by Michael Satterfield
Yvette VanDerBrink has a knack for finding some of the biggest barn-finds in the world. In 2018, VanDerBrink had just finished an auction of another collection when she was approached by a man, who had a collection of his own he wanted to show her, the quiet man in blue jeans known as Coyote Johnson. She got his address which didn't show up on GPS, but after getting close and heading down a few back roads she came upon a collection of barns and steel buildings, deep in the Iowa countryside.
Each building he showed her was filled to capacity with Chevelle’s, Camaros, Firebirds, GTO’s, Challengers, Cudas, Impalas, Tri-Five and more. Coyote Explained that he hadn’t shown anyone, not even family members, the collection in over 40 years. After seeing the collection and talking with Coyote she had to ask how he got his nickname.
When Coyote was in High School, he got a call from his mom, she said had bought him a car. A 1969 Road Runner, a car that is still in his collection. “Every summer weekend, if you had a hot car, you went outside Farragut, Iowa and race.” The Coyote and Road Runner cartoons were popular and someone dubbed him "Coyote" and the name just stuck.
Owner of a successful contracting company, he started buying classic cars for his collection. At first, he would restore and drive them, but once he got so many, the collection just kept growing and he would simply buy them and pack them away in one of the outbuildings on his property. Today the collection has over 100 muscle cars. While he is selling most of the collection, he will keep just a handful of them including his high school car and Dad’s 1957 Chevrolet.
The cars he is not keeping well all be sold at a NO-Reserve on Sept. 14th, 2019 at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Red Oak, Iowa. The auction will be onsite and with online bidding. For more information visit
VanDerBrinkAuctions.com.
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