Barn Find 1980s NASCAR Thunderbird & Buick Saved From Time! Abandoned After Days of Thunder Filming

We're the hillbilly pickers. So, do your negotiations usually go that well? Yeah, sometimes. Somewhere in these woods, there's a shipping container with an old Budmore Thunderbird stuffed in it that has not seen the light of day in 30 years. Appears we have entered a graveyard of fox bodies and other mustangs. Oh my god. Well, I guess we are walking to wherever this thing is. Yeah, this way they go. Right there. This thing's grown up a bit since I was over here a couple years ago. Hey, you didn't prepare me for this. I would have brought long pants. Well, I figured you'd clean this one up. You said you wanted to see it where it was at. Yeah. I would rather cut it out and hang it in the shop. Yeah, that's what we needed. Was that an old Bud Moore car? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was a Motorcraft 37 car. They changed it to 11 for the movie. Yeah, because the the Budweiser car wasn't supposed to be damaged. Oh. Didn't you say you came to look at this car in the same spot a long time ago? 2001. Come here and looked at it. I was working for Bill Elliot at that time and we was getting into restoring vintage cars. Was looking for cars and Bill knew knew these guys and he said they got car sitting up there in trailer. Why don't you go up there and look at that car? And I come up here and looked at it and seen it and seen that it was an old banjo car. And at that time we was hunting Hopkins cars. Bunny Hopkins cars said we don't want an old banjo rear steer car. left it sitting here for another 20 23 years. Yeah. Jeez. Did it look just like it looks right now? It doesn't The condition doesn't look any more no more dirt. The tires were flapped in. Uh probably didn't have as much stuff piled on it then. The headers are right there in the pasture. Okay. See, they're piled up in there. I wonder what the inside of that engine looks like. Uh about like the outside of this car looks like. Yeah. Okay. Hey, come on now. So, nobody was prepared for this? No, I think he kept it to himself. Was he said there was work involved? Nobody would want to go, right? We're the hillbilly pickers. How many times you actually have to get a skid steer out to clear way to drag a car out? [Music] No spray. Don't spray. Not good anymore. Hey, it's not even good anymore. I'm going to take it to the engine builder and I want it disassembled, clean, maybe rings, bearings, but leave all the internals that's in it. Clean them, refurbish them if possible, put them back together. That would be a cool video. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want it I don't want it changed. as as much parts that can be reused, reusable. Um, but it, you know, this trailer seems to be pretty dry inside. I mean, you know, floor doesn't seem to have rot. Normally, when these things start leaking, you know, they they literally come apart. You hope the block didn't have water in it when they placed it in here. Yeah. I said, it had water in it, you know, it's frozen, but that's a crap shoot. Good size rat nest right there. So there's some serious rat poop going on there. This car has the actual Baltimore engine, transmission, suspension, everything under it. It's an actual race car, not, you know, just a movie car. All the sound that is in the days of Thunder movie was this car making after laugh while they were taking audio recordings of it. Whatever you hear out there running around, the sound is from this car. You'll notice it in one of the pit roof seams in its Mocraft 15 colors. And then you'll notice it has the Budweiser 11 car. You see the 11 is still on the roof, but look on the dash. You'll see the motor. It's still on the dash, but they beat it up. There's one scene where Ed and the the Chevrolets are banging against each other three wide coming to the strike. Uh, this car got beat up and uh, Jerry then said, "Uh-uh." They brought it back. They fixed the sides, put it primer in it, pushed it in here, and it's been here ever since. Wow. Uh, Jerry Mason, Alan's dad worked for Bud Moore for like 25 years. And, as he told us, he burned 63 of the cars that was used in the film. But there were two Thunderbirds in there. One of them they painted in the sitco. this one in the Budweiser colors because Sitco paid them money, Budweiser paid them money, so they painted over the morgrad. And uh so this is one of the the actually the one of the primary cars. Who has the Banjo numbers? Uh Bill's got a catalog cuz he bought a lot of chassis, a lot of his chassis came from Banjo until Banjo went out of business. Bill Elliot. Mhm. For people. Yeah. He told me, he said, "Give me the numbers off of it." And he said, "I can research it." So what I'm after is see when Banjo built that chassis and you know it may be an 87 86 87 chassis. So then it's a Mocraft Ricky Road part. If it goes back the early '80s 81 2 3 that's what I learned. Wouldn't the number be on the spring perch up there somewhere or something? It