With only 25 Cunningham C-3s ever built, it’s amazing that one appears in this barn-find book. For that matter, it’s even more amazing that two barn-find Cunningham stories appear here.
Classic car sleuth Chuck Schoendorf, of Rowayton, Connecticut—the owner of a terrific collection of cars, including two Cunninghams—was on the lookout for C-3 #5209, the fourth built between 1952 and 1953 out of a run of 25 at the Cunningham factory in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Number 5209 was the only missing Cunningham C-3, which after more than 60 years is amazing in itself. In 2011, Schoendorf made it his mission to either find the car or find out why it no longer existed.
Harry Sefried drove his Cunningham C-3 with abandon when he bought it in the early 1960s. He even bought speed parts directly from Briggs Cunningham. But then he parked the car in his backyard, where it sat for decades. TOM COTTER
Records show that the car was last owned by a Mr. Harry Sefried Jr. of Connecticut. Obituary archives showed Mr. Sefried died in 2005, but the obituary did not mention where he resided. It did, however, mention a daughter named Leslie Lockhard.
Schoendorf investigated and discovered that a Leslie Lockhard lived in Pennsylvania, and —BINGO!—there it was. “Yes, I still own the car, and it is still sitting behind my father’s house in Connecticut,” she said, rather surprised about the phone call. “But it’s probably in pretty rough condition. It’s been sitting outside for at least fifteen years.”
Since the elderly Sefried was wheelchair-bound, he had kept the car in the backyard rather than in the nearby empty garage, so he could keep an eye on it out of the window of his house.
As a younger man, Sefried had a wild streak. He raced motorcycles, and when he purchased the C-3 in 1962, he purchased high-compression pistons, a high-lift camshaft, larger valves, and roller-tappets directly from Briggs Cunningham. He intended to install the parts in his car, but never got around to it. “I remember Daddy used to drive me to school in the Cunningham,” Leslie says.
After a few phone conversations, Schoendorf realized that he had discovered the only missing Cunningham C-3. But when he drove east across Connecticut to see the car, he was disappointed—the car was in terrible condition after being parked outside for so long, even though the empty garage stood just 50 feet away. Rust had penetrated so severely that the chassis’ front cross member had deteriorated, causing the front suspension to collapse. And even though the Italian-made Vignale body was made of aluminum, much of the body’s steel substructure was severely cancerous.
As Sefried aged, he looked out the window of his home as the car slowly deteriorated. Look carefully and you can see that the front suspension collapsed because the crossmember had deteriorated. TOM COTTER
Leslie declined Schoendorf’s offer to buy it, saying she would rather restore it in memory of her father. Schoendorf suggested, though, that instead of opting for an expensive restoration, he would be glad to oversee a less expensive, sympathetic refurbishment.
Before the repairs began, the car was displayed in the Barn-Find class at the Fairfield County Concours d’Elegance in Connecticut. “The car won the best barn-find class,” Schoendorf says, “and the crowd flipped!”
Since then, #5209 has been partially restored and displayed at a Cunningham Gathering at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, where it won an award over several other, concours-winning C-3s.
Leslie likes to think that her father, Harry, was watching it all from the window of his new residence, somewhere up there.