American Motors Corporation. - Muscle car barn finds: rusty Road Runners, abandoned AMXs, crusty Camaros and more!

Next to the regular Burnt Orange Challenger was the owners other car, a 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A. This one sat at the Packard Plant in storage until the place was condemned and he was able to bring the vehicle home.

In the end, I always leave my business card in the glove box. Im more than happy to help an individual out, and if the car comes up for sale, I can try to purchase it, or I can get them in touch with individuals who are straight shooters and wont lowball them. Or, if they ever want it restored, I can point the owners in the right direction of good, quality shops. The option used most often, Im pleased to say, is the owners call asking where to find parts for the cars because they do want to get them going again. Sometimes my enthusiasm rubs off on them, and they want to get it going, or they just want to hear it run again. Either way, the car wont be sitting anymore.

Before I was writing in car magazines, I had (still have) a blog about my adventures. I documented the cars with my little digital camera, then did write-ups about the adventures, and posted the pictures. It became popular enough that I made friends in the automotive journalist world. I did some freelance work for magazines such as Mopar Collectors Guide and Mopar Muscle. One day I got a message from David Freiburger, the head editor of Hot Rod Magazine. He mentioned that they were doing a big refresh of the magazine and wondered if I would be interested in doing a monthly column for the magazine. Everything from there on is history. Ive had a monthly column in Hot Rod now for years, and have been able to have work featured in a variety of magazines.

This newfound, very public profile led me to create my other personal website, The Auto Archaeologist. That way I could keep my regular life private, but post all my cool car adventures. This was a major boon to my collection of clues and leads. Normally, I had them all in a spreadsheet on my computer, organized by state, by zip code, and so forth, so I had a general idea of where things were when traveling. That all changed when I found Google My Maps. This allows you to have a private map online you can pin locations to. And not just pin a location, but you can enter comments and notes and more. So I was able to plot out every lead and every story on a map. Since it was in Google, I could see while traveling which pins I was near, giving me the ability to hit up a bunch of finds every trip. It revolutionized the way I find barn finds.

Thats the gist of how I started and how I operate. Anyone can do it, it just takes a little time and a little effort. People say all the time that there are no more cool cars to be found. And I am out there proving them wrong every time.

A side note about the 1971 Cuda that was my big epiphany car: I went back to that shop recently and learned the car had disappeared shortly after I had seen it about 15 years earlier. After talking to the owner of the shop about how that car changed my world, he invited me back into the shop, where that exact car was back in the exact same spot! But it had been fully restored and was in the final assembly! It blew my mind. And there, sitting on another car, I saw it: the original grille for the car. It had some cracks and was missing some parts, so they got a new one. And as a gift, he sold me the grille for next to nothing. So I now own the exact grille from the exact car that changed my life. When he did that, it made me the happiest man in the world. It just took 15 years!