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Three years ago, Bill Connell and Joel Lauman made a remarkable discovery inside a hog farmer's barn in rural Trenton that they likened to "finding a Picasso in your attic."

What they found rusting inside that old barn was an extremely rare piece of American automobile history — a 1957 Chevrolet "Airbox" Corvette.

Fewer than 50 of these racing-model cars were produced by Chevrolet and fewer than half of them are known to exist today. But even more surprising, the "Airbox" car Connell and Lauman found was the prototype, or "pilot car," used to produce all of the subsequent Corvettes in that 1957 line.

That meant the car had unique parts that wouldn't be found on any of the other "Airbox" Corvettes, making it truly one of a kind.

"This car is so rare that even the most-dedicated Corvette hobbyists have never seen anything like it," Connell said.

"The probability of us finding a car like this is unbelievable," said Lauman, 66, of Colerain Twp. "I wouldn't equate it to finding the Holy Grail, but it is kind of like that in an automobile sense."

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2584 or kaldridge@coxohio.com.