Ever wanted to find a cool old vintage British motorcycle leaning up in a barn? Who hasn’t? But have you ever dreamed of finding 180 of them bad boys in one place? Hold on to your butts, y’all. This is one of the craziest barn finds we have ever seen.

Barn find alert: 180 vintage British bikes uncovered

The barn find craze has left many vintage car and motorcycle collectors feeling like they missed the boat. We’ve all seen maybe just one too many stories of someone finding a 1938 knucklehead in a barn and snagging it for $500. The stories of someone tracking down a 250 GTO in a barn in France or somesuch have turned us green enough times to kill the hope of still being the main character in one of these legendary barn find stories. Well, here we go again. 

According to Silodrome,  the folks at Hitchcock’s Motorcycles, a British bike specialist located in Solihull, between Birmingham and Coventry, just became the main characters in the next legendary barn find. 

The lads just finished unloading and cataloging 180 vintage British bikes along with over 50 tons of spare parts, including engines, frames, exhaust, seats, and more. The haul came from a warehouse in the U.S. via five 40ft shipping containers. 

What bikes were in the barn find hoard, you ask? 

The collection really covers the Bristish isle almost entirely. There are examples from BSA, Triumph, AJS, Norton, AJS, Coventry Eagle, Velocette, and a large number of Royal Enfields. The bikes range in condition from really rough to some just missing a few pieces like bars or seats, and others look like they are ready for a change of fluids and a good ride. 

If it makes any of our greener readers feel any better, this deal took years to complete. This wasn’t someone stumbling up on Paw Paw’s barn and getting the deal of a lifetime. This was a long and difficult process, and even though the deal is done now, the folks at Hitchock’s still have a lot of work ahead of them. While we all want to know where exactly the hoard of vintage British motorcycles came from, the best we have is “an undisclosed location somewhere in Michigan.” 

Moving a collection of bikes like this takes a lot of work

As we mentioned, Silodrome states that the bikes took four shipping containers to get back to England. All of these bikes you see here were stored on a second-floor loft. This means each bike had to be hoisted down with a winch. This process took a full week alone. 

You might recall I said there were five shipping containers earlier, and there were. The fifth container came from a separate location, and if you can believe it, there are more bikes to come from this second location.