Barn find

I recieved this as an email.

You need to read the boxed text before checking out the pics below

A New York man, retired. He wanted to use his retirement money wisely, so it would last, and decided to buy a home and a few acres in Portugal. The modest farmhouse had been vacant for 15 years; the owner and his wife had both died, and there were no heirs. The house was sold to pay taxes. There had been several lookers, but the large barn had steel doors, and they had been welded shut. Nobody wanted to go to the extra expense to see what was in the barn, and it wasn't complimentary to the property anyway... so nobody made an offer on the place. The New York guy bought it at just over half the propetrty's worth, moved in, and set about to tear into the barn...curiosity was killing him. So, he and his wife bought a generator, and a couple of grinders...and cut thru the welds. What was in the barn...?

The male I was with, when reading the email was agog, drool dripping from his chin, no doubt imagining himself unlocking such a treasure. I was more pragmatic, I wanted to know the story behind the photographs, careless of what particular make & model each was. After being assured that the expression 'barn find' was indeed an accepted & used expression for such a situation, we both searched for more info on the web, and found -

The guy "E" who put up these pictures in February 2007, had stumbled upon a Portugese web forum that contained a large number of pictures of old cars left in a barn, and he put them up on intuh.net, and since then the story of the barn full of classic and not-so-classic cars seems to have taken on a life of its own. The interwebs have been abuzz with theories and he believes the 'New York guy' story is an urban myth.

Tom Cotter says he contacted the photographer who was sworn to secrecy about the cars’ location and the owner’s name. However, he was able to obtain permission from the elusive owner to give the following information:
The owner of the cars was a car dealer in the 1970s and 1980s, and decided to save the more interesting cars that came through his doors. When the barn was full, he padlocked and welded the doors shut. There are 180 cars in the barn, and none of the cars is for sale.

I'm still wondering why you'd build such a huge ugly edifice, fill it, then weld it shut!