In the spring of 2025, posts on VKontakte went viral about an enterprising Taganrog resident who was able to make money by restoring a rare car and then selling it. We have verified the accuracy of these reports.
May 14 public "Brain explosion” on VKontakte (5.5 million views at the time of writing this analysis) shared the following story: “A resident of Taganrog bought an old car in the USA for $9,000, invested $6,000 in its repair and then sold it for $80,000. What a businessman!” Attached to the post was a series of six photographs: it is assumed that five of them show the car before repair, and the sixth - after. Authors of the public "How is this possible?"(265,000 views) called this Taganrozh resident a genius, and "Forgotten garage | Forgotten garage» (10,000) clarified that the pictures show a Plymouth Barracuda. Similar posts came out in many others communities in "VKontakte"
Using a reverse viral image search from Google, Verified found that five photos of the car appearing to be in poor condition originally appeared on Instagram*. March 25, 2025 them published on this social network, blogger Thomas Mortske accompanied his post with the following caption:
“Yeah, there's a Hemi [engine] there! Yesterday we found this gem on Facebook* Marketplace and headed to the site with a trailer and some cash! Unfortunately we weren't able to make a deal, but we did get to do some shooting of this supercharged '68 Barracuda! This thing must have been quite a sensation back in the day!”
Mortske is a fairly popular American auto blogger who fixes old cars. “Most of them are junk that others would leave to rot,” reads the description of his YouTube channel Mortske Repair (208,000 subscribers). Mortske has a second channel with additional content (More Mortske Repair, 54,000 subscribers), where on March 29 he published video of his unsuccessful attempt to buy a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda - the same car depicted in the pictures that went viral.
From the video it becomes known that the car, which had not been used for about 15 years, was sold for $14,500 in Rosemount, Minnesota. According to the seller, cited by the blogger, other potential buyers were from various US cities, including St. Cloud (Minnesota), Boston (Massachusetts) and Joliet (Illinois), as well as from Sweden. Taganrog and Russia were not mentioned. Mortske explained, that he refused the purchase due to the unsatisfactory condition of the car, but paid $200 for the shooting. In addition, the engine installed in the car was not the one stated in the ad, and difficulties could arise during registration due to problems with documents. By the time the video was published, the advertisement for the sale of Plymouth had already been closed, and the buyer and the final price were unknown.
As for the viral photo, which supposedly shows a Plymouth after repair, using the TinEye “Verified” service, it was established that the photo originally appeared on eBay back in 2014. The ad itself is no longer available, but we found news about the sale of this car on the website of the online magazine Street Muscle. On March 4, 2014, they reported that the seller was ready to sell a 1968 Barracuda with a Hemi engine for $50,000. It was clarified that he had invested more than $80,000 in the car and had already failed to sell it four times.
The earliest publication with a viral story about a resident of Taganrog, which was tracked by Verified, appeared on VKontakte in the Ob public page (165,000 views). There's a post there posted April 11, 2025. This community has previously been mentioned in our rebuttals as the source of other fictional stories. For example, they talked about Kamchatka mushroom picker, who found a jug with gold coins in the forest, and about teenager from Krasnodar, who discovered thousand-year-old shells with large black pearls on the beach. At the same time, in description The public does not explicitly state the satirical nature of the posts: “The author’s entertainment blog with original content and a unique style, founded more than 15 years ago.”
Thus, the story about a man from Taganrog who bought a rare Plymouth Barracuda in poor condition in the USA for $9,000, and after repairs that cost another $6,000, sold the car for $80,000 is a fiction. Its primary source is a public page on VKontakte, which has repeatedly published posts with a similar structure about finds that have enriched residents of different Russian regions.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities and symbols are prohibited in Russia.
Cover photo: @mortske_repair (Instagram)
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