Collector car enthusiasts gathered together at the Wheels for Wishes auto show in St. Johns, Newfoundland, to raise $50,000 for local recent high school graduate Brandon Joy to get a guide dog.
Joy is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare eye disease that’s left him legally blind with no peripheral and night vision.
As he gears up to attend his first year of college at Memorial University to pursue his dream career of being a teacher, Joy is eager to get a CNIB guide dog to help him get around campus with ease.
Hundreds of cars and attendees showed up.
“Such a great group of people to come out, especially to see all the cars, a couple hundred cars, to come out makes me really happy that there are so many great people willing to help,” Joy told NTV news with a smile on his face.
The Wheels for Wishes group started fundraising three months prior to the event and right before the car show started, Wheels for Wishes received a donation that put them over the $50,000 goal.
Wheels for Wishes’ guest of honor, Brandon Joy
“He’s a real smart, real nice kid,” event organizer Leon House said at the event. “When the ask came out to get a dog, Wheels for Wishes decided he’d be a great guy to get it for.”
Ed “Isky” Iskendarian has celebrated his 100th birthday, and we can report that Isky is still frisky as a centenarian.
He earned his nickname as “Camfather” after developing better valve lifters and drop-in-self-locking roller lifters (suitable for high-rev use) to serve the flourishing new supercharged fuel dragsters of the 1950s. Under a gentleman’s agreement with a young racer named Don Garlits, he created the first corporate sponsorship deal in drag racing, and the newly christened Don’s Speedshop/Ed Iskendarian dragster turned a record 8.36 second/180 mph pass with Garlits at the wheel.
But Isky’s story goes way back to the 1940s when he went racing at Muroc Dry Lake, a bombing range for the Army Air Corps at Edwards Air Force Base in California enlisted himself in the US Army Air Corps for World War II, flying supply missions in the Pacific theater.
Living a century is maybe to some of us a dream but most don’t make it that far. Isky did and as sharp as a tack.
I made the almost three-hour drive to the middle of nowhere, to LTR Racing Engines in Onyx, California, which is owned and operated by noted engine builder Lanny Trefz. He has hosted Isky’s birthday for many years and recently Isky said, “Hey, pal, when are we gong to have another party, I’ve been waiting almost 100 years for this one.”
Isky-sponsored ‘push vehicle’ was used by Garlits for many years
Vintage advertisement for early drag racing sponsorship
So on July 10, 2021, promoter Crafty Kate and Lanny Trefz attracted hundreds of friends, business acquaintances and fans to celebrate Isky’s centennial milestone with a nostalgic car show featuring the “Car Guy of the Century” and the “Camfather.”
Steve Gibbs, former NHRA director of competition and original director of the Wally Parks NHRA Museum in Pomona, California, organized and supervised a small “cackle” presentation event with some outstanding Nitro-burning dragsters including Garltis’ Swamp Rat III slingshot dragster and “TV Tommy” Ivo’s first front-engine gas dragster powered by a 425cid Buick “Nailhead” engine. The sweet smell of Nitro during the “cackle” was as good as the BBQ lunch aroma to all the old timers.
Even though the temp was hovering close to 120 degrees, Isky seemed ready and willing and able to tell me of his most significant event in his 100 years on the planet, and how it gave him the success he achieved.
Isky takes part in a cackle fest at this birthday party | Dave Kommel/Photoshelter.com photo
Swamp Rat III
TV Tommy dragster
Hot rods at the party
“I was 18 or 19 years old and went to buy a cam from Ed Winfield and showed these cylinder heads and he showed me his cam grinder and I was fascinated by that grinder,” Isky said.
“So that’s the way it’s done and I thought ‘gee, I’m just an apprentice in a machine shop and I think I could build one of those, too’.
“I was working on my Model T Roadster but the war interrupted my plans. After the war I made my first fast-action cam and I sold it to a kid for $20. Later, when he came to visit me with it in his flathead roadster it sounded loud and great and was very fast.
Isky, 100, and Howard Koby, not quite there yet, have known each other for years as Howard has covered drag racing through the decades
In this week’s episode of “The Drive with Alan Taylor,” automotive journalist BJ Killeen joins Taylor to chat about their visit to Barrett Jackson’s Las Vegas auction and the surprising number of minibikes on the docket.
