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There is no more romantic a phrase in the old-car world than 'barn find'. For sheer heart-fluttering mystique it even tops 'Darling, I've bought that Lamborghini you've always wanted.'

The reason for this is that hidden cars are our buried treasure, and we;re all taught from a very young age that nothing is more special and magic than buried treasure. Tracking down forgotten cars in dusty, cobwebby barns is our version of a quest.

These days many are even happy to enjoy barn-finds vicariously; it seems to be enough of a thrill to buy a car that's lain undisturbed for decades. The right cars with good back-stories nearly always spark bidding wars. That's why so many cars go straight from barn to auction house, and the that's had a profound effect on the market place as a whole - the UK has seen an explosion in the number of cars described (often incorrectly) as barn finds.

The effect of a genuine discovery may now have been diluted, but they always retain enough of that treasure hunt romance to provide headlines for auction houses. It's the same driver that makes people buy lottery tickets: we all dream of opening that barn door ourselves one day.

So we've picked some of the great finds of the past:


Ferrari 250 GTO left to rot
Talk about hidden in plain sight - this Ferrari GTO spent 14 years sat in a field next to the owner's home in Ohio, completely neglected. joe Kortin had bought the car for a sealed bid of $6500 from a Texas high school in 1972. He didn't use it, but left it sat on a trailer. His kids used to slide down the bonnet. This rare right-hand drive car had been raced in 1962 by Innes Ireland, and he heard about its fate in 1982 at a GTO 20th anniversary meeting.

He turned up on Joe Korton's doorstep and, sure enough, there was the GTO sitting in a field of long grass. Nothing would persuade Mr Korton selling Innes the car, saying he was going to put her in a shed under cover (which he did), and extracted a promise that if he decided to sell he'd give me first option (which he didn't).'


Lamborghini Miura from Onassis
Stamatis Kokotas was known as the 'Greek Elvis', as much for his sideburns as his hit records. But he had a big fan in the shape of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, so much so that Onassis gave him a Miura S as a gift in 1969. Kokotas clocked up 52,000 miles in three years until it developed engine problems. The engine was removed and sent back to the factory; the car was left in a garage beneath the Athens Hilton - for 30 years. 

Battered and bruised, it was unearthed in 2003 when the hotel was being remodelled ahead of the Olympic Games. Having never been paid for its repair, Lamborghini still had the engine - on display in their museum. So, after 40 years, it was finally reunited with the car, which was auctioned by Coys in 2012. It failed to reach its reserve, but a post-sale deal was struck for about £300,000.

Ferrari Barchetta in the desert
Few things can be better than finding an abandoned Ferrari - apart from finding one that's been raced at Le Mans and in the Targa Florio. And like so many barn-find tales, that of 1950 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta chassis 0052M began with the death of its long-time owner.

Reg Litton had imported the car from Switzerland to his Scottsale, Arizona home in the late 1950s. He had fun racing against Maserati-owning friends until something broke. Then the car was simply left in his backyard for the next 50 years, much of that time open to the elements.

The owner's children were smart and put the word out amongst Ferrari collectors, one of whom bought it sight unseen for $1m. He had the car mechanically overhauled but left the body as found. He also unearthed the car's racing history, won a trophy at Pebble Beach, then sold it to a Polish collector for 3.5m euros.

The buried Ferrari Dino
It's one of the great fairy tales: in 1978 some kids digging in a California backyard come across a Dino 246 GT buried there. Like much about this Dino, the truth is elsewhere; more likely someone who knew it had been buried there let the information slip.

In December 1974 the car was lifted from Wilshire Boulevard while the owners were enjoying an anniversary dinner at the Brown Derby restaurant, just weeks and 501 miles after the plumber had bought it as a present for his wife. Seems he'd overstretched on the car loan, and had hired some low-lifes to make it disappear. They couldn't bear to cut it up, as instructed, so buried it in the yard. 

Once unearthed and delivered to Farmers Insurance - now the legal owners, having paid out on it - there was so much interest from potential buyers that they put the Dino on display in a warehouse, from where everythig that wasn't bolted on got stolen.

