“I think many spectators and exhibitors at Pebble Beach became exposed to the notion that vintage race cars are important and beautiful purpose-built artifacts of history. These cars are increasingly popular among young people, and collector interest is growing. The fact that these 917s were on the field at the most significant concours in the world tells us winds may be shifting.” —Miles C. Collier
This winter I was asked by Sports Car Market to interview legendary collector Miles Collier. The topic? The unusual presence of a gaggle of legendary Porsche 917 race cars on the show field at Pebble Beach last August. Over a delicious dinner of stone crabs at The Claw Bar in Naples Florida, we spent a fascinating evening together discussing the racing history and historical significance of the Porsche 917. The SCM article reposted below reveals intricate facts and some “inside baseball” about the history of this infamous machine—through the lens of Miles Collier (himself an owner of a very special and significant 1967 917K).
About Miles Collier:
Miles C. Collier is an ex–race car driver and trained artist. He is Founder of Revs Institute® in Naples, Florida, regarded as one of the greatest repositories of automobile resources in the world. He has been intimately involved with automobiles for more than fifty years and has written innumerable articles for specialist automobile magazines, academic anthologies on automotive topics, and other publications. He is well known as an advocate of the automobile as being among the most important technological artifacts of the twentieth century.
About the Revs Institute and the Miles Collier Collections:
Revs Institute is a haven for scholars, preservationists, and passionate connoisseurs of automotive history. The museum in Naples, Florida is a working facility and home to the Miles Collier Collections — over one hundred significant automobiles built between 1896 and 1995.
The Miles Collier Collections of automobiles is a purposefully curated assemblage of the most profound and rare automotive innovations of our time. Declared the finest sports car collection in America by The New York Times, Revs Institute attracts a worldwide audience of automotive enthusiasts, preservationists, and industry scholars.
The automobiles on display at Revs Institute are some of the rarest and most important cars ever built. These are cars that blazed technical pathways, redefined aesthetic standards, made history, and changed the world. Attended to by full-time restoration technicians, these meticulously selected rare vestiges of automotive history remain operational and continue to demonstrate their engineering prowess on race tracks and roadways the world over.
No other venue provides the same level of intimate access to these rarefied masterpieces of mankind’s creativity than Revs Institute. That is because the Miles Collier Collections is presented as a working museum. Nearly every vehicle in the Miles Collier Collections has been masterfully restored according to exacting historical standards and is maintained in peak operational condition.
Receiving the Master of Monterey Award in 2019 with Miles Collier, Donald Osborne, and Carl Bomstead.
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