Killeen then shares her experience driving around in the new Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport SUV. While impressed with its solid driving capabilities, she expresses her disappointment with the interior lacking accessories found in other luxury vehicles.
Switching focus to another new SUV on the market, George Kennedy III – co-founder of Cartender and freelance journalist for CarGurus, Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report – shares his thoughts on the Kia Sorento and what makes it unique.
Kennedy and Taylor then talk about the new Ford F-350 Tremor and its impressive towing capabilities.
Wrapping up the show, Taylor and the president and CEO of McCall events Gordon McCall discuss the anticipated happenings at the Quail MotorSports Gathering at the upcoming Monterey car week.
Episode Highlights:
[00:00:00] – Barrett Jackson [00:07:17] – Mini Bikes [00:12:30] – Atlas Cross Sport [00:19:52] – Kia Sorento [00:29:22] – Headroom and Legroom [00:35:53] – F350 Tremor [00:42:14] – Quail Motorsports [00:49:07] – Get Your Ticket [00:54:46] – Monterey Car Week [01:02:06] – Laguna Seca Raceway [01:11:06] – Gremlin [01:18:07] – U.S.S Abraham Lincoln
To learn more about “The Drive with Alan Taylor” visit the podcast’s website.
Rolls-Royce has launched its latest collection series of Wraith and Dawn Black Badge vehicles as the Landspeed Collection celebrating records set by George Eyston in Thunderbolt, a Bonneville-style vehicle powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce R V12 aero engines.
Among the cars’ interior features are what Rolls-Royce terms “fissured texture” designed to mimic the Salt Flats’ surface and with a steering-wheel detail that repeats the dark track-line that racers use on the Bonneville Salt Flats.
The “Starlight” headliner is designed to show the precise night sky on September 16, 1938, when Eyston set his third and final land-speed record of 357.497 mph.
Silhouettes of the Thunderbolt and its record-setting speeds are laser-engraved on the center console. The interior of the driver’s door has ribbon colors representing honors Eyston received during his lifetime.
Only 35 Wraith Black Badge and 25 Dawn Black Badge vehicles will be built, Rolls-Royce said.
“It’s human nature to want to go further, do more, be greater than ourselves,” Rolls-Royce Motor Cars chief executive Torsten Muller-Otvos, is quoted in the company’s news release. “The innate desire to extend horizons and define new limits is an instinct we’ve always understood at Rolls-Royce; and we have acted upon it once again with our new Landspeed Collection.
“The Collection, which includes both Wraith and Dawn Black Badge, celebrates someone with exactly that dauntless, fearless, pioneering spirit. His name was Captain George Eyston, a Cambridge University graduate, racing driver, gifted inventor and engineering genius. In the late 1930s, he broke the world land-speed record three times with his car Thunderbolt, powered by two Rolls-Royce R V12 aero engines. He was a true hero from an age of epic endeavours; yet both he and Thunderbolt have been all-but forgotten for more than 80 years.
“With this Collection, we have revived Eyston’s memory and retold his remarkable story. Throughout Wraith and Dawn Landspeed, clients will find numerous subtle design elements and narrative details that recall and commemorate his amazing achievements, grand vision and exceptional courage.”
The Dawn Black Badge in Landspeed Collection trim
Eyston was born in 1897, started racing motorcycles under an assumed name while in school, studied engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, and served with distinction in World War I. He returned from the war to develop and drive race cars and earned patents as the inventor in the field of supercharging.
His records at Bonneville included those for 24- and 48-hour endurance runs on a 10-mile circular track in 1935, and he returned in 1937 with Thunderbolt to set a trio of land-speed records.
Thunderbolt had three axles, eight wheels and weighed seven tons. The aluminum coachwork had a large triangular tail fin.
The supercharged, 37-liter V12 engines that propelled the car each produced more than 2,000 horsepower and previously were used in the Supermarine S6.B seaplane that was used in development of the engines for Spitfire aircraft.
While those engines are preserved at the Royal Air Force Museum and the Science Museum in London, Thunderbolt was destroyed in a fire in 1946 while in storage.
While those engines are preserved at the Royal Air Force Museum and the Science Museum in London, Thunderbolt was destroyed in a fire in 1946 while in storage.