should uh banjo u you know uh normally had like a BP and uh four digits on there or three or four digits and normally it's on the right front spring perch and so we get it out we'll kind of look for one and then like say with Bill's help we try to try to document come out there yesterday I mean, it has every single original part from period correct under here. That is a Bud Moore motor plate right there. [Music] I think that hood latch popped. Yeah. I don't want it to fall on us. Big old radiator. This is um supposedly a Speedway car. Probably a Daytona, Talladega, something like that car. One reason why it's got such a massive radiator in it. Uh okay. It is a Windsor block. It's not a Cleveland. So, the motor is at least an 85 model. That's one of the old Lemons distributors. See the the cable drive the cap off right here for the cable drive for the mechanical tachometer. Yeah, those distributors are super rare. So, were those built for the GT40 stuff? Yeah, GT40s used them. Of course, those had big blocks in them. Uh, but the Trans Am cars and even uh the NASCAR used those Jones cable driven tachometers that just they became the Roso cable driven tachometers. Those are pretty sought after now. When you're doing a restoration on an older car, I've had to pay $600 or $700 for a used tachometer. And they have a key on them where you can reset them. Got a little key. So it's got a tail tail and you have to put the key in there and turn it and it'll go back to zero. Interesting. Inner crush. inner crush tub panel. They wrecked it in that movie. They beat both sides all the hell. Yeah. Um and so that's that's the repairs from it that hasn't been painted since then. A lot of times they'd put whatever designation they gave to a car, they would scribe it on it or write on it. You know, this goes to car number and it ain't door number car. It's just their inhouse numbering system for a particular car. Right. You think that's the one for this car? Yeah, I found it in the trunk. Oh, okay. And so there's not one bolted in it cuz So I'm assuming that it's a right everything's a right length. So I'd say yeah, that is the dry bracing. I don't know about you, but that looks like blue paint on that bar. Oh, it does. That looks like blue paint to me. Well, let's say Look right in here, too. In the body. Yeah. Look here at the body line. See the See the paint? Oh, yeah. There is blue. Yeah. I bet that's the blue. Yeah. I bet that's the motorcraft blue stripe right there. And not the um Wrangler color. I mean, not that it isn't. You know, it's the the Wrangler car was a earlier a little bit earlier T-Ird than this one. Has a different body. The body's different. I was looking to see if there were different color paint chips on the chassis, but the windshield bedding on this thing. I mean, it's got an 8788 nose on it, but this windshield bedding is earlier. The 8788, the windshield was up here, bedded down like this. This is like 83 85. Interesting. I wonder if this is like updated a little bit to be a backup car or something. Well, what I'm what what it may be is a Delart senior car. And this, like I say, this windshield bedding isn't an 8788. That's an 8385 bedding. So, you can change the front nose on one. And um and the rear bumper cover is a little different on the 8788, but the rest of the T-Ird body is pretty much the same. And also notice how the roof rails are rolled over on the side of this car. You know, they're wider apart than a lot of them are like right here. It's right here. Yeah. They didn't actually put the riveted on roof rails themselves on the car until like 88 or 89, didn't they? Well, this is uh it's got an 88 I mean 87 nose on it. No, no, no, wait. We get it out there and see the nose a little bit better. It may be an 88 black. It's an 87 or 88 nose that's on it. I couldn't get couldn't get down and see the front balance well enough. Get close to the front part. The plan is to take it apart, blast it or paint it back like whichever we decide. Once we done how old it went back to, we take it back as old as we can and restore it to just like it is in a running configuration, but just for use or playing [Music] around take something like this and go out and crash it. It's too dangerous. Yeah. You can't replace history. No, you can't. And you got one shot at this right here. You only find one. It's only in this condition one time. over here. This is just freaking wild. I I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am, in spite of getting attacked by mosquitoes and everything. If you think this is cool, please help us do more of these by hitting a thumbs up on this video. It helps more people find it. which enables us to travel farther, um, be gone longer, do more things that are basically not right in our backyard. Subscribing helps, too. If you want to see more videos like this, go to the channel page. You can find the 150 something videos we've done like this before. I think you got it. All right. Somebody start playing music or something. It's first