FLORIDA BILLIONAIRE 420 CAR LIFETIME COLLECTION

Currently the

collection

has 442 cars, we keep them all in running and driving condition and that is by choice of the owner Mr. Pillock, you know there is a right turnkey

collection

and you don't just see American Muscle Cars you see some of the Porsches here. some of the Porsche tractors, I mean, you say some of the Porsches, that's a serious range of Porsches. It's great to meet Ed, hello and welcome to the American Muscle Car Museum, here you are in Melbourne, Florida, let's come in and show you some cars, check it out. Thank you, as you can see as you walk into the front showroom, this is a very Ford heavy showroom and of course what do we have on the turntable?

One of the original all-aluminum Allen Man cars. We'll come back to that a little later. but that's surrounded by 2005 and 2006 Ford GTs, every single production one. Color Wow, we have neon signs, we have memories of the gas pump, Juke boox, a little bumper car, let's have a quick race. The collection started when Mark was very young and started with his Matchbox cars and has obviously grown to over 422 cars today. What do we do here at the American Muscle Car Museum? We do educational tours from first grade to college, in fact we had the University of Delaware motorsports team here yesterday.

The second thing we do is automotive events outside, it could be a car show or an autocross. The third thing would be to raise funds. We raise money for the local community here we pay for the food and everything and 100% of that money goes to them we average about a million dollars a year that goes directly to the charities here in Bard County we The last thing we do is thank you and what I mean by that, I like that we shoot our police and everyone else that we can use, so we go ahead and thank you for them and our biggest event of the year is the day Veterans Day open house for our American veterans and their families we have about 3 to 4,000 people through the door and we're going to talk about the cars now from 1966 this is one of the continuation cars here okay , but as we like it, it really shows, you know, part of the story. and of course some of the Coca-Cola machines do something with the old Coca-Cola branding, it's cool, it really is, and there's one from 1941 that we just bought in Arkansas and we restored it and we're going to come here below. the Coca-Cola sign, what do we have here?

One of the Shelby series. These were built in 1999 and this is one of the cars that Carol Shelby didn't start with a Ford or didn't start with a Dodge. She made her own car; they made 249 of these cars, so we are very lucky to have one with less than 500 original miles. One of the unique things about these cars is that they have a Hertz rating for frame rigidity. This particular car is rated at 52 Herz. By comparison, the same year Corvette in 2000 would be a 25 to a 27 depending on if it's a convertible or a coupe, so this will go over the Roto track assembly and not twist at all.

The incredible Cobra collection. Here the original 1966 427 Cobra one. of the Allen Grant 63 and then a 62, how do you get these cars? the Heritage that had paint schemes dating back to the 24 Hours of L man winners how many of the Gen 2 for GT are there in the uh there are 15 15 of them and we have a total of 25 of the four GTS to the other side of the hallway here? I have one of the Prototype 65 Shelby Mustangs. Are you kidding me? No, it is an original prototype. This is an original prototype. I mean, again, how did you find one of those?

You know this is something that took owner and founder Mark Pilac a

lifetime

to achieve. this and get something like this, oh come to the main showroom here, oh the neon effect in the dark is Drop Dead, well it's impressive and this is a very big building. We are 500 from east to west, 180 feet from north to south and 32 feet. From top to bottom, oh wow, are you kidding me? Currently the collection has 442 cars, we keep them all in running and driving condition, and that is by choice of the owner, Mr. Pac, you know there are some right old turn keys and you don't just see American Muscle.

Cars, you see some of the Porsches here, you see some of the Porsche tractors, um, I mean, you say, some of the Porsches, that's a serious Porsche line, that's a serious Porsche line and the Porsche tractors that we have are all the models and what I By that I mean that from 1957 to 1963 they made, in a sense, four different styles: it would be a single cylinder, which would be a two-cylinder junior to be a standard, three cylinder to be a super and a four cylinders to be a master. carrer GTS some of their unique 911s uh latest edition tribute car 2024 oh wow these are the sports cars The classics are amazing cars I love the colors on them I love the houndstooth interior you know even when I grew up like a person Camaro Corvette these really capture my heart I have 3.8 and 4 on this is the latest meter engine yes 997 I only did 600 of those and of course one of the Carrera Americas he has really captured in certain sense the colors in which we have had some groups of children come here. and he actually names this the Skittles paper because all the colors the color drinks it's like you have your own pts showroom here it's amazing and we have so many pts or sample cars painted here so special so I guess It's a coincidence that Portra has just launched the 9911 St off the back of the 992 RS platform, which is effectively the successor to this car.