Petersen Automotive Museum, which exhibits some of the world’s most unusual, rare and historically significant vehicles in its 100,000-square-foot facility in Los Angeles has announced the launch of its new business incubator program designed to help develop female-led startups in the automotive industry.
“With only 23.6 percent of motor-vehicle positions held by women in 2019, we felt it was our responsibility as a world leader in automotive thought to create this incubator program,” Terry L. Karges, executive director of the Petersen Automotive Museum, said in a news release. “Through the generous support of Rolex, and our selection committee, we can empower and develop visionary women to harness their potential and given them an opportunity to break into the automotive space.”
The museum, along with its selected advisory board, will choose one early-stage female-led business based in California to join a 3-month mentorship incubator program. During the program, Petersen will invest up to $25,000 into the business, provide hands-on mentorship and give the selected business access to the Petersen network.
On the incubator program’s advisory board is the CMO and principal at Redline Detection, Alex Parker; the CEO of Fremont Private Investments and chancellor of Fremont College, Dr. Sabrina Key; PR and media-relations leader at Kahn Media, Nikki Riedmiller; senior vice president of experiences at Omaze, Sarah Lassek; group services director at Petersen, Jasmine Gonzalez; and vice president of Hagerty Drivers Foundation, Diane Parker, who sat down with us to share her excitement for the program.
Vice president of Hagerty Drivers Foundation Diane Parker
“What I love about this type of program, other than its uniqueness is this is what’s going to help shape the future and make it the norm for women to be within the automotive industry,” Parker said.
“This isn’t just exclusive within the automotive industry of restoring cars or working on cars; this has so many more elements to it, which makes it so incredibly unique. It’s really a vast program with mentorship in business development, retail, marketing communications, design or IT.
“The other great thing about this program is they get to tell us where they need the help and where they want to focus. It can be very specific to their needs so it’s not so broad.”
Perry Mason is one of those vintage TV shows that’s lived long past its prime time, still enjoyed as six-decade-old reruns along with such classics as The Andy Griffith Show, The Twilight Zone and Leave it to Beaver.
There are loads of reasons for watching crime-solving Los Angeles attorney Perry Mason, artfully portrayed by Raymond Burr, investigate myriad crimes and wring courtroom confessions out of murderers and thieves. But for many viewers today, it’s the parade of beautiful automobiles from the era, mostly driven by Mason and his prosecutorial staff.
Raymond Burr as Perry Mason in a 1957 Buick
Perry Mason is actually a smorgasbord of mid-century cars, which can be seen on the road or in the backgrounds of the many street scenes, an apparent effort by the show’s producers to dress up the series with automotive eye candy, as well as helping the automakers to push their current models. Most are American iron, although there are a few foreign jobs sprinkled in there.
Many of the car spottings were the result of car company sponsorships, as was the product-placement system of the time, with Ford and General Motors pretty much trading off seasons during the nine years that the show was on the air, from 1957 through 1966.
Paul Drake and Perry Mason with a Thunderbird and Corvette in the background
Mason’s 1957 Ford Fairlane Skyliner
The show’s first season in 1957 bounced back and forth between Ford and GM. Part of the time, Perry’s classy ride was a Fairlane 500 Skyliner, the iconic hardtop convertible, shown mostly with the top was down as Perry cruised to the latest forensic venue.
But then there were episodes with a black Cadillac Series 62 convertible – the prosecutor was apparently a major fan of driving al fresco. There also was a certain white Buick Special convertible.
Mason and company in the 1958 Cadillac
Many of the lawyer’s most memorable rides were Cadillacs, in particular a chrome-laden 1958 convertible that seemed to suit the looks of Raymond Burr to a T. The following year, he drove a 1959 Caddy with those dazzling tail fins.
One of Mason’s cars was featured in the final year of the series in the only Perry Mason episode filmed in color, the better to see the electric-blue shade of his classic 1966 Lincoln Continental convertible.
Mason’s Lincoln Continental before it gets stripped by thieves
Alas, in this episode named The Case of the Twice-Told Twist based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, a youthful street gang led by a Fagin-like character strips the Lincoln while it’s parked on the street, an incident that becomes central to the story.
Mason’s prosecutorial staff also were shown in premium rides, such as Mercurys and Buicks, which sometimes seem like blatant plugs for certain models. There’s a few 1958 Edsels in what seems like a vain attempt by Ford to attract buyers.
