150 classic cars discovered in small South African town going on auction next week

Around 150 classic cars discovered in a barn in the small town of Barkly East, Eastern Cape, will be auctioned off by Joburg-based Creative Rides next week.

The 10-day, online-only sale starts on 25 March and will include vehicles such as vintage Cadillac Devilles, Chevrolet Novas and Impalas, Ford Fairlanes, and dozens of Mercedes-Benzes, to name but a few.

There will also be hundreds of items of automobilia; scores of engines across makes and models including monster V8s and V12s; barrels of classic car spares, car books, and original manuals; and a wide variety of original body parts from bumpers to tail lights.

The massive treasure trove forms part of some 600 vehicles owned and collected over five decades by late South African automotive legend Louis Coetzer.

“I’d struggle to name a single undiscovered, completely unknown barn collection of this size ever found outside of the United States. It’s crazy; more than 200 cars,” said Creative Rides CEO Kevin Derrick.

Barkly East barn find

Coetzer’s vehicles would likely have remained secret for the foreseeable future had it not been for the sale of a nondescript patch of land outside Barkly East back in May 2023.

What was supposed to be a simple, routine disposal of property turned into much more when Coetzer’s children decided that before they could sell the plot, they had to inspect the barn’s contents as it had stood deserted for many years, only to happen upon a time capsule of automotive art of which the world has rarely seen before.

They immediately called in Creative Rides, which has auctioned off previous Coetzer-owned cars, to assist in cleaning the vehicles and finding them new owners.

Joff van Reenen, Lead Auctioneer of Creative Rides, describes the moment when he first laid eyes on the collection as “both surreal and staggering.”

“It literally took my breath away stepping over the threshold, sunlight behind me and ahead disappearing into the gloom row after row of cars; all coated in decades of undisturbed dust,” said Van Reenen.

“I stood speechless for the longest time, blinking to adjust my eyes and thinking over and over that with the next blink this impossible vision would disappear like a mirage.”

It wasn’t until Van Reenen was put in charge of cleaning and cataloguing the cars that he recognised the true scale and significance of the discovery.

Over the months, he has amassed around 5,000 photos of the various vehicles and their accoutrements to create a comprehensive record of the collection as it was found.

“One would think that after the initial thrill of discovery the sense of awe would fade, but it hasn’t,” said the auctioneer.

“If anything, it’s grown over the months, and the more I’ve seen the more incredible it’s become.”

He said there is one memory from the cataloguing process that will stay with him for the rest of his life – the smell of fresh leather.

“Imagine walking among dozens of cars in the dimness of a huge barn in the middle of nowhere, and as far as the eye can see, decades of dust settled on once shiny paintwork now camouflages glorious design and creates a patina of age,” said Van Reenen.

“Then, you reach out to open a random door and ‘whoosh’ – you’re hit by a scent wave that scrambles your brain because your nose and eyes are suddenly at war. By the time you open the third car’s door, your mind finally catches up to your senses and you realise that the ‘whoosh’ is in fact the heady aroma that’s unique to quality leather interiors of new cars – time capsules of scent hidden under layers of grime and preserved untouched for decades.”

Over 30 years of auctioneering, it is the first time Van Reenen has ever experienced something like this, he said.

After the vehicles were cleaned, Creative Rides flew in the lead auctioneer of US-based Barrett-Jackson, one of the biggest auction houses in the world, to inspect the goods and provide his expert insights on their rarity and potential values.

According to Barret-Jackson’s Joseph Mast, two features of the barn find are noteworthy from an international perspective.

“The most obvious is scale. When collectors think of barn finds, they think of one or two cars,” said Mast.

“Every now and then Barrett-Jackson sees barn find collections comprising as many as 25 automobiles, but headlines blow up at those extremely rare times when forgotten caches of 50 to 100 cars are discovered. This South African barn find is much larger.”

The second is the fact that these vehicles are in relatively pristine condition for their age, with a thick layer of dust being the biggest cosmetic issue on many of them.

“For countless years they were stored indoors, protected from the elements both by the building in which they were found, and by its inland location nearly 1,800m above sea level,” said Mast.

“Collectively, this means these cars could possibly be amongst the best-preserved barn finds ever brought to market,” which he expects will reflect in their hammer prices.

The vehicles are already receiving plenty of interest from prospective buyers across the globe, according to Creative Rides’ Derrick.

The online auction catalogue can be viewed on the Creative Rides website as well as via the company’s app available on iOS and Android.

Bidding starts at 08h00 sharp on the morning of 25 March and will remain open until 3 April.