I've never seen a Porsche specter in a place like this, well we haven't even made it around the corner. Still, we haven't even started, but you literally have a decent percentage of the total 4 GTS production. Here we have 10 of them here and we try to get each of the production colors and here again we also have. some of the paint to test the colors, what I mean by that, we have the Soko blue at the end, we have a paint to test the grays and of course we have some more Porsches coming here, amazing, absolutely amazing, so we really got here. with very little idea of ​​what this place would be like, so walking here right now, uh, I mean, anyone watching this is literally watching this as it unfolds, we haven't done a pre-walk talk about this, It's amazing, no, and that's something. otherwise we are open in a sense like a football or soccer stadium, we are open for events, we are not open daily, so since we have events, car shows, anything like that, you can buy a ticket or sign up . and go there, but not on a daily basis, so this, you know, gives a little more exclusivity and also helps a lot with the fundraising and the excitement when people come here.

I mean, obviously, the name of this American sports car museum made the collection originally start with a specific base for sports cars and then it grew from there, it grew from there and here again? Mark, the owner and founder, has a real love for it and he also has a real love for being able to share. With you, here again, other generations is something we want to do. I love taking tours for children. As far as you know, third fourth fifth graders, it's amazing because we'll have 17 kids, but all of a sudden, we have 20 dads, wait. minute the math doesn't work but it's exciting there are quite a few Mustangs coming out quite a few Cobras and most of these have less than 100 original miles really yes so what percentage of the cars are driven?

You mentioned before. all turn key start all turn key start all cars are serviced at least once a year but they get a major service every 5 years and what I mean by that is all the fluids are flushed brake fluid , coolant, fuel and they are all taken care of and ready that way you might see a car with about 2 miles 4M 7 on them it will use the car engine to get out but at least it still runs and drives yeah something like the original Cobra in the front. It has 33,000 original miles, we can drive a few miles around it, and as you see the 42 acre complex outside, there is plenty of room to drive.

It's 42 acres, it's phenomenal, so if you want to do a quick Shakedown, you can just go outside without having to take it outside OK, yes, some of the modern Shels we have here are a one-off Shelby GT500 and a Sunlet Gold. It was bought new by a person named Colonel Edward Little John II, which is Colonel Edward Little John. he was the influencer of the Navy's Top Gun show next to him of course you keep your wife happy you're happy this is a 1968 GT500 KR Shelby it's done in Royal Maroon which was not a production color However, Carol Shelby was a secretary at the time. o business manager o very nice to say who Joan Sherman was sleeping with this was his favorite nail polish color so in a sense he had three of these produced two of them were locked up a convertible this is that car this is that car real and the following year it became a production color.

Hey, we brought it back to the car of the future. Come on, we can't not talk about the DeLorean. Is this a specific DeLorean or one of the DMC 12 and the uniqueness of this car is less than 200 original miles so this is really a time piece and let me open up to you this car care kit that we will find fascinating in a sense , okay, it's dry and unusable, yes, but it's also something, but it's also a time capsule, huh? I can even see where it leaked a little, so this is the original care kit that came with the car, so it's to reapply the brushing effect on the hood, a neat and proper piece of history, it's great, Isn't it like that before?

