Meet the Special Collectors

Across the country there are countless individuals with private collections, ranging from people with a few cherished vehicles to those who need major space to house their fleet. We talked with two collectors who have a few hundred cars each in their private collections to find out how they got started and what drives their passion.

It’s not about the money, they say. Many of the cars have sentimental value; their favorites are those that were popular when they came of age. “I think a lot of us relate to different cars at different phases of our  lives,” says collector Ken Lingenfelter, owner of Lingenfelter Performance Engineering in Wixom, Mich. “I’m buying cars I wish I could’ve had when they came out.” Here, these collectors share the stories of how they got started.  

You may have heard of Ken Lingenfelter because of his successful car parts and tuning business, even if you didn’t know he owns one of the most impressive car collections in all of the Midwest, which he often opens to charity functions.

Ken Lingenfelter has Chevy in his blood. So much so that it once got him expelled from high school. His family had moved to Dearborn, Mich., from Ohio, “where everybody’s family worked for Ford,” he says. “I was a General Motors guy and it was hard to fit in. Someone in a Mustang challenged my 375-horsepower Camaro and I couldn’t let that go.” Without going into detail, Lingenfelter says he was able to prove he had the better car. It wasn’t his brightest moment, Lingenfelter admits, but after that, he says, “all of the Ford guys wanted to be my friend.”

Lingenfelter’s dad was an auto executive and would often bring 5-year-old Ken back to the factory after stopping home for dinner. Lingenfelter, now 65, was 11 years old when he laid eyes on a split-window 1963 Corvette. His fate as a car guy was sealed.

It was the space age, and all of the astronauts had Corvettes. “It made a huge impression on me, looking through that split window into the interior,” Lingenfelter says. “I think it’s one of the most beautiful cars General Motors has ever built.”

A split-window Corvette is still his favorite in the collection, which is made up of about 30 percent muscle cars, 30 percent exotics, and the rest Corvettes. They’re stored in a 45,000-foot facility in Brighton, Mich., and he opens it about 60 times a year for charity functions. Highlights from the esoteric, exotic collection include a 2007 Bugatti Veyron, which, with a maximum speed just over 250 miles per hour, is one of the fastest street-legal production cars ever. You’ll also find a Lamborghini Reventón (no. 12 of just 21  produced), and let’s not overlook the 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO: Built for racing, it was the fastest Ferrari of its era.

The first car Lingenfelter bought for the collection was a ’77 Corvette, one that he “had to rub two nickels together to get. I had to use it as my driver—even during Michigan winters,” he says. The quirkiest is a  wild-​looking silver 1979 Caballista Corvette, customized by the same mod shop that became known for its vehicles in ’70s action films.

There are some cars Lingenfelter will never get rid of, but the collection is always evolving. He’s constantly attending auctions, buying and selling, but he doesn’t have a grand plan for it. “I don’t look at it that way,” he says. “It’s just part of who I am and what I do. As long as I’m alive, I’ll have a big car collection.”

Dennis Albaugh has turned a childhood prohibition against driving convertibles (his parents wouldn’t let him) into a grown-up obsession with Chevy ragtop cars. This astonishing collection of convertibles is encyclopedic, with 181 models representing every convertible the company every produced between 1912 and 1975.