1974 Dodge Charger Barn Find

A barn find just like on Pickers!

Everyone has seen or at least heard of the Pickers and other shows like it where these guys tend to find the coolest things in rural areas seemingly by happen chance. In every episode some treasure is discovered covered in dust in and old barn over yonder. Well we all know real life isn’t that lucky. I watched this show often when they first came out, in the early 2010s and thought to myself I’d love to find something cool like that one day! Well that day came.

Quick back story, my friends have some property in a very small town in Alabama. I mean very small like not even a blip on a map. There is one blinking yellow light on the main road. There was one restaurant, one gas station and one hardware store. Someone vandalized the gas station and set it on fire and now its gone. Its a real cool place and the hardware store is actually thriving like you wouldn’t believe (theres no other for many miles in every direction so the locals come from all around to shop there).

That hardware store is one of the largest lawnmower dealers in the region. How’d he do it? Facebook ads. Having an interest in internet marketing I asked the owner about it and he is just as shocked as I am that this store in the middle of actual nowhere can bring customers from Texas to New York state down to by lawnmowers from him. Its amazing, here is a link if you’re interested… Stafford Equipment & Safford Trading Co.

So this old man whom is not known to me lived in an old (and very run down) house between my friend’s place and the store. He passed on and after his affairs were handled his house was just left wide open. Door open and all the stuff still in it. After seeing that for a while we decided to take a peek inside. Mainly to see what was up and we could see stuff through the open door so we wondered why they wouldn’t secure it. Well when we looked inside we understood why the house wasn’t secured. It was completely trashed with garbage and in the process of falling down.

Go around back to the barn there are wild cats everywhere. Apparently the man had been feeding them and they just kept reproducing. Two of the cats found their way over to my friends farm and have stayed since. We went back there to bring them food and there it was. In the barn, under years of dust and debris, a 1974 Dodge Charger V8.

It was in great shape considering. Few rust spots but nothing too crazy. The interior was the worst with mold and mildew growing all over it. It didn’t smell as bad as you would think inside. Was old and musty but not rank. We were able to open the door and look around. Thankfully the cats didn’t get in!

The odometer reads 10,506 which I assume is 110,506. No way its only 10k miles. The tag date sticker reads 97 so someone at least kept it register for 20 years and then its been in the barn since them. Twenty years of driving has to be more than 10k miles. Especially out in the country. Everything is far in rural areas.

You shoulda had a V8

After we were all through checking it out I went back to the house and did some research. Unfortunately it would have cost more than it was worth to restore the thing even if the family had given it to us for free. The V8 model was worth considerably more than the V6 but still even with that it wouldn’t have been worth it unless you just happen to have a love for this model and year of car. Hopefully the family does do something cool with it or gets it to someone who does want it. I would hate to see it scraped as its a piece of American history.

Thats about it. It was really cool to find this thing out of no where in the middle of no where. I assume the majority of folks won’t ever have that “barn find” moment in their life. Mine was with something as cool as an old muscle car. Even if I didn’t get to keep it!