MG Marks The Spot As Buried Treasure Takes Vintage Car Crown

A rare MG unearthed from beneath a cow shed in a rural English county has won Best Vintage Car at the Bristol Classic Car Show.

The man who restored the MG, Fred Body, bought the parts from the owner who uncovered the car in 1999.

According to the BBC, the 1928 MG MK IV was found "carefully dismantled" and buried beneath 50mm of concrete.

"I think what must have happened was the war was coming and someone thought 'they're not taking my car for scrap'," Mr Body told the BBC. 

"They carefully took it apart and buried it thinking they would come back and put it together again. It's weird really - most of it was there and most of it was as sound as a pound."

The car was found with the original number plates and guarantee plate intact.

While most of the leather had crumbled and some aluminium parts had corroded, few components were missing - except for the instruments.

"They probably adorned someone's fireplace," Mr Body reckons. "So they were the most difficult to find."

A spokesman for the Early MG Society confirmed that there was no history for the car until its discovery.

The spokesman also joked that it was a true "from the ground up" restoration.

The MG find is one of several on country properties throughout the UK. In 2010, an auction house was called in to catalogue a deceased estate when they found a barn filled with Bentleys, Maseratis and de Tomasos.

[photo by RJ Colmar, via Psycho on Tyres]