time it's moved and getting something over on it. Yeah. I can I don't know if it'll be uh keep y'all got to start yelling. Is it coming straight? Hang on. Gear. Hang on. Let off the pressure. Let off the pressure a little bit. Take up. Oh, is it here? Yeah. Try that now. All right. Hey, [Music] roll. How many years? How many years? How many years? Early 90s. early 90. You think it'll drag up here? No, I just don't want it to come loose when we get down here and go back in the trailer. Yeah, I don't. That would be bad. It likes where it is. All [Music] right, let's do one thing. Hold up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. [Music] Hey, wait a minute. I know another op y'all. Watch me. Are we touching? Not quite. Okay, watch what we're doing. Oh, that didn't sound good. Yeah, that's why I wanted them to watch cuz I don't want to bust my spoiler. Um, if I can get it, if I can get the tire to the edge, I can pick it up with the tire and bring it out. So, regardless of what you do with it, at this point, it's not going to help. this was a Crisco car. We're We're too We're on the truck so far now. We're not changing We're not changing the size of the height of the car. She's so cute. She said she's hot and she wish y'all left her home. She said, "I didn't know this was going to happen." I didn't either. He sent me the location and it was the the hobby shop. I'm like, "Oh, that's fine. Yeah, we can bring the dog." They're like, "Oh, no. We got to drive 15 miles over and get something out of the woods." Oh, well, I have a lunch box with like ice and water in it for her and stuff. say the main thing is it don't matter about the rest of y'all as long as I'm took care of it. You know, this whole clearance issue really ruined the cinematic moment of pulling the car out of the [Music] container. We get like 3/4 of the way there. Then it's got to be like, wait a minute, we got to get the monkey and the football real quick. All right. Is the tire on the other side on the truck? Just Wow. Right on. You happy? I don't I don't know whether I'm happy or I'm looking forward to several years of hard work and [Music] I was I was draining these three months. It took me 6 months to get to. Here's your good look at what an authentic exhaust system looks like in the late 1980s. The standard 3 and 1/2 in pipe squished down to oval. Ends are banded. H pipe. [Music] Now we can see it a lot better. And I want to know what the inside of that engine looks [Music] like. Sharing is too. We got a little bit matter now. We'll do it when we get [Music] shot. [Music] Three. The irony. It was made to look like a Jeff Bodine car, but this was actually driven by his brother Brett. It goes up. We couldn't find the hood. Here it is. What' that go on? 63 gallons. Holy That's worth money right there. So, this was done with Budweiser because the original Budweiser car got screwed up. Well, it was done Budweiser, but it wasn't supposed to get wrecked. Oh, the Motorcraft car was going to get wrecked. The Budweiser car wasn't. We painted the motorcraft car Budweiser to keep the original race car from getting tore up. Oh, but they continue filming until they tore it up. If you ever been around movie, that's the way they do. So, you're taking this back to the other place? Yeah. Put it in our trailer. Okay. I have an eye for this stuff. I don't know what you paid for the car, but I think that's I think that's the hood for it. Sure enough. Is it yours now? I think so. It should be. That's the hood to it. I get that out. Hang it up. Man, ain't going to be a rattlesnake. Big as You go first. Now, I don't have any homeowners here on that in there. Don't worry, I'm not sure. Watch out for the wrecking ball. Every shop has one of those, right? Chain that for the chain game. Yep. That's the hood to it. I put that on your wall, man. A real days of thunder Budweiser [Music] hood post crash. That better be worth $25, shouldn't it? So, you could probably sell that and break even on the rest of the car, right? Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, that we might as well throw that in there with the rest of the junk. I would. I know some guy up in Ohio would love to have this. I wonder if the sides are anywhere out here. They kept the hood. I don't know. They might. Here, Mike. Put this in your throat. You say I never gave you nothing. That was worth it. I want to get rid of them. This That's the show car nose. I mean, they're usable racing, but that's uh I think they made those for the show cars. Is that a Thunderbird nose? Aluminum nose? No, it's a Thunderbird nose, but it's plastic. It's all one piece and it's plastic molded. That's not the one I'm talking about. What do you want for this one? I don't know. $5,000. What do you get for it? Uh, I don't know. Not that. Oh, we're way off, right? I better get out of here. You want the plastic node? Damn, but that that thing ain't worth much. Uh, I've got I've actually got some real ones. I don't care. Like I said, make offer. I don't need it. 100 