Portuguese Barn Full of Classic Cars

From the time when these pictures became to circulate on the net in February 2007, the story of the Portuguese barn full of classic and not-so-classic cars seems to have taken on a life of its own. The interwebs have been humming with theories and somebody has even gone to the trouble of creating up a tail about it. Classic car enthusiasts, treasure hunters and auction houses have all somehow contacted intuh.net in an attempt to find out more. In order to stem the flow of e-mails and even telephone calls: here's all I know.

At the end of January 2007, I visited a Portugese web forum with a thread that contained a huge number of photos of old cars left in a barn, somewhere in Portugal. The picture files themselves were hosted on the web site of a Portugese classic car dealer, but were taken down after only a few days.

For all those who have been eagerly sending round e-mails about 'a New York man' having bought 'a piece of land in Portugal' for 'next to nothing', that happened to have this treasure-filled barn on it: I'm pretty much convinced that's an urban myth and here is what I believe to be the facts:

One of the many "lucky discovery" scenarios that folks from time to time fantasize about involves taking possession of a dwelling and turning up something of great value left behind by a previous resident perhaps a forgotten stash of currency, discarded coins that were once common but are now worth a pretty penny to collectors, jewellery hidden away and never retrieved, etc.  Purchasing an old farmhouse and find out that the property had a barn stuffed packed with a few hundred classic automobiles is a reverie probably outside the range of even the most hopeful daydreamer's imaginings, but that's the back-story that was created to enliven a set of photographs showing an "eclectic collection of old cars in a decaying building."

The referenced pictures were indeed taken in a barn somewhere in Portugal, but the "lucky find" aspect of the story does not quite ring true.  As Tom Cotter of Sports Car Market magazine noted when he looked into this story:

Huge collections of cars don't just happen. Cars are accumulated sometimes lovingly, sometimes not by someone with a purpose. I was sure this collection was not assembled by accident; nobody would simply sell an old farm and fail to mention to the new owners the stash of old cars in the barn.

What he found out by tracking down the photographer was that the owner of the barn (and the 180 or so vintage cars contained within) was not a lucky buyer who had just purchased the property and was astonished to find a treasure trove in one of the farm buildings.  The owner was an automobile dealer in the 1970s and 1980s who had built up his assemblage of cars over the years and stashed it in the barn (locking the structure up when it was full) and who simply hired a photographer recently to document his collection.