Because I’ve been searching for old cars since I was 14 years old, you might think I’d have searched every nook and cranny in my hometown of Davidson, North Carolina, for vintage tin. Actually, I’ve done a pretty good job of discovering the few cars within the town limits, but to my chagrin, one actually appeared right under my nose.
It was practically next door, literally. It was hidden my neighbor’s barn!
It happened soon after my friend, Road & Track Editor-at-Large Peter Egan and I arrived at my home after the 3,300-mile cross-country commute of driving my 1965 Cobra from the San Francisco area to North Carolina (those were nine incredible days).
Soon after the story appeared in the January 2002 issue of Road & Track, I received a call from my neighbor, Hugh Barger. I had never met Barger, because his home was more than a half-mile from my house. “I just read about your A.C. Cobra, and wondered if I could take a look at it,” he says. “We seem to have something in common.”
I drove my Cobra to his house the following Saturday morning and visited with him and his lovely wife, Brenda, as they looked at my Cobra. Then he invited me into his barn.
When I was invited into Hugh Barger’s barn, just one-half mile from my home, this is what I found. It is a 1962 AC Greyhound, and it was built on the same assembly line in England as my Cobra. TOM COTTER
The car has been sitting for decades and has slowly sunk into the dirt floor, now resting on the chassis. Rats and raccoons appear to make the AC a super-highway. TOM COTTER
Now, I had driven past this barn for almost 20 years and was always curious if something interesting might lurk within. But I’ve so often been disappointed when searching through farmers’ barns—most of the time, it’s just a pile of hay. Or a Massey Ferguson.
Thankfully, I was wrong.
This barn, one-half mile from my house, contained an A.C. Greyhound, an aluminum four-seater coupe that had rolled off the same obscure assembly line in Thames Ditton, England, as my Cobra had a few years later.
Barger explained: “In the 1960s, my father sold my Alvis and bought me this A.C. Greyhound to drive to graduate school. Brenda and I used it for years when we lived near Washington, D.C. But when we moved back to Davidson, it wasn’t a reliable car, so I just parked the thing.”
It’s been sitting in his barn for close to 45 years. The Greyhound is a unique and rare car, and was to be the new direction for A.C. Cars. Only 83 Greyhounds were produced from 1959 to 1963. It featured a Cobra front grill, mounted upside-down.
Instead of a 289 or 427 Ford engine—which is what Americans saw in the Cobras shipped to the United States—it featured a 105-horsepower, 2-liter Bristol engine, which had been developed as an aircraft engine by BMW before World War II.
Barger’s car had seen better days. The tires had sunk into the dirt floor, and I’m sure the chassis was resting directly on the dirt. Even though Brenda said she would like to push the Greyhound into a ditch, Barger is satisfied with the car just resting in his barn.
And the moral of the story? Barn-finds are not necessarily all hiding 1,000 miles from where you live—sometimes they’re right next door!
