The barn find, what every car enthusiast hopes for……
Well maybe an old Mercedes diesel isn’t exactly what you think of but it was awesome to me. This car was owned by a friend of mines family, I bought it from his grandfather, a man I affectionately call Daddy Bob. Daddy Bob is an old time southern man and is truly a trip to be around, he tried his best to talk me out of buying the old beat up car, as he put it “the damn brakes don’t work, I tried to have them fixed and they couldn’t figure out why they didn’t work so I parked the POS!” he did that six years before I came to see the car. Daddy Bob continued and proclaimed “it would take me 3000 dollars to get that thing runnin, cause mercedes are expensive.” With that comment I convinced him to let me buy it for what it was worth in scrap, 350 dollars. Long story short a fresh battery, ten dollars worth of farm diesel, courtesy of Daddy Bob, and a couple hour later I had a running Mercedes diesel, I waved bye to Daddy Bob and I drove it home that day. The brakes turned out to be a 45 dollar master cylinder and a simple tune up. And don’t let the picture fool you, this is how it looked later that day.
Pretty good eh? I used the merc for my first year of college here at UNCC, it never once failed me, a harrowing trip to krispy kreme at 1 in the morning with no lights of any kind led me to replace the alternator belt. The car left me for 2500 dollars with a little over 1200 invested, its not to say I regret selling the car, but I do miss my small schoolbus. To me a barn find does not have to be a rare classic worth thousands of dollars, it can be as simple as a car that brings you joy for pennies on the dollar.