cast aside, but which are now regarded as valuable and historical treasures. Author Wallace Wyss, a Motor Trend veteran, recounts stories that are almost beyond belief. Here are a few examples: a pre-war Mercedes 540K that was simply abandoned by a German baroness at a Connecticut resort and later sold for over $11 million, the rubber-bodied Cobra that Ford built to assuage the ego of their top design exec, the jet-powered Fiat prototype that an American fell in love with and spent almost $1 million to make into a running driving car, and the Corvette that Carroll Shelby and pals had bodied in Italy as part of a plan to create Italian-bodied Corvettes-- a plan that failed after three cars were made. One thing's certain--once you've poured through these inspiring stories, and absorbed the tips in the final chapter, you will know more about how barn finds are unearthed and how you yourself can become a successful barn finder!

"This is Leon Malmed's true story of his and his sister Rachel's escape from the Holocaust in Occupied France. When their father and mother were arrested in 1942, their French neighbors agreed to watch their children until they returned. Leon's parents were taken first to Drancy, then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and they never returned. Meanwhile their downstairs neighbors, Henri and Suzanne Ribouleau, gave the children a home and family and sheltered them through subsequent roundups, threats, air raids, and the war's privations. The courage, sympathy, and dedication of the Ribouleaus stand in strong contrast to the collaborations and moral weakness of many of the French authorities. "Papa Henri and Maman Suzanne" were honored as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem in 1977. It is a narrative of love and courage, set against a backdrop of tragedy, fear, injustice, prejudice, and the greatest moral outrage of the modern era. It is a story of goodness triumphing once more over evil"--Publisher's description.

While some of the stories actually are about cars found in barns or sheds, author Wyss has taken the liberty of expanding the definition of "barn find" to include any collector car found derelict, ignored, in pieces, or generally found in circumstances belying its stature. This could include cars parked in fields, found in cellars, left in parking garages, or even found under a pile of cars in a junkyard. What the cars do have in common is that they are valuable and exotic and have histories chock full of unimaginable twists and turns. Take, for instance the Two Rotor Corvette, a car that cost GM $2 million to build and then they flat gave it away to the first guy that asked. Same thing for a GT40 roadster, one of four built, and Ford goes and hands the keys to a movie car customizer who kept it for decades and never quite got it up on the big screen. That car today is worth $4 million. So, if you're into collector cars and love the thrill of the hunt, then you'll truly appreciate the 50 stories Wyss has selected for this first in the series.

Here are the true stories of people who found their dream cars in the most unlikely places.

Reprint of the detective novel starring Hamilton Cleek, the master of disguise. Originally published in 1912.

Human civilizations' longest lasting artifacts are not the great Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their inert hulls will continue to drift around Earth until the Sun expands into a red giant and engulfs them about 4.5 billion years from now. The Last Pictures, co-published by Creative Time Books, is rooted in the premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created. Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning signs, and Carl Sagan's Golden Records of the 1970s, artist/geographer and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite in September 2012, as both a time capsule and a message to the future. The selection of 100 images, which are the centerpiece of the book, was influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions that characterize contemporary civilizations. Consequently, The Last Pictures engages some of the most profound questions of the human experience, provoking discourse about communication, deep time, and the economic, environmental, and social uncertainties that define our historical moment. Copub: Creative Time Books