In what you mentioned, there was a regular maintenance schedule here and with over 400 cars that must be a full time job, there are actually two of us, uh, Ryan, you'll meet a little bit later, okay, and in a sense , Ryan and me. We handle cars and have someone who recently graduated from college in the automotive field and will be joining us here shortly. Wow, there are three of us taking care of more than 400 cars. We don't do any outside work, we just get busy. of your stuff must be an incredibly satisfying process, it's very humbling, yeah, and in a sense, let's say an old '55 Chevy, a pretty simple, pretty basic mechanical car, if you work on it, you can figure it out and, like any of these cars, I try too. to give back, but I have so many people that I call and they will contact me, they will work with me, hey Ed, this is what we did, this is who we used, you know, of course, parts are getting harder to find for some. of the weird old cars, uhhuh, the internet is wonderful, but you still want the right data.

I'm sure you've got some of our independent pace cars here. There are actually three different types. You can get a car at a dealership and what it would be, something you would buy. the dealer who has put up stickers, mhm, can get a Heritage addition, which would be, they could give 50, they could give 100 to the local community, who would go and say make sense to the mayor, to the senator, to someone in the city and will take you there. brilliant marketing plan, okay, and then you can have a track car, okay, getting a track car is very difficult to do, in fact we have one of them up here and of course you can see that GM weighs a lot in it, yes, one of the track cars. what we have of all things is a Barda SUV, this was a pace car, at the end you can see the number two, yes this would have been the backup track car, it still has automatic modifications, all the lights and everything others, but Here again, these were two things, not only did we have the first SUV, this was the first, they called it female celebrity, John Cougar, Melan Camp's wife at the time, who was the American singer, it was his wife the who conducted it, we return to the old radio. collection these are pre-WWII and it's just so you know at the time what you had for entertainment and radios these are pre-WWII oh yeah look these are Art Deco 3940's from 1936 you know we're spoiled with our little smartphones and our headphones and everything else compared to what they have.

In this way, we will show you a completely different appearance. Oh, I just noticed that you have a portico that runs through this place. Let's see how. Well, your cameraman okay, oh K, you can really get a sense of the scale here, but if you look at it here again, you can see the cars on the highest lift and just the overall scope or spectrum is incredible. Can you fit all the cars or do you have excess? There are about 400 here and the rest are in the maintenance shop, which we'll take a quick look at, so this collection has taken What are we talking about? 40 50 years in a sense, yeah, marks, you know, a

lifetime

doing it.

Wow, that's exceptional. There's something about the neon signs that just tops off this place, that's soamazing and he has it where the cars are the stars, if that makes sense. You don't see any dealer history or anything like that, but this is his choice, obviously, there are all kinds of brands here, but there is a very heavy Ford. Mark grew up in a Ford family, his uncle had a salvage Ard that had a lot of it. of Ford and that's his first love is Fords, okay, his favorite, yeah, one day, one, and you can see the 1966 Cobra above, that's his favorite car even though he's about 67 years old and not He fits in it, it's still his favorite car, you know?

We're going up for some of the early Corvettes right now, you see the white '54, yeah, right on the other side of that is the red or split window from 1963, next to it is the black Trans Am, which is one of the modern Trans Ams of TransAm around the world. They're located here in Florida and they built 77 of those Bandit cars and that's number 57 and that's one that we were lucky enough to have Bert Reynold sign. In fact, he has the birth signature. The second where you see blue and adrionic blue, which is one of the five paintings.

Car shows that Pontiac Firebird had at the time five um we found out that it was actually hurting cattle in Texas. I J no, they didn't realize where the car came from. They restored it at a place called Muscle Car Memories located in Lincoln, Nebraska. Fantastic. There was some restoration work done, but if you look at it, the rarity of those parts in 73 they had a strike in the plants, so they didn't know how many cars they were going to put out in September 1972. to meet 73 guidelines, so everything produced after that they had to crush these cars because they don't bother me because they didn't meet the guidelines, that's why five just ran well, they had five special paints, but they're only You know, a very limited number of cars that they made that year because of the strike and because of the new guidelines, there's a really fascinating nuanced story as to why, a lot of cars have some stories, yeah, and one thing you have to give to Mark. has captured the colors it really has, yes it certainly has an eclectic taste obviously it's an amazing collection but it wouldn't have the same impact if they were all grey, no they wouldn't you really know there are so many cars nowadays that They are white. silver black yeah I know it sucks blah yeah it was it's really special to see the pts Corner so to speak yeah so what's up with the solar array solar panels on a if you look at them from one point financially from an environmental point of view right now?

