ABANDONED BARN FIND First Wash In 25 Years Borgward Isabella! Satisfying Car Detailing Restoration

This barn door hasn't been opened in the last 25 years, so today we're searching for treasure. Now this is where I need you to become a detective. What we have here is a black, boardward Isabella Coupe from between 1955 and 1960, and it came from Europe where it was sitting in a barn that had a barn fire. The car had burlap sacks that were sitting on the hood, and they caught fire which charred the paint on it. And it's still in the exact same condition today as when it came from that barn. Now what I need from you is if you know what this car is, we want to try to figure out what year it is and what's so special about it. So as you're watching the video, if you can find any significant details about it that can help you figure it out, leave a comment down below. The first thing we had to do was pump up the tires with air and see if they would hold, and surprisingly they actually did. And then our new friend Jeff hooked up his antique tractor to the back of the car to see if he was able to pull it out, but because it's been sitting there for so long we were having no luck. And this is where we had a genius idea. I didn't show you guys this yet, but around this property there are so many antique cars, like a BMW Isetta, and then this Bentley that used to be owned by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself. This was her stateside Bentley. So when all else fails, what do you do? You use Queen Elizabeth's Bentley as a tow point. We were able to rig something up going all the way into the backyard, all the way from our trailer attached to the Isabella, and when we started pulling it actually began to move. And with a little bit of engineering, this Isabella's seeing the light of day for the first time again in 25 years. Now I will say we didn't know what type of condition it was in before we got there, and as soon as we saw it coming out and got it back to our shop, we were able to actually take a look over this thing. And I'll let RJ tell you what we're thinking. All right, so we have the BorgWarn Isabella back to the shop, and now that we see it under better lighting and can get a good look at everything, this thing is whoop. Sometimes we get called for cars that are a little too far gone, or in this case way too far gone for our detailing skills, but in the case of this car, it's going to be for sale. The owner has a large collection, he's trying to move a lot of cars, so we're going to try and make it look better, presentable to somebody who will then actually do a frame off restoration, because that's what this car is going to need. But what I will say, ignoring all the rust, the styling of this car is amazing. Apparently during this time period, BorgWarn was really innovative in their design. His wife had an affinity for the Carbon Ghia, and he decided that he was going to follow that design cue and make this car. It was actually considered a very good looking car for its time, and actually I think it still looks pretty good. Now the trunk. Oh wow. So we have an old German license plate. It says... Oh no. Hap to... Oh my god. It's from Stuttgart West, and that's all I can tell you guys. Stuttgart. My buddy lives in Stuttgart. Looks like we have another grill piece and a ton of hubcaps. I bet these hubcaps are probably worth some change if you're looking for them. Should we go to the inside? If you think the outside looks bad, we'll show you the inside. And as we move into the interior, it gets no better. It looks like the floors are pretty much completely rotted. We're gonna have to sit on the rockers here in order to clean anything, because I don't trust this floor at all. But we have like skeletons of some type of creature. I'm not even sure what this is. More bones. Whatever it was, it was kind of big. There's more bones back here. This thing, as our good friend and teammate Mike would say, has seen better days. With all that being said, we are going to take everything apart, clean it up as best we can, try to make it presentable so that somebody can take it the rest of the way, and get this thing back on the road in some way, shape, or form. What do you think the odds are that I can make this thing shiny? Zero. Zero? I bet you I'll give it a nice patina, a glossy patina look. There's no way. I mean, what do you guys think? Do you think RJ can bring this paint back at all? Leave a comment. But starting out on the detail, there was this padding or foam or something on the inside of the headlights. We went ahead and pulled that out first. And the glass in the headlight was also loose. So we wanted to make sure that we could get that out so we wouldn't break anything. So we first started with the wheels. And I don't know what happened, but when we went to put the hubcap back on, all the rust must have gotten knocked right off of it. I think some new tires may be in the near future. And now we'll start rinsing the dust away to see what's underneath. I want to take a second to let you guys know that we just found two of the rarest cars that we're ever going to feature on this channel. So I would check to make sure you're subscribed. And if you're not, I would highly recommend doing that with your notifications on because you don't want to miss them. And since, you know, this car is probably going to be back on the road by next week, we got to make sure we clean the gas cap. That way it can be filled up and ready to go. Oh, and you should probably start from the top of the car when you guys clean cars at home. But we do it this way because if we started from the top, you'd have nothing else to watch because the rest of the car would just get cleaned in the process. All right. So it took a while for us to get the hood latch open. We finally did it. And this is what the engine bay looks like. So here's the little inline four. You have one, two, three, four spark plugs there. I wonder if we can turn it by hand. Oh, it turns. Get out of here. I would have not expected that. But we have to get the airbox up and out first. Something's been living in here. Well, they've been served. Oh, yeah. Look at that. So the old filters were actually just metal grates. And you have a nice hornet's nest that was being built right there. Or bees nests. Hornet, bee. I always get it wrong. So now that we've got a good look at the engine, we're going to go ahead and clean it. We started by vacuuming all the debris out. It was very short lived because we found a very quick surprise. Holy crap. Bioskeleton. It's a random spot. It's a whole thing. Oh, my God. Eww. So much more. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, who knows how long that was sitting in there? Now, with the engine, when we started cleaning it, we noticed there was a substantial amount of grease that started coming off. And I had the great idea that using some degreaser and steel wool would take it the extra mile. And wait till you guys see the result. It's outstanding. All right. So this is a little segment we like to call. Your face. Where I practice my PDR skills. It really is a soft touch. There was also a piece of plaster or something stuck to the paint. So with a rubber razor at about a 30 degree angle, we were able to get it off. I think our plan of action is to pull all the carpeting out and then we'll go ahead and vacuum everything. From there, we'll assess how bad this floor is. I don't think we're going to be able to actually sit in the car. So we're going to have to clean from, again, the rocker. So let's, I guess, start back here. I got to get the chicken nuggets off there. Dude, that's a big bird, whatever that was. It smells so bad. It smells disgusting. Okay. What do you think would happen if you stepped on that right now? Yabba dabba doo. So now you guys have seen this much of the car. Leave a comment if you think it's even worth trying to save or if you think it's more of a parts car or if it's even too far gone for any of that. All right. So for the door cards, we're going to clean them up as best we can. It is falling off the actual door. But there's definitely enough here to where this can be salvaged. So we're going to clean that. And then up here, we're actually going to leave it alone completely. It looks like it's some type of composite wood with a nice wood grain finish over top. Obviously, that has deteriorated a lot. But the owner, again, wants to have a template in order to restore it. So we're just going to leave this alone because it's a bit too fragile for us to do any cleaning. And truth be told, it wouldn't make any difference at all. I wanted to show all these buttons on the dash. I've never seen a dash that's set up quite like this. With these big ceramic buttons and and all these different toggles in a line. The one big question that I had, obviously, this one is for fan. I'm assuming heat. This one looks like the dim light for the speedometer and whatnot. Dome light. But then we have big light, fog light. Oh, that's what it is. And then this is high beam. So this is your normal beam, your fog light and your high beam. There's the windshield wiper. Oh, that I thought was a magnet. But there's an e-brake in there. Oh, no, that's a wiper. Yeah, look at that. Wait, is that what it is? That's obviously you're totally right. That is a wiper. But it looks like an e-brake or maybe it's like a I don't know, super strange. I wonder what those different knobs do. You should pull the one above it. Oh, my God. Oh, I thought I broke it. I thought I snapped it right off. I was going to say, oh, no. Oh, man. All right. Well, I'm not going to pull any more buttons or knobs because I don't want that to happen to the other ones. So there you go. If you guys have any answers for us, leave a comment. But now we're going to go ahead and clean up the steering wheel. I always love when they have this chrome on them because then we can take steel wool and some blue magic metal polish and really bring that part back to life. And now we'll empty out the trunk and take out the mat. And I think this part was the most pungent when it came to the smell of mouse urine. So once we got it out, we gave it a very good cleaning because it was disgusting. Now, a lot of the times when chrome or bumpers have rust on them, I'm able to take most of it off. But in this case, it sat for so long and ate so much away that a lot of it was not going anywhere. So the best we could do was improve, not perfect. All right. So obviously the front of the car, there was not much that I could do. I tried my best to make it shine a little bit. Didn't really work out. But the back of the car, the roof, the trunk, everything came out OK. It came out nicer, which is frustrating because as a detailer in this business or I guess in life in general, I want to be perfect. I want to be the best that I can be. I want to do the best work that I can do. And I want it to speak for itself. But you don't always get that satisfaction. So although I didn't fully make the car look amazing, I still made it look a lot better. So it's kind of something that I keep in my own head for my own personal life. And I think you guys should as well. You know, as long as you gave it your best effort, you got a little bit better. Like we made this car look a little bit better and gave it the opportunity to potentially have a second life. Do the same for yourself. So we're going to finish up the detail by cleaning the windows and dressing the tires. If you guys enjoyed the video, please give it a like. It really helps us out. And like I said earlier, make sure you subscribe to the channel because we have some crazy stuff coming in the next few weeks. And with that being said, we'll see you next Saturday.