Hot Wheels

Not all car collections can be stored in a box. But, that’s where it all began. Robert Belt’s childhood Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars preceded his grownup fascination with full-size cars and their histories.

“I like the historical significance of seeing progress in automobiles that point to the evolution of the current-day car. Car design is connected to what is going on in the world at that time,” says Belt, an auditor and CPA who has 10 cars and recently opened a 30,000-foot car-storage warehouse in Memorial called Carriage Clubhouse.

His own collection began when a nephew needed to sell his 1941 Ford truck. Belt took it off his hands for mostly sentimental reasons. “My grandfather had the same model truck that I played in as a child. I had a full, cab-off restoration performed that was knowingly going to be in excess of its market value, but I had no intention of selling it. It was the last model produced before World War II, when car production ceased until after the war.”

Nostalgia drives other car collectors as well. Stuart Bamberger’s Buick collection stems from high school memories of driving his parent’s Buick in the late 1960s. Bamberger, who runs a scrap-metal business, says he enjoys driving his 1950s Buick convertibles rather than visiting them in storage.

Exposing collectible cars to everyday elements, even an occasional rain, is often considered taboo among die-hard car collectors, but Bamberger’s attraction to starting this collection was, he says, in “the memories of driving them, so I drive them a lot.”

Although some cars only see the light of day when en route to a car show, some collectors enter their cars in races, giving their vehicles a chance to show they’re more than just pretty bodies.

Mark Brinker and his wife, Newie, win a ribbon with their Beast III at the 2010 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in Pebble Beach, Calif.

Collector Mark Brinker has broken seven world records at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats for racing his 1959 Deutsch Bonnet 750cc sports car, a blue coupe he’s named BoneEvil, in homage to the Salt Flats, a famous racing venue, and the fact he’s a bone surgeon. He also owns Chet Herbert’s Beast III Streamliner, a red, 20-foot, Buck Rogers time machine-design so futuristic it’s hard to believe it was introduced almost 60 years ago.

Another favorite is a Devin SS, a 1958 American roadster with only 18 of its kind built. But at the top of his list is the Beast III. “Besides being the fastest single-engine car built in 1952, it was built by a man who had polio and was in a wheelchair. My sister was in wheelchair with cerebral palsy, so this makes the car extra meaningful for me.”

Since Brinker’s collection began in 1995 with the purchase of a 1971 Maserati Ghibli, his fascination with classic cars has grown to almost a second career. His true passion is in his collection of 1950s-era American, Italian and French sports cars, and he writes a column for Vintage Racecar Journal. (Brinker also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2008 crime-thriller movie Untraceable, starring Diane Lane).

Brinker’s enjoys driving his cars when opportunities arise. “A beautiful car is like a Rembrandt painting, but you don’t have to just look at it. You can do something with it,” he says.

Engineer Linda Stacey, described by her friends as a gear head who knows more about pistons than any guy, was inspired to start collecting after the release of the 2005 retro Mustang, reminiscent of those built by Shelby American from 1965 to 1970.

“When I was a kid growing up in a small town, Grand Bank, on the east coast of Canada, I remember everyone working on their cars,” she says. “I also remember cars like the Stingray Corvettes and old Trans-Ams.”

Stacey likes cars resembling the muscle cars of her youth. Her collection includes a limited-edition, pre-production Shelby Mustang hand-built for her in 2007. With only a dozen made, she tends over the car she’s named “Angel” like a mother hen. “It’s never seen the rain,” she says proudly. Her other baby, named “Maverick” after Tom Cruise in Top Gun, is a P51B Mustang reminiscent of American WWII fighter planes.

“Just about everybody collects something. I just happen to collect cars. It’s irrelevant how much it is valued at. It can be a coffee-cup collection. If it’s meaningful to you, that’s what counts,” she says.