Do you think about this? We have 42 uprights here, we produce about 365 Kow a year, really wow, and you say we have the workshop here. You know we have all the HVAC systems, all the air compressors, what do you think about our monthly electricity bill? back there's about $150, are you kidding me, no, $150 and you'll probably cut the bill by 75% on the big building, that's amazing, so this is where the work happens, this is where the magic happens. Well, welcome to the American Muscle Car Museum's maintenance shop. Wow, oh yeah, this has a real shop feel to it, doesn't it?

And it has, and this is something that has worked as a business. What I mean by that is that we have maintenance files on every car, all the files as far as possible. I would call it, the documents are off site, but this is an area where we have some of the cars stored. We cleaned it up a little bit because we had a lunch here for the University of Delaware K, upstairs, we have some. from our rare and unique pieces or our storage for leftover pieces uhhuh and we also try to keep it simple. What I mean by that is we are color coordinated.

Right now you can see the yellow, blue, red and green, those are for different types of cars. we have every section for that, this is one that we are doing a suspension detail on these were Shi in cosmoline and if it is not cleaned it is not very nice, so this is one that we have taken apart, cleaned and detailed, uhhuh, this is fresh in the process wow, there's another 959 in there, some of the cars we actually used for the ncrs event that would be the national corvette restoration. They had a regional event here last weekend and used our 2004 Z06 car here as a benchmark for their standards, why would we use that?

This one has seven original miles. Seven, yeah, in a sense, it's exactly how it came out of the factory, so to move this, are you going to put it in the right place? We're actually going to use the stringos that we have in the other building, we have them both up there for the event that's going on today, yeah, and then you know we have the blue ones, we call them the blue ducts, we have the exhaust system that we can . drive cars here and be in the air conditioning which is really nice especially in summer.

I bet so, but I have one more area to show you here. Your cameraman is following your steps during the day. Here we go, these are my favorite areas. right at the back where it starts to get interesting, oh c you have excessive spill and then more points, you have two Ruby star turbos up there, you know your cars, oh three Ruby style turbo sers, wait a minute, this one It's the entire row. In the whole row there are some magical magenta up there on each of them, on a coupe, a convertible and a Target roof and some of the neostar that gt2rs, that 9972 RS, that's cool, only 500 of these These are these are Big Boy cars, this is the kind of car that if you're not on your game you end up in the weeds backwards.

I assume you don't have any information on the mileage which this one doesn't have. 67 original miles, yeah, here we go, one of 500. We actually went with these lightweight plastic car covers for two reasons, right, they're very soft and easy to use, as long as you don't keep them clean, yeah, and the other thing is you can still see the cars, yeah that's a good point, actually yes, I guess when you have that many of them, especially if you're in a shop where fundamentally the platform is the same shape, it's going to be hard to identify. I guess now it's back to the main museum and me.

I would like to share with you one of our military areas, our military soldiers and military in general, we would not have the lights that we have if it were not for them, so we try to get some firearms from each of the conflicts that the United States faces . has evolved in oh wow and look how far it has evolved from the Revolutionary War to the M16 the M16 and this is another one of the race cars in the 1970 Kingfish car uh this was driven by the eccentric Peterson, but this is when We let the kids come in and see what it's really like to sit in an independent car.

Croy's family at the time owned a Pepsi bottle dealership and they also had Dr. Pepper there, how they came up with the number 38 at the time. Pepper had 38 ingredients, so that's what they came up with, meaning 73 the week after the IND 500 and, let me see, he raced in Milwaukee and at that point you just park the car and there's the race. We come to the Viper collection here again, you see the unique colors and all these cars here, all 15 have less than 100 original miles, are there cars that are assigned to be used? All of these cars yes, they were sold in a sense at a dealership price or a private individual yes, roadworthy cars yes, these are not any of these cars that are just hidden here just because basically all of these cars are part of the history of American sports cars and it's nice to see young people involved in these.

