Barns full of 300 cars including rare Ferraris, Corvettes, and Porsches were hidden for 30 years. Now, the collection is going to auction with a Youtuber’s help.

• A 300-car, three-barn find filled with rare and vintage cars – such as Ferraris, Fords, Corvettes, and Lamborghinis – has been unveiled in a YouTube video by Larry Kosilla of AMMO NYC.
• The cars are all owned by a secret collector, and the majority of them will go up for auction.
• AMMO NYC currently has 1.35 million subscribers, and as of April 20, the YouTube video tour of one of the barns has 2.2 million views.
• Kosilla will help preserve some of the cars in the collection.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A 300-car, three-barn find filled with vintage Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Corvettes, and more has been unveiled by YouTuber and car preservationist Larry Kosilla.

The owner of the collection, who preferred to remain anonymous according to Kosilla, allowed the Youtuber to film a tour of one of the barns, as well as the restoration of a Bizzarrini P538 said to be worth almost $1 million. Kosilla then documented a tour of one of the three barns and posted it to his YouTube channel, AMMO NYC, which currently has 1.35 million subscribers.

The video – which was filmed before the coronavirus pandemic – was initially posted on April 10. The video tour has 2.2 million views as of April 20.

It’s no surprise the barn find has piqued the interest of millions of viewers. It’s filled with rare finds from all across the US and Europe, including cars made by Ferrari, Ford, Oldsmobile, Matra Djet, and Rolls-Royce, to name a few.

Kosilla himself hasn't seen the full collection yet, in part because the coronavirus pandemic has hindered several of his plans to continue viewing and working on the collection.

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Kosilla first heard about the collection around three years ago, he told Business Insider.

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Friends of the owner initially contacted Kosilla and asked if he could detail the cars.

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According to Kosilla, he is one of “very few people who have had access to these kinds of things and experience with these types of valuable paint jobs.”

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"They called me because my job is to preserve what's there and to remove the very minimum amount, the least amount, without damaging what's there," Kosilla said.

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However, due to a variety of reasons — such as the owner's constant traveling — Kosilla was unable to see the collection for three years.

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Earlier in 2020, the owner suddenly called Kosilla asking him to help with the collection as he was running out of storage space in the warehouses, according to Kosilla.

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The collection started taking up so much room, it became difficult to walk around the storage units.

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The owner told Kosilla it was time to start working on the cars so he could clear up his storage space to make room for more collections

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The owner of the massive collection wants Kosilla to keep his identity and location a secret.

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According to Kosilla, this is a common practice among the car collectors that he's come across.

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Unlike this owner, about nine out of 10 car collectors won't even allow Kosilla to film their collections.

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“I want to shoot the videos because the videos are fun,” Kosilla explained, “I love talking about it and sharing it.

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“You know how many people have emailed me like, ‘This is amazing. I feel like I was there with you. It's so cool,’?” Kosilla said. “It's like a shared experience.”

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The mysterious owner intends to sell the majority — with the expectation of a few vehicles of sentimental value — of his collection that he's spent the past three decades building.

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However, because of the pandemic, plans to move forward with the preservation and selling of collection has come to a halt.

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But since the video was released, the collector has been getting messages about the cars "left, right, and center," according to Kosilla.

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The cars in the collection aren’t grouped together by make or model.

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Instead, they’re scattered throughout the warehouses depending on when the owner collected the vehicle.

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Kosilla still hasn't seen one of the warehouses yet.

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Instead of limiting his collection to specific makes, models, and years, the collector "went wherever his heart went," according to Kosilla.

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“I’ve met the guy a thousand times,” Kosilla spoke of the anonymous collector. “He’s a very sweet guy, very smart. He’s driven by his passion, which is cool because he knows everything about every single one of [the cars].”

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The owner can also recall information about the date and time of the cars' purchase, as well as his reason for purchasing the vehicle.

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Despite this immense passion, Kosilla says the car collection owner doesn't work in any related auto industry.

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Instead, the collector is instead motivated by his love for cars.

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“He would tell me a 20-minute story, literally, for every call, which was pretty cool,” Kosilla said.

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In terms of Kosilla's experience, he said the tour of the first warehouse was "quite a trip" and one of the top five barn finds he had ever seen.

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There were also about 10-12 cars in the collection that he had never seen in real life prior to his initial tour of the storage units, including several one-off cars.

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"I was excited, a little overwhelmed, shocked, and then certainly overwhelmed after I settled down and was like, 'Okay. How do I execute this preservation?'" Kosilla said.

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He described the storage of the cars as Tetris-like, all stacked and aligned perfectly.

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The storage area was so tight, he struggled to walk around without hitting his head on the lifts that suspended a multitude of the cars in the air to allow for more storage space.

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Some of his favorites in the collection include the Ford GT40s, a Ferrari Lusso, and a Lamborghini LM002 truck that may have been owned by Nicholas Cage.

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Kosilla's full role in the 300-car collection is still unclear, in part because the pandemic has halted any work related to it.

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However, he hopes to clean the cars and "get them back into shape ... to be able to get in front of people to show the history."

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In theory, if Kosilla had the ability to work on every single car without interruption, he predicts he could finish all of them in two months.

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But this jumps to four months if he were to complete the repairs while documenting the process on video for his popular YouTube channel.

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However, Kosilla doesn't think every car will be cleaned and preserved because some would-be customers could want them untouched.

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Kosilla specifically wants to take part in the preservation of the two Plymouth Superbirds in the collection, including one that will have an intricate paint removal process.

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As of now, he doesn't know how long he will spend on the restoration process, or how many cars he will ultimately clean and preserve.

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On average, he predicts that many of the cars won't need extensive work beyond a "fluff and puff" such as a wash, wax, and "some love."

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"You want to feel like you're a part of history when you do something like that," Kosilla said.

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The cars likely won't be auctioned all at once, but instead in batches of about 10, 20, or 100.

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Kosilla and the owner have also received requests from several auction houses.

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"[People are] just emailing and calling and calling, emailing and emailing, but there's just nothing that can be done because you can't even go to the DMV," Kosilla said.

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"There're no workers to move cars around," he continued. "So it's a little bit of a funky time."

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But even after the cars have been auctioned, Kosilla predicts the owner will continue his lifelong passion for collecting cars.