Complex sentence: The original intention was to scrap the factory and use the proceeds as war reparations; but Hirst found a pre-war prototype Volkswagen in a remote workshop on the site and realised that the factory could be used for producing cars for the British Army.
Split into simpler sentences: The original intention was to scrap the factory and use the proceeds as war reparations. But Hirst found a pre-war prototype Volkswagen in a remote workshop on the site and realised that the factory could be used for producing cars for the British Army.