An Austin Healey 100 making a quick getaway
A 1957 Mercury station wagon with a ’55 Chevy Nomad in the background
The suspects often drove cool cars, too, such as one escape artist in an Austin Healey 100 roadster who evaded capture via the agile handling of the British sports car.
Speaking of sports cars, Mason’s indomitable and quite suave private investigator Paul Drake, played by William Hopper, seemed to have an endless array of cool rides, with his switching between Ford Thunderbirds and Chevy Corvettes in the early seasons reflective of the sponsor tradeoffs.
Paul Drake sporting the 1957 Ford Thunderbird
But Drake also drove more-exotic fare as well, being seen at times in a classic Lancia Aprilla Pinin Farina cabriolet from Italy. In real life, Hopper apparently owned one of these, perhaps even the one shown in the series.
A 1958 Chrysler 300D
1958 Ford Thunderbird behind a 1958 Chevy Impala
Perry Mason reruns are still being shown, providing opportunities to watch one of the best crime-investigation shows from the first decade of TV, as well as lots of chances to spot great cars from the post-war years.
To dig deeper into cars shown on Perry Mason, check out the Internet Movie Cars Database, through which you also can explore some of your other favorite old shows.
(Editor’s note: During the month of April, the Journal presents a series of stories about vintage rallies and vintage racing. Today, Larry Edsall writes about his participation in several rallies, events ranging from a $40 entry fee to those charging thousands of dollars. If you have a story about your participation in a vintage rally or race that you’d like to share, please email us at journal@classiccars.com.)
Historic U.S. 66 shields dot the pavement
It cost only $40 to participate in the Route 66 Motor Tour, at least that was the registration fee. You also had to pay for your meals and lodging along the remaining segments of the historic Mother Road which ran all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Living in Phoenix at the time, and busy with work and other responsibilities, I just did the section of the tour across northwestern Arizona. I met up with the group at its early morning driver’s meeting in Williams, Arizona, paid my $40 fee, got my T-shirt and window sticker, listened as tour director Craig Parrish briefed us and handed out copies of the route plan for the day, and off we went.
I’d met Parrish during one of my summer visits to Michigan, where for a decade or so he had been organizing the annual driving tour up Old US 27 from Coldwater to Cheboygan. Parrish noted that US 27 was “the other Route 66, the north-south version” that ran through Michigan and on down to Miami.
He also had done several drives on Route 66 and finally, in the fall of 2014, felt he was ready to lead a group on such a tour. By scheduling the event in the fall, he not only was able to get off-season rates at motels along the way, but avoided the triple-digit summer temperatures in the Southwest desert.
Here is one anecdote that, I think, speaks volumes about the folks who participate in such events: One of the US 27-tour regulars was Jan Miller, who had done the Michigan drive in a 1947 Oldsmobile convertible with her late husband and now was doing the Route 66 event on her own.
But to make sure her trip went well, a group of other Route 27 veterans stayed close to her Olds all the way to California should she encounter any problems.
Wave if you’re having a good time on the tour
Classic Olds at Addicted to Route 66, Williams
Seligman
Another rally, another example: While it cost only $40 to take part in that Route 66 event, it costs several thousands of dollars to enter a car in the annual Copperstate 1000 vintage sports car rally, a fund-raiser for the Phoenix Art Museum that also supports families of injured or fallen Arizona Highway Patrol officers. I tagged along on the event several times, covering it for ClassicCars.com.
One daym one of the older British sports cars had a mechanical issue that forced it onto the shoulder of a desert highway. Almost immediately, three or four other British cars from the same era had arrived and pulled over with their drivers diving into trunks and offering whatever parts that might be needed to get the ailing car back on the road. Maybe half an hour later, all the cars returned to the rally route.
The rally routes and what you see along the way is a big part of such events, but so are the relationships that emerge as the troupe makes its way across the landscape. People who met on such events often develop friendships that last a lifetime. I did all or parts of the Copperstate often enough during my years in Phoenix that I still count several of those I met as friends.
ELK Charity Challenge ready to roll from the Fess Parker Doubletree in Resort in 2015
A classic encounter along the route
City by the Bay — and in the fog
While I was mainly a journalist covering the Copperstate, I was very much a participant on the ELK Charity Challenge drives in 2015 and 2016.
