2021: Muscle Beach Party

The return of the endless Corvette summer

Jan 15, 2021

As the years pile on, we get further away from an era of automobiles that still boggle our imaginations with their style, their courageous views of the future, and their red leather chrome enhanced interiors.

In a few days, those of us who still drool over ‘55 Chevy Nomads and steroid-infused 70s muscle cars get an existential ride of sorts. The majority of us will vicariously go from zero to sixty on someone else’s rock and roll fantasy. All thanks to Muscle Car City owner Rick Treworgy, who at 72 is about to sell the majority of the bitchin’ rides he has accumulated since his teens.

To the automotive world, it’s a stash of Picassos that ran on dinosaur fuel.

Chances are a quick trip to Florida next week to get in a bidding war with top tier collectors isn’t in your iCal. No worries. The auction will be televised live over two days. The cars are the stars of the show, but it is always fun to watch someone spend on a collectible automobile what some spent on a first home.

Hollywood certainly figures into these fantasies. When you see a street scene from a movie shot in the late Fifties, the cars aren’t all winners like those in Treworgy’s stable. No catalytics to convert, mismatched tires, cracked windshields—the road warriors of the 50s and 60s looked like great turtles who had been in a fight. Treworgy’s only car with a screen credit is a race car from Charlie’s Angels (2000).

Thanks to revisionist movies like Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, Green Book, Peggy Sue Got Married, and The Irishman, our imaginations long for super shiny dream machines born into worlds without dirt.

Enter Treworgy and his battalion of buffed beauty. Fourteen years ago, Rick moved his collection into an empty Walmart a hundred miles south of Tampa at Punta Gorda, Florida, population 20,369. The newly christened Muscle Car City opened to the public as a museum. Up until this Sunday, January 17, you can buy a ticket and roam around the 200-vehicle collection, considered one of the finest repositories of GM cars in the world.

That includes twenty Camaros, seven El Caminos and another seven Oldsmobile 442s, seventeen Chevelles, and over fifty Corvettes covering eight generations. According to Brett Hatfield on the GM Authority website:

“There are multiple Corvette Z06s, ZR1s, a fourth-gen Grand Sport convertible with just 640 miles, a 1971 Corvette LS6 (one of only 188 produced), a 1968 Corvette L89, a 1967 427/435, Big Blocks, Fuelies, and Solid Axles. There is a 1965 Chevelle Z-16 396/375 that is listed in the Z-16 Registry, a 1969 COPO Camaro 427/425, a 1970 Chevelle LS6 hardtop, and a 1961 Impala 348 with a four-speed.”

When asked which car he plans to keep for his drives down memory lane, Treworgy has specified his daughter gets first pick. Then he will try to narrow things to a mini-museum and perhaps twenty Corvettes for himself.

Shifting gears has to happen in sequence, so one thing at a time.

Mecum will stream the event Jan 22 and 23, 2021. More info including how to register at www.Mecum.com.

Professor Mikey's OLD SCHOOL

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