The barn find has an almost mythical position in the classic car scene around the world.
In 1974 a Volkswagen Beetle was stored in a barn in Varmland, Sweden, by an American of Swedish descent who flew back to the US. Now it has been taken out into the daylight and is for sale at Bilweb Auctions.
It was a cousin from The Big Country that come to visit in the summer of ´74. ABBA was big on the charts, just a few months earlier they had won the Eurovision Song Contest with ”Waterloo”. The cousin flew to Germany, bought a beige 1970 VW 1300 Beetle at the VW dealer Raffay in Hamburg and made a roadtrip the 900 kilometers up to the relatives in Varmland. At the end of the summer he returned to the US, but put his Beetle in a local barn. The plan was to use it again when he came back to visit again.
That didn’t happen. He never came back.
So the car stayed in the barn, with its German export plates, until this summer. It was gently taken out of its Seventies slumber, fired up, but needs a thorough service of, among other things, the brakes in order to gen an MOT and a registration. The close to 50 years in the barn has not passed entirely unnoticed, some surface rust, a few minor dents and very hard Fulda tires from its youth are details that a new owner might want to adress. But the car is mainly untouched and the interior is in an original status, seat covers front and rear was put in already in the early Seventies and has not been removed since then. Bilweb Auctions has not taken them out because of the risk for ripping it apart, but it seems that a very nice original upholstery is underneath it.
The odometer says 19 320 kilometers, but it is not clear if this is the correct figure or if the meter has turned over once, giving a milage of 119 320 kilometers. For a VW enthusiast this newly awake Beetle represents an opportunity to acquire a car in an unusual original condition and with a special history. Restore or just put it back on the road - that is up to the next owner to think about.
Bilweb Auction has estimated the value of the car to between 50 000 to 60 000 SEK. The auctions closes on 27 October.