I like how I have organized all the trickle chargers, they are displayed and you can see the status of each battery up there, they are on display and here again, it goes back to where you want each car to be running and driving. The condition, uh, for us to keep all the batteries charged, is a prototype, that car, which is a 1956 Mercury turn prik XM prototype, uh, that's one of the ones that will be, we required it last year and they invited us to the immediate conquest of the island. Show it in a couple of months to show that car.

I mean, that's the American dream. It is not like this? There is a term that defines the genre of style. Is this the jet age? jet era and if you could look, take a look at the steering column, the gauges around it, you'll see what everything is like, it just jumps like they're sitting like something futuristic, almost like a Jetson light car, I mean, when it debuted . people must have lost their minds in 1956, yes they must have, and this one had a specific truck and trailer built for this car to take it all over the United States and show off the car, luck has it, that would be special now , that would be another one I can show.

You, of the cars from the late 50s, this would be a 58, these are a Skyliner. I'm going to let you go ahead and jump in there. Okay, you'll be the one to race to the top, let's take a look at this, turn the key. just one click on the passenger side just that one, okay, okay, and then the knob right below that, okay, now stop there, now that we've cycled down, go ahead, grab the lever, pull from it towards you and hold it until it completes. as you can see It will open the trunk lid no way look at its size there is no way to look at the joint on this roof this must have required some engineering in the past it is quite impressive there are over 600 feet of cable It has 19 solenoids and if one of the solenoids is malfunctioning, you know, in a sense, you have to figure out what it is.

Oh, something incredibly satisfying about that. Do you know how much this car cost in the past? they were around 3000 to 4000 in the '50s, so it was an expensive car and an expensive car, yeah, you know, just the top itself was. You would have to look at $700-$900 to upgrade just to have the top power. Continental Kit, look, it's like the back deck of a yacht, another thing, as we go up here, we'll get to the '54 Corvette. These were so cool. The first generation was built between 53 and 1962, but the first ones were 5 3 54. 55 now at that time it had 150 to 155 horsepower, later production doesn't seem like much, however it was right in the area with the Austins Martin, the Jaguars and everything at that time, yeah, look at this here, this would have had a six-cylinder with 31 barrel carburetors uhhuh, later in production they changed the carburetors to where they appeared and had a different air filter because, in In a certain sense, the fuel would leak out and cause fires, but one thing I would like to share with you.

Have you thought about how easy it is to get into modern cars? Take a look at this one, go ahead and hop on, okay, so you wouldn't want to be that big. Hey? No, how did they get away with it? Well, it's now. and then you look at it too, you look at the windshield, that's funny, it looks like a monster in that car, doesn't it? First of all, the circumference of this steering wheel literally drags on my thighs, it's like piloting a boat. but even funnier is that the edge of the windshield is directly in my line of sight, but you also look at the time it had, you have your AM radio, not only do you have your AM radio, you have the colon here. the number six the number 12 which was part of the Connell National Defense System rad if you were in the eastern half of the United States you had to go to the first of the six if you were in the western half return to the other in case of a nuclear war , they would give you instructions at that time.

I'm also thinking that if we have nuclear problems, I don't care what the radio says. Look at the shift pattern, it's actually very strange, it starts in the parking lot and reverses all the way forward. That's the right shifter, like it's not the biggest one from BLS, but I have a hard time getting my leg under it. You'll see a lot of these techniques for getting in and out. You'll see a lot of these where they are cracked because people are holding on to them trying to get in and out. Yeah, I bet here again, some of the low mile cars, we have 5 miles on the red 1980, we have 80 1. miles on the 1978 and on this white 79 we have 6 times.

It seems to me that a high mileage car here would have 100 miles right, most of these cars have never filled the gas tank, no, but we would swap out the gas so it doesn't go bad, but for the most part no, no They've used a full tank of gas, it's not that surprising. You take some of these cars and you think like the black 1970 Chevel LS6, uhhuh, that's a piece of Americana there and that's a lot of car, I mean, that's cool, look at that 450 horsepower, but in terms of something with presence On the highway, I mean, if that showed up in your rearview mirror, yeah, you'd need 450 horsepower because everyone gets out of your way.