Luckily there is a happy ending: someone did buy the Dino, then sold it on to Brad Howard hwo had it restored and was still driving it around LA 30 years later.


The Bugatti in Lake Maggiore
Not all 'barn finds' are found in barns, and even fewer are found under water. This 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia was discovered in 1967 by a diver, and over the years became a sub-aqua club attraction. It seems the car was dumped in the lake around 1963 to avoid the payment of Swiss import duties, which by then were probably more than the 11-year-old car was worth.

There was no serious thought of extracting the decomposed car from the lake until 2009, when a young member of the sub-aqua club, Damiano Tamagni, was murdered by thugs. It was decided to use the car to raise funds for a charity in Damiano's name, and the footage of fishing the car out was seen right around the world.

Bonhams auctioned the Bugatti at their Paris sale in 2010, where it sold for £205,925 to American Bugatti collector Peter Mullin. He is keeping the car preserved in its as-found state.

Mercedes-Benz 500K still out there
One of the most valuable Mercedes-Benz in the world has been tracked down - but not seen yet. Unused for over 35 years, the 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500K 'Roadster Limousine' built for racer Rudolph Caracciola, gathers dust along with other rarities behind closed doors at Porsche Foreign Auto, a junkyward in Los Angeles run by the Klein family.

The car's last outing appears to have been to the Pebble Beach concours in 1978, where it won an award. Even Mercedes-Benz itself has been unable to prise the car out of the barn - the company offered to restore it for free in exchange for displaying it in its museum for a period of time. The offer was declined. So don't both knocking, it's not coming out. Experts believe the car would fetch well in excess of $10m if it ever did come to market, and the owners are said to know that.


Citroen 2CV prototypes
To prevent the Nazis getting their hands on them Citroen decided to hide the various prototypes that had been developed from the invading forces during WWII. In fact they concealed them so well that after the war only two could be found. Or so Citroen said.

However, a memo has come to light from the 1950s ordering that other prototypes be scrapped. Luckily that instruction was ignored, and in 1995 three prototypes were discovered in the roof of a barn at Ferte-Vidame. How they got there is a mystery as they needed to make a large hole in the roof and use a giant crane to get them down.

Missing Cobra Daytona
Cobra enthusiasts spent decades trying to track down and buy CSX2287, the original Cobra Daytona and the only one of the six Daytonas to have been built in America. Some had even worked out its whereabouts, but it wasn't for sale. The car only came properly to light after its apparent owner, Donna O'Hara, committed suicide in 2000. O'Hara's mother then sold the car for $3m, sparking a massive and convoluted legal battle over who actually owned or had been promised the car.

O'Hara was the daughter of Phil Spector's bodyguard, who had apparently bought the Daytona from Spector in the late 1960s after he tired of all the repair bills and the number of speeding tickets he was collecting in it. And Spector was one of the (unsuccessful) parties trying to claim ownership after the death of O'Hara.

Bugatti Type 57S Atalante
Hidden away in a Gosforth, Newcastle garage for 47 years, this Bugatti was described in 2008 as 'the barn find of the decade.' However, it was later revealed that several 'hunters' had previously tracked down the car and made offers to buy it to the owner Harold Carr. A retired surgeon who suffered from OCD, he apparently knew its value and refused to speak to collectors. And quite understandably: his condition meant he hung onto everything.

As in so many cases, the car only came out into the open after Dr Carr died in June 2007. The Atalante, it turned out, had first been owned by Le Mans racer Earl Howe. One of just 17 built, it had covered a mere 26,000 miles and was in wonderfully unmolested condition. Auctioned by Bonhams as the centrepiece of their 2009 Retromobile sale, it made just shy of £3m.

The lost Jaguar Lightweight
Jaguar experts knew 12 Lightweights had been built, but could only account for 11 of them - until 1998 when WWII air ace Howard Gidlovenko died. No 12 was in his garage. Bought to race but barely used, it had been partially dismantled in 1963, then later on had areas of paint removed with a grinder to make it look like a wreck (divorce settlement). And there it sat for 35 years. It was auctioned at Monterey in 1998 for £540,671, then flown to England to be restored by Lynx for racing.