bucks. You need it, take it with you. That's a long way from five grand. I'm going to be like, I'm reasonable. I wish more people were like you. I mean, I would rather somebody have it that's going to use it is my point. So, do your negotiations usually go that well? Yeah, sometimes I'm going to have to ask you to come with me. Okay. Yeah. So, if we would had to come here to get my car now as Carlos is over there, I'd never hear the end of it. How long has this thing been in here? I think it's been in here about a year. 6 months. Whenever you bought it, I got it. Yeah. It was in a Ruford, North Carolina in a uh a restored service station. The fella that bought it had it in there and had the service station all kind of restored as a toy box and uh uh he died and it set and the service station did and the wife got an offer on the property or sold the property and needed to get rid of the car and and uh so here we are. So, uh, Jerry's son, Allan, Jerry passed away last year, but was gracious enough to remove it before the demolition started on the building and stored it in this container for the last 6 months. But, but as he was telling us, they Jerry Mason, they supplied 63 of the cars that was used in the movie Days of Thunder, and this is one of them. Original white [Applause] letters. I'm surprised they still hold air. [Applause] Yeah, that looks like a factory Regal grill under that mesh there. Does it still have the original engine? No. Just a crate motor of some kind. Do you know the backstory of like what happened? How did it get purchased from Stavas? Or what's your name? Um I sure don't. Uh the fellow that's buying the car might have more information than that. Interesting. No rear steer car for real. You never know these days. Before someone barks up in the comments, "Oh, it's a Bobby Hillen car. It's ain't Bobby Ellison car. It's the Bobby Hillen car. You're wrong is my disclaimer. I don't know what it is. In 1988 when Bobby Ellison was driving for the Stavola Brothers, that was his last year of racing. They had two cars. They both looked the same essentially minus the number. Now, this postcard here is has a 84 on it. This was after Bobby's wreck when he was no longer racing. But Bobby Hillen drove an identical car to Bobby Allison at that time. Now, why this is significant is this particular car is a rear steer car. There is a very interesting story about Bobby Allison and front steer cars. If you're big into history, you know Bobby was kind of like the pioneer of the front steer chassis all the way back to the the '60s where Front Steer didn't become mainstream in NASCAR until into the early 90s. Everybody was still using the rear steer banjo stuff. Well, Bobby was running Front Steer forever. And this is actually a story that came directly from Bobby yesterday where he got into a big skiff with his crew chief at Stav because he did not want to put the front steer setup on Bobby's car and Bobby said if you don't put front steer on my car I'm leaving. So they ended up putting front steer on his car but Bobby Hillen's car stayed rear steer. So, this car having a rear steer chassis makes me think it may have been a Bobby Hillen car that they renumbered to be Bobby Allison car because that's the the cooler one. The second thing you'll notice is the nose on these Buick Regals. This postcard is from ' 89. This post car is from 89. Look at the noses on here. They got a big shelf. They have aluminum patches over where the headlights go. That was pretty common for the Buicks back then. Now, this car in the video has a much rounder, smoother Buick nose. That particular nose is more like 9091. And if you look at the contingency decals on the car, they the the Winston Cup decal says sports marketing 1992 on it. So, that's probably when somebody redid the car. My guess, this is just my guess. This is what I think. I don't know. My guess would be whenever the Stva brothers switched from Buick to Ford, this car got phased out. It still had the red chassis, which they use red chassis with the Snickers cars also after the Miller sponsorship ended. It had the red chassis. Doesn't appear to have any other paint colors underneath that red. So, somebody thought, "Oh, let's just take this and paint it back to Miller, make it a Bobby Allison car." Now, this is just my my opinion, my analysis of what I've observed and learned. It could be a chassis that Bobby Allison drove. I don't know if every single car he ever had over there was a front steer car. I don't know, but I want to find out. So, you think it's going to sound like a pickup truck or is it going to sound like a a half decent I think it should sound pretty good, but hasn't been ran for obviously a long time. So, it' be cool to get it running here. You pretend like I don't know that. You say that again. So, the motor and everything in this car was they took the race motor out, put this motor in for the movie. Uh, it's more of like a street car motor for the movie. And that was the last time actually the car was running on…