ELK is short for Everyone Loves Kids, and was founded by Craig Corbell, a Texan who had done several high-speed driving events but realized there were folks who desired a slower pace and a way to raise money for children’s charities.
The inaugural event was staged in California with a route from Santa Barbara to the San Francisco Bay. Supposedly to make the event more attractive for those paying the 4-figure entry fee, Corbell invited several celebrities to go along. There were actors and rodeo champions, plus one much lesser celebrity, me.
Spending a full week on the road with a bunch of people who are having a good time and who enjoy raising money for charity and afterward while you go your separate ways, you also go with new friends you’re eager to see again.
ELK Charity Challenge visits the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016
Soap Box Derby hill
Lake Placid Olympic venue
I know, because in 2016 I paid my way into the second ELK Charity Challenge rally, which in that second year started in Detroit and ended at Lake Placid, New York.
By the way, you don’t necessarily have to own a vintage or exotic vehicle to participate in such events. Some people bring a car from home, others rent something fun when they arrive. For the second ELK event, I was able to borrow a spanking new Chevrolet Camaro convertible from General Motors, which was willing to do so because I’d just written a book about the car’s design and development, and because of the charitable nature of the event.
And what an event! We got to race grownup-sized vehicles down the official Soap Box Derby championship hill, got a private tour of the Corning Glass Museum, got to slide down the pole in a firefighting museum, drove hot laps around a race track and drag-raced on a closed airport runway, and we participated in some hugely embarrassing escapades as part of the daily contest to see which charity would get that’s days donation.
Two of our stops were emotional events for me. One was a visit to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Erie, Pennsylvania. I had received in-hospital and out-patient care at the Shriners facility near Chicago from the time I was 2 until I was 18 and can walk today because of the treatment I received back then.
The other emotional stop was our final one, at Lake Placid, where I’d covered the 1980 Olympic Winter Games as a newspaper sports writer and where I trekked up Whiteface Mountain to watch downhill skiers slide past and where I covered speedskating and figure skating and biathlon and cross-country and bobsled and lots of ice hockey and where I sat in press row in disbelief as a bunch of American college kids beat the daunted Soviet hockey team.
Cars are cars and, quite literally, they come and go, but it’s the memories and the friendships they enable that we carry with us throughout a lifetime.
(Editor’s note: During the month of April, the Journal presents a series of stories about vintage rallies and vintage racing. If you have a story about your participation in a vintage rally or race that you’d like to share, please email us at journal@classiccars.com.)
You could make a good argument that even at its annual Runoffs national championships, the Sports Car Club of America is all about vintage racing, what with imports from the 1960s and ‘70s still competing for regional and national honors in multiple classes.
Steve Earle at 2014 Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival | Photo by Pete Lyons/www.petelyons.com
But it was Steve Earle who took it upon himself to belie the old axiom that there was nothing more worthless than last year’s racing car.
While people who owned fancy old cars could restore them and compete in a concours d’elegance or cash them in at a collector car auction, “what did you do with an old race car?” Earle asked.
“Nothing,” he responded to his own question.
But Earle liked not only his own old race cars but those of his friends. Indeed, he recalls that they used to sneak into the Willow Springs race track for a few laps from time to time. But such events were unsupervised and could be dangerous. So in 1974, Earle decided to organize a showcase event for vintage racing cars and their owner/drivers.
The location he selected was the Laguna Seca circuit near Monterey, California, and he timed his event to coincide with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, which made sense since that event actually was born as part of the old-time sports car races through the Del Monte Forest.
Earle organized General Racing and, to make sure the competition was conducted as safely and as sanely as possible, he brought in SCCA corner workers and safety personnel, “the same guys who worked the Can-Am races,” he noted.
And thus, the Monterey Historics, which grew so large that a Pre-Historics weekend was added to deal with the overflow and as a practice session.
Steve Earle in a Ferrari 412 (#4) at the 1st Annual Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca | Photo by David Love
Initially, Earle simply wanted the event to be a stage to encourage people to preserve, maintain and enjoy their old race cars, and for spectators to get to see such cars once again being driven at speed around a track.
He planted a seed, which sprouted into a variety of vintage racing groups and events being staged across the country.
After 36 years as the founding father of American vintage sports car racing, Earle’s oversight ended when Laguna Seca’s own managers, the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula, decided they should be in charge of the event, which is now known as the Monterey Motorsports Reunion.
