Barn found, will travel

Discovering a car in a field, seeing one of note in a crumbly lean-to or even – God forbid – in a barn will never not hold a certain fascination for me. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s when I was a kid, me and the lads in my village would spend hours cycling around doing three things: trying to pull a wheelie for more than five cranks, keeping eyes peeled in hedgerows or fields for abandoned cars, or searching for discarded top shelf adult ‘graphic novels’ down by the stream.

Simpler times. Back then Urban Ex was simply known as ‘snooping about’ and the internet hadn’t yet been invented, meaning people were more trusting and less clued up on car values.

In 2025 we are now pretty universally familiar with the term ‘barn find’. We know it doesn’t necessarily mean a vehicle found in a wonky farm outbuilding, but is in fact a blanket term for a machine that’s been sitting dormant for yonks, discovered in a garage, on a driveway or in a crumbly carport. It’s always great to find something in a literal barn, but the building plays second fiddle to the machine in question. Or maybe third fiddle – I’ll come back to that.