There are barn finds, and there are barn finds. Imagine pulling open the doors of a rural barn outside a hamlet near the Finnish-Russian border. Cobwebs brushed away, and with the soft Nordic light spilling in like a Neolithic tomb on a solstice dawn, you see the rust-mottled shell of an Escort half-buried beneath straw and farmer’s tools.
Somehow, it’s survived the murky depths of many Finnish winters, long months when the sun hardly rises above the horizon and temperatures linger so far below zero that if you touched the bodywork, your finger would stick to it. It has survived here for nearly 30 years, but even rusty two-door shells fetch good money these days, so if it was simply any old Escort, it would still be a fantastic find.
But, as is evidenced by the
