Brutt - Amazing Barn Finds and Roadside Relics

First published in 2015 by Motorbooks, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.,

400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2015 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

Text 2015 Ryan Brutt

Photography 2015 Ryan Brutt

All photographs are from the authors collection unless noted otherwise.

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Digital edition: 978-1-6278-8645-1

Hardcover edition: 978-0-7603-4807-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brutt, Ryan, 1983

Amazing barn finds and roadside relics : musty Mustangs, forgotten Fords, hidden Hudsons, and other lost automotive gems / Ryan Brutt.

pages cm

Summary: Ryan Brutts Amazing Barn Finds and Roadside Relics is a cross-country photographic account of some of the most remarkable abandoned car graveyards and abandoned barns and garages around, and the forlorn (and often rare) vehicles found within-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-7603-4807-9 (hardback)

1. Automobile graveyards--United States--Pictorial works. I. Title.

TD795.4.B78 2015

629.2220973--dc23

2015018809

Acquisitions Editor: Zack Miller

Project Manager: Jordan Wiklund

Art Director: Cindy Samargia Laun

Cover Design: Simon Larkin

Book Design and Layout: Simon Larkin

MUSTY MUSTANGS,
HIDDEN HUDSONS,
FORGOTTEN FORDS,
and other lost
automotive gems

RYAN BRUTT

This all started because of a story and a radio. In 1970, my father bought a new Hemi Cuda. He told me stories about how he used to race it, and when he blew up the engine, he threw in another big-block, riveted the shaker bubble to the hood, and away he rumbled once more.

Thirty years later, I was driving a beat-up 1990 Ford Taurus station wagon as my first car. I wasnt into cars then. But someone else was into my carsomeone really wanted the radio and stole the tape deck. Afterward, Dad arranged for a friend to put a CD player into the car for cheap. At the shop where the wagon was getting the radio, I spied something between the two work bays. It was a car underneath a ton of general junk from around the shopupholstery materials, tools, car parts, and more. I think there was even a hard top for a Corvette on it. Underneath it all, though, was something special, even nowa 1971 Plymouth Cuda.

Finding that car in that shape was the spark I needed. The car was cool, with the cheese grater grille, the gilled side fenders, the unique rear taillights. It looked like nothing on the road. That was the moment that changed my life. I was hooked on muscle cars.

I loved the thrill that something this cool could be tucked away, hidden like a lost Incan temple in the Amazon or a ship at rest at the bottom of the sea. And once I found one, I asked around and found more. And more. And more. It didnt stop.

Eventually, I started going on expeditions to find as much American automotive memorabilia as possible. I would beat the ground and drive around aimlessly, no real destination in mind, but Id usually find somethingsomething cool, more often than not. A GTO, or maybe a C3 Corvette. You never know what you are going to uncover. Some of my best findslike that first 1971 Cudawere completely by accident, and others I have been given leads to. But you just dont know what is out there.

People always say, There are no more hidden carstheyve all been found!

I intend to prove them wrong.

Ryan Brutt

Youre driving through the countryside and you catch something out of the corner of your eye: The taillights of an old car peeking from beneath a tarp. You back up and find the driveway. Maybe the car is something really great. You want to take a look.

You pull up to the house and do the polite thing by knocking on the door. You wait a few moments and then the owner swings the door open and looks at you. Hes a crusty guy, and he knows why youre here. Hes been through this before.

He says, Its not for sale.

And thats that.

While I attended college, I found this 1970 Chevelle SS sitting next to a home, and there it sat the entire time I was at school. I went back after nearly a decade and the car hadnt moved an inch.

This was the first hidden car I ever discovered, a 1971 Plymouth Cuda sitting in a car stereo shop in Chicago. I was having a radio installed in my daily driver and the Cuda was sitting between the two major work areas. It sat in the same spot for over a decade.