There was concern that the Historics would not continue. Thankfully, they have, albeit under a new name and leadership. But Steve Earle’s role in preserving and promoting old race cars needs to be revered, not forgotten.
As the old Irish blessing says, “May you have all the happiness and luck that life can hold – and at the end of your rainbows ay you find a pot of gold,” we bring you our version of a pot of gold – a gallery of eye-catching, green-painted cars.
Many of us believe our cars have personalities. Some might contend we coddle and spoil our mechanical steeds more than our children. And to a certain degree, they would be completely correct.
However, When I entered the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, recently, I immediately sensed something very different. This was not a museum of relics. This was a living, breathing creation holding automobiles (and their individual histories) with the care you might normally provide one of the world’s most valuable works of art or an irreplaceable historical artifact. I was completely unprepared.
The Collier Collection includes one of five 1963 Corvette Grand Sport racing cars (serial number 4 but racing number 3), and the car gets exercised from time to time | Revs photos
The vehicles that comprise the Miles Collier Collection,housed at the Revs Institute, all have personalities. Each has a story. And those stories not only are being preserved, but the cars themselves are continuing to function as they were intended, in some cases being driven as part of an event or exhibition, but many times participating in vintage race competitions where their true spirit is unleashed.
The collection has been closed to the public during the pandemic and opened again on February 25. The collection, gathered by Miles C. Collier, grandson of Barron Collier, is a work of love and admiration, not only of the vehicles themselves, but as a tribute to his father, C. Miles Collier, and his uncle, Sam Collier.
The brothers Collier were instrumental in the development of sports car racing in the United States, driven forward when the youngsters were first enamored with European sports cars while dividing their time between homes in New York and Florida. They were the sons of Barren G. Collier, an advertising maven who built his fortune in New York City, later becoming the largest landowner and developer in Florida with interests in hotels, bus lines, banks, newspapers, telephone companies and steamships. The Colliers had the means to follow their passions and they did just that.
In the 1930s the brothers, who had been following sports car racing in Europe, constructed a race track on the family’s New York estate. The die was cast. Beginning with home-built go-karts, they graduated to sports cars in short order, establishing their reputation as serious race car drivers. Their race events prompted them to create the Automobile Racing Club of America in 1933, which later became the Sports Car Club of America. The Colliers were close friends with Briggs Cunningham, who established himself not only as a race car driver/team owner but also a sailing impresario who, in 1958, skippered the Columbia to victory in the America’s Cup.
Miles and Sam Collier stepped into management of the Collier businesses, but still pursued their love for racing. When World War II broke out, ARCA was disbanded and the brothers headed off to war. Following the war, in 1944, the SCCA formed where ARCA had ended and brought the Colliers back into active racing.
Miles and Sam Collier, father and uncle of Miles Collier Jr., were instrumental in shaping the future of amateur motorsports in the US and they never hesitated to push the envelope. In 1950 the brothers went to Le Mans with a Briggs Cunningham prepped Cadillac sedan. They finished 10th overall | Revs photos
Briggs Cunningham’s other entry at Le Mans was a streamlined Cadillac dubbed ‘Le Monstre”
In 1950, Briggs Cunningham set out to place two entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, at that time the most prestigious race in the world. But Cunningham wanted to do something different and prepared two 1950 Cadillacs for the race, one that was virtually stock (and driven by the Collier brothers) and another heavily modified with a streamlined body designed by a Grumman airplane engineer. The Colliers Caddy placed 10th while the aerodynamic Cunningham entry fell back a lap and finished 11th. So much for streamlining.
Tragedy struck the Collier family not long after that Le Mans experience. Sam Collier was leading a race at Watkins Glen, New York, in a Ferrari borrowed from Cunningham. The car left the road. Collier was taken to a hospital but died shortly after, which greatly affected his brother Miles, who soon stopped racing. The 1948 Ferrari 166 Spider Corsa Sam was driving is restored and part of the Collier Collection today.
But the apple did not fall far from the tree as Miles’ son, Miles C. Collier, also became captivated by sports cars and the history his father and uncle were involved in way before he arrived on his first race track.
