If you have not watched “Barn Find Hunter” on the Hagerty YouTube channel, you are missing out. The show is cool because it’s not just a string of amazing and wildly valuable cars found “hidden” in American garages and stuff. It is way more diverse and open than that. Take this episode for example. Tom Cotter cruises the country in his 1939 Ford and finds neat stuff, this time landing in Michigan at the home of 49-year Mercedes technician Ron Borher. This guy has a load of stuff ranging from Unimogs to a classic Chevy 2-ton truck. There’s (as you’d expect) plenty of Mercedes stuff to gawk at as well.
What we like about the show is that Cotter lets the subject largely tell the story and we really get to know them by what they say and what they own. In Borher’s case, the guy has neat stories of his life as a Mercedes wrench and we like his taste in collecting. Yeah, lots of the stuff here is tired and needs help but frankly it’s better to be in the hands of a guy like Borher than rotting in a scrap yard somewhere.
The Cosworth powered 190 is one of the only cars of its type we have ever seen and the way it is spoken about here, that thing is a unicorn among unicorns as far as Mercedes fans go. We bet it was a pretty zippy little driver back in the day as well. The straight five speed is a neat part of the car’s lore we did not know about until we heard it discussed here.
Dig the rigs, dig the cars, dig the story.
Sad …that MB 190e 2.3 will sit there and rot into the ground. One last comment…why do we have to joke about getting shot just stepping foot on one’s property?