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It could be a matter of OCD or hoarding. Whomever gets these vehicles could make some money. Even if they don't run, they could be worth a lot in spare parts for collectors.
the story about that Portugal barn being abandoned was long ago refuted. I don't recall all the details, but the seller of the cars wanted a cover story to make it sound like they were a true "barn find", an undiscovered treasure trove until he broke the lock on the doors or opened the welds or whatever malarkey they put out about the building. It was all a ploy to get publicity and excitement generated about the collection of cars for an auction.
They simply held on to all the cars until they'd decided it was worth selling them. Many were in poor condition due to the years of storage, and many had been bought cheaply because they were damaged/needed a lot of work when they were parked.
There are other known substantial accumulations of cars around the world. Until somebody decides to sell them, they sit on the asset. For example, the recent mid-west car auction from a Chevy dealer where he'd traded for cars and kept them for parts, or some of the new year model cars that were stale and he simply parked them. Generated a lot of excitement when they opened up the shop building where he'd crammed many of the cars, or took pictures of cars that had been in the field where they'd been stored for parts cars.
IIRC, there was another recent announcement of a fellow retiring and selling off his "collectable cars" (USA models with a lot of pre-WWII cars in it, and cars of the 1950's) salvage yard. It was strictly a buy it all or none offer, and he'd priced out the remaining value (in his estimation) of the cars in the yard. If it sold for anywhere near his asked price, the buyer would be taking decades to recoup the investment a car piece at a time. It got a lot of publicity and excitement, but you'd have to be in the antique car salvage business to make any money at it and there were very few complete cars. A better description would have been that there were a lot of restorable cars ... if you had the time and money to do so.
I think one of the biggest fallacies in the collector car market is that there's easy money to be made at it. When you see some of the perfect cars going across the auction block at the big publicized auctions, many of those cars have taken as much money to restore to that condition as they brought on the sale block. Many have taken even more money to bring them to that condition and were sold at a loss.
The days of really easy pickin's of collectable cars is long past. I know guys who used to travel the USA with a truck and trailer, buying up older parts inventories cheaply and stashing them away for resale all the way back in the 1950's. They (or their family) are still selling those parts today to earn a living. As well, they scoured the countryside for those proverbial "barn finds" in the '50's and '60's and paid reasonable money for what might turn out to be collectable cars in later years. What few people in the marketplace today appreciate is how many of the high end, bespoke cars were parted out in WWII scrap metal drives. I've a friend, now a long retired MD, who grew up in his Dad's salvage yard and can relate the difficulties of breaking up by hand so many of those bespoke cars of the 20's-30's; he hated the physical labor and it was that which influenced him to seek a professional career rather than go into the family business. I worked for a fellow who owned one of the oldest motorcycle shops in the USA, and he told many tales of scrapping out what would now be highly valuable bikes of the pre WWII era during the scrap metal drives.
Well I can understand the deception to get publicity but what I don't understand is why they weren't protected in that barn....no matter what the plan was. Some tarps, sheets, anything to protect the investment potential.
Rust and the toll of time even eats away at these supposed "barn finds". Rubber dissolves, gaskets rot, rats eat into the upholstery and eat the wiring. Insects move in. Humidity and temperature changes take there toll.
What you are left with after 40 years is a collection of worthless rusted junk. Very sad.
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