Yahoo Autos Ken Lingenfelter Owns Roughly 250 Cars and Daily Drives a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
From the October 2018 issue
C/D: How well did you know John Lingenfelter?
KL: Not real well. I’d had a couple cars built through his shop. We spent time together, but we never really spent time working together. When John passed away, his brother Charlie made it a project to get me involved and to just spike my interest in buying the assets of the company and take it forward. He knew that John had created something really good. He wanted to see the thing keep going. And John’s brother and I know each other pretty well-better than John and I knew each other.
C/D: You made your money in the real-estate-settlement business. But you grew up with cars, right?
KL: My dad worked at a Fisher Body plant in Euclid, Ohio. We were a real General Motors family. We had Frigidaire stuff all around the house. He’d come home for dinner and take me back to the factory afterward. My dad didn’t have a college education. He started on the assembly line, like so many other people did right out of the service, and worked his way up into management. We used to get the opportunity to go up to the Tech Center on family days. I saw the split-window Corvette in ’63-I was 10 years old-and that car did something to me. I know it sounds silly, but it kind of paved the way for the future.
C/D: So the moment you turned 16 you got a Corvette?
KL: I wish I could’ve afforded a Corvette. I did have a ’69 396/375 Camaro, and I did eventually get expelled from high school for drag racing it out in front of the school. I have a little bit of a defense, though. We had moved to Michigan, and I went to Dearborn High School. And in Dearborn, you didn’t ask where someone’s dad worked, you asked what department he worked in at Ford. I had the only Chevy in the parking lot. One of these jerky guys kept pushing me to race him. He had a Boss 302 Mustang, and if he had just done the math, he would have realized I was going to smoke him-and I did right out in front of the high school one day.
C/D: What does the guy who owns 225 cars drive every day?
KL: Yeah, it’s 250; I’m almost embarrassed to tell you that. I’m driving a new ZR1 Corvette right now. Prior to that, I had a Z06. In the wintertime, I like 911s. Either Turbos or 4Ss because of the all-wheel drive. I just put snow tires on and drive them through the winter. We found a way to make real good power in a new Tahoe with the 6.2-liter engine. So that’ll be my winter driver this year.
C/D: Does Lingenfelter Performance Engineering modify all your daily drivers?
KL: My new ZR1 we haven’t touched. Yet. We have three of them altogether. Mine I’ll be using to run around the country to different Corvette events. My wife actually tracks her car. She’s got a new yellow one, and she’ll be tracking it all summer and into the fall. And then we have a red one that we have in engineering, and they’re going through every component to find this, that, or the other thing.
C/D: Are there still cars out there that you want to own but haven’t been able to get?
KL: They’re out there. It’s just if I’m willing to pay what it might take to get them. The L88 Corvette. I wish I had one of those in the collection. I passed them up over the years. Now, to me, they’re a little higher than they should be.
C/D: You have quite the lineup of halo Ferraris, including a 288GT0 and an F40. Which is better?
KL: I like the 288GTO because it’s a monster. But it’s also a car you can just drive and enjoy. I wouldn’t have had any trouble getting in that car and driving it from Detroit to Chicago. That’s not the case with the F40. It’s just a race car.
C/D: Do you still work every day?
KL: I’m in here at 7:30 a.m. every day and leave well after five. We did 60 events in the collection here last year, from pizza and beer with car guys to black-tie events. It takes a lot to pull those off.
C/D: James Glickenhaus has been building his own car. Would you want to do that, too?
KL: No. There are a lot of guys out there who would be much better at that than I am. At my age, the idea of going through the headaches that would go along with that isn’t something I’d want to take on. It doesn’t make any sense for me. I’m glad some others are doing it.
C/D: Is there anything you’d have done differently?
KL: Oh, there are a few cars I wish I’d have gone ahead and bought: an F50 and that L88. Some of the cars that I’d have liked that others wouldn’t like-I’ve found that I should have gone ahead and bought them. Last fall, I bought a 1980 Chevy Chevette with 5000 miles on it. This car is perfect. It’s amazing to watch how many people walk right by the Ferraris and Corvettes and whatever to go take a look at that Chevette. They weren’t the best cars, that’s for sure. But they were a part of history. So I’m glad it’s here.
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