Miles Collier entered the family business as well, continuing development begun by his grandfather in Florida and collecting cars he felt defined the “legacy artifacts of modern culture” in the world. This collecting took shape in earnest in the 1980s, particularly after he purchased the outstanding Cunningham car collection and added them to an already extensive collection of his own.
The Revs Institute has its own restoration workshop where cars such as this 1919 Ballot Type 5/8LC, one of four built for the Indianapolis 500, can be carefully preserved
In 2008 Collier founded the Revs Institute, a 501 (c)(3) not for profit “dedicated to deepening our understanding and appreciation of automotive history.” At the time of its founding, the organization stated it was to be a “haven for scholars, preservationists and passionate connoisseurs of automotive history.”
The Revs Institute’s mission of scholarly study was given a huge boost in 2011 when it acquired the library of Karl Ludvigsen, a former General Motors consultant and past editor of Car and Driver and Motor Trend magazines, who had assembled more than 7,000 automotive books, 300,000 photos and hundreds of research files.
Impressive as the car collection is, the library and archive have grown to be among the most extensive collections of automotive history in the world. The organization has an ongoing program of acquisition of books, journals, audio-visual artifacts, mascots, manuals, photographs and posters to support its continued mission.
The archive holds over 120 collections, more than 24,000 books, 200,000 magazine and journal issues, and nearly 700,000 online images that are accessible to the public for viewing and download. Materials are available in French, German, Italian and Japanese in addition to English.
This 1971 Porsche 917K was raced as a member of the Martini Racing Team which was owned by Louise Piech, whose son, Ferdinand (name sake of his grandfather Ferdinand Porsche) led the factory racing program of Porsche Salzburg. This car won the 1971 LeMans 24 Hours
The Revs Institute website provides an online tour of the collection and a full search of the library materials, both onsite and digitized. Mark Vargas, chief operating officer and director of the library/archives, explains that the library collections are focused on “cultivating, maintaining and making fully accessible both diverse and unique collections…t hat promote the study of automotive history. These collections detail the history of the automobile from the dawn of the motoring age through to the present day.”
The library’s physical collections include over a million photographic negatives and transparencies, with more than half of those now digitized. “We are digitizing approximately 6,000 images each month,” said Vargas. But just scanning an image isn’t enough as the staff must assess each image, organize and create spreadsheets of images related to events, personalities, vehicles, etc.
Once those images are determined to be ready for digitization, they are placed in itemized boxes and put into a digitizing queue. Currently that queue extends out about nine years and there are plans to add scanning equipment to shorten the backlog.
Detailed metadata is created for each image, allowing for the extensive search capabilities needed to make the archive useful for researchers, historians and enthusiasts alike.
“Applying this additional information to each artifact is critical,” Vargas explained. “Every item, whether it’s a scanned image or an actual object such as a poster or three-dimensional piece must have data points affixed providing detailed keywords so searching is efficient and as accurate as we can make it.”
So once items, including images, are scanned, where do they reside? Revs uses four systems to insure preservation for the future.
“The Revs Digital Library is hosted on the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) content platform,” says Vargas. OCLC, founded in 1967 in the US is a nonprofit cooperative of over 54,000 libraries in 109 countries. “We want to make certain this information is safe and accessible to all who want to use this information in the future.”
The library has a staff of technicians educated in the most current digitizing processes. It has student interns from nearby higher education programs wanting to be involved in historical preservation. “That works well for RDL,” said Vargas, “as well as the students.”
Vargas explained the RDL mission for preservation. “We take every step in historic preservation seriously,” Vargas said. “We are extremely fortunate to have the resources and the sheer will to take on the process. We are determined to be as comprehensive as possible when it comes to automotive history.”
The RDL continues to accept collected materials related to the marques and models within the museum, but Vargas points out the library is also interested in preserving materials related to the history of automotive business and industry, design, inventors, transportation and the social impact of automobility.
A living, breathing tribute to our automotive heritage. While car enthusiasts worldwide have their bucket lists of events or places they want to see, it would be well worth the effort to visit and drink in the incredible Revs Institute. Many of our great museums and libraries dedicated to the preservation of automotive history are working to address the newest technologies so access to their holdings can be assured in coming years.
“Revs wants to drive the recognition of the automobile as not only one of the world’s greatest social change agents,” Collier says, “but also one of the highest expressions of all that is great in the human mind and spirit.”
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