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Big-horsepower Lingenfelter Collection raises big bucks for American Cancer Society
Posted by Talbot Payne on April 22, 2024
Lingenfelter Collection: Ferrari 812 Competizione, Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Brighton — Flowers are opening up for spring and so is the epic Lingenfelter Collection.
Million-dollar Ferraris, thousand-horsepower dragsters, hundreds of some of the rarest muscle cars you’ll find anywhere. From 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, the public is welcome in to ogle Ken Lingenfelter’s 170-car collection at the annual Charity Spring Open House — and even get an autographed poster from the man himself.
All proceeds go to the American Cancer Society. There is no entry fee, and visitors are free to make a contribution at the door or choose from the hundreds of Lingenfelter Shop items that celebrate the need for speed and the cars that deliver it. In 2023, over 3,000 people mobbed the Spring Open House and filled the charity’s coffers.
Just south of I-96 in Brighton (more details at website: https://www.thelingenfeltercollection.com), the Collection’s 40,000 square feet is split into three massive galleries filled with eye candy.
“These are the cars that have caught my eye over the years,” said Lingenfelter, whose Lingenfelter Performance Engineering has become one of the country’s premier after-market mod shops. “I fell in love with the 1963 Corvette Split Window when I was a kid, and I was hooked.”
The first gallery hits you with a row of five red-blooded Ferraris. Though Ken’s business has made its name modifying General Motors Co. muscle, Lingenfelter has a weakness for Ferraris just like everybody else. He rotates his Prancing Horse collection, and this year it’s book-ended by front-engine Ferraris: Roma and 812-horsepower 812 Competizione. The latter, its hood as long as a football field, bears the last normally aspirated V12 before the brand moves to hybrid powertrains.
Lingenfelter Collection: Ken Lingenfelter. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Drag yourself away from the Italians and you’re greeted by good ol’ American muscle: A row of menacing Camaros and Pontiac Trans Ams, including a Lingenfelter-produced 2010 Trans Am. One of 30 made, the white and blue-striped beast has a shaker hood to feed the V-8 within making more power than the Space Shuttle.
Speed runs in the family, and wife Kirsten is an accomplished autocross driver. She finished fourth last year in the Corvette Club’s national autocross championship in her mid-engine, Accelerate Yellow Corvette C8 — which is buried in the first gallery.
Gallery #2 is all ‘Vettes with very special pedigrees – including that ’63 Split Window that Ken coveted as a boy.
GM has a bad habit of destroying its concept cars, but the collection showcases a re-creation of the first-generation 1954 Corvette Corvair Motorama Showcar, of which only two were made (before their destruction). The first Corvette coupe, it also bears the first use of the Corvair name — a badge that would ultimately stand alone as a separate model line in the 1960s.
Did you know Corvette made a station wagon? Well, kinda of. The concept for the two-door Nomad wagon started as a Corvette-based model — complete with Corvette C1 fascia — at the 1954 Motorama (a GM showcase in the day). Lingenfelter showcases one of five re-creations of that concept car (which was destroyed, naturally) made in 2004 and based on a fifth-generation Corvette chassis. It’s wild-looking.
Wilder still is a Greenwood Corvette GTO based on the legendary red-white-and-blue race cars of the 1970s that hit a GT record 215 mph at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance car in France. Greenwood made two of these cars for the street, and it looks little different than the wide-bodied monsters that wowed race fans. Under the swollen hood is a turbocharged 6.0-liter V-8 engine.
Lingenfelter Collection: Greenwood Corvette. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
Speaking of V-8s, Lingenfelter’s engineers added twin turbochargers to a fifth-gen Corvette and raced it against a Blue Angels F-18 jet down a runway. The Corvette won, hitting 60 mph in just 1.9 seconds. The ‘Vette is on display behind a poster signed by the Angels team.
Even the cars in Gallery #2 that don’t look like Corvettes are Corvettes. Check out the 1981 Caballista, which looks like a Rolls-Royce and a Corvette had a baby. Behind that vertical British grille is a good ol’ Corvette pushrod V-8 Just six remain in the world today.
The third and final gallery shows off the diversity of Lingenfelter’s collection. Sure, there are plenty more Camaros and ‘Vettes to check out. but there are also unique animals like a modified, V8-powered, 1974 Gremlin (complete with Levi’s jeans interior). A nitrous-fed 2007 Dodge Charger Funny Car dragster lurks in the corner. The winner of the 2007 NHRA Nationals, it ate a quarter-mile of track at 327 mph in just 4.8 seconds — that’s more than twice as fast as the Ferrari 812 Competizione. Oh.
Lingenfelter Collection: After Lingenfelters’ 2000 Corvette beat ta Blue Angel’s F-18 down the runway, the Angels became fast friends of the collection. A signed poster is on the wall. Henry Payne, The Detroit News
There’s also a movie star in the house. A heavily-modified 2006 Pontiac Solstice sports car played the character “Jazz” in the 2007 sci-fi hit “Transformers.”
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of gems in the Lingenfelter Collection. And all in support of a great charity cause.
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.