Anyway, I would agree with you on that, but no, so we stuck to the winged cars and what I mean by winged cars were the 1969 Dodge Daytonas, what was the reasoning behind those wings if you look at the 1969 who were trying to win? Any advantage they might have in NASCAR racing is fine, and this one here you would think it was for down pressure, yeah, which actually wasn't the case, it was for side to side stability and you also see the nose where the nose is 18 inches long, you know? That was helping the aerodynamics. If they were thinking about aerodynamics at thatso, not really, but they were starting to do it when you got here in 1969, there was always a game of cat and mouse between NASCAR and everything else, they decided that if they wanted to produce. these cars already needed to have a front bumper Dodge wouldn't use it anymore, but they went ahead and went to Plymouth and made a Superbird, this was a Superbird that Richard Petty would make famous in issue 43, but we have this one here and aha, you need a bumper front here's your front bumper here's your front bumper yeah it's basically kind of a gesture of one yeah 1971 Plymouth Road Runner 1971 GTX that's cool and then we have a Porsche 918 Spider, the red ax and the interior stand out Very good with the Riviera blue, do you know how many miles this 35 has? 35 miles yes it still has this literally sticker on it.

Yes, and some of the ones you see without the stickers we will laminate and save. the storage boxes keep them in a really safe place, so all you know, hey, we go up. I need to find the specifications for car number 412, this Porsche is up there on the list, here is a VI, here is the number of boxes, everything is stored, then we come. To the Mustang row, I bought your boss 302, some of your Seline cars, a Shelby truck and then we have a 1996, this was done in a mythical metallic chrome and as you can see it changes from green to purple and two others colors of what our paintThe school told us that this was developed by drug dealers in the 70s and 80s in the Miami area, so in a sense it would help them not get caught because I don't know what color the car was .

This car here is a 7UP edition. The car produces these cars with the intention of doing something big, in a sense, for the National Basketball Association. They were going to do halftime giveaways with these cars, it never happened, but this is one of 7 1978 King Cobra cars that is an interior. K, it looks like they cut someone's golf pants off, but this would be when they were really struggling to have something to run on with 139 horsepower and if you look at the side tires and the little things there, there just wasn't a lot to do. work with here I'm going to see colors tonight when I sleep, okay, there's a lot to cover here, awesome, we did kind of a quick tour, you know, I hope you guys really enjoyed it, believable since you could spend a day. on every car here so good literally one of the gems of the collection when it comes to extreme Porsche is a 1959 Porsche 718 rsk this is number six and this is the first one to be modified to have the rear suspension independent that they manufactured.

Also some, a little later, called them center seats, which would have a seat in the center, but look at this, it's been used to race at Lemons, it's been used to race at Sebring, some of the climbing challenges, you know, is incredible. story, but then you look at how simple, how straightforward it is and I mean, there's not a lot of security there, the condition is so exceptional that you would be forgiven for thinking it was a continuation car and this was one that had really polished illumin in a moment and they called it The Shining spider and then you get to that, you look at this, you look at the aerodynamics and here again the safety features, the size of the wheels and the tires, we come back from the 1959 Porsche. we get to this one here uhhuh, this is a 2019 Ford GT, it's done in a Heritage Edition and Mark has 15 of the modern ones or this, I would call them second generation cars, but if you look at this car, you look at the tilt of the windshield like you mentioned, look at the doors, what it looks like This car, this would be the cutting edge of 1959 technology, it was back then, everything was super small and light, not a lot of power, although in a weird way, I mean this is built around an all carbon tub, so they still looked to save weight, but the size differences have a little jump once again, thanks for coming, it was amazing, let's start with the man.

Frontal chat with Henry brilliant, but I know we went through things very, very quickly here, it was honestly amazing. We would love to come back and spend a little more time, but thank you very much for that trip. We hope to see you again. Thank you. I appreciate it thank you