Confessions of a Corvette Fanatic

It was 1963.

Mike Yager, then 13 years old, was riding in a truck with his brother in St. Louis. “At about 4:30 in the afternoon on Interstate 44 near the Pillsbury plant,” he says, “heading east back toward Illinois.”

That’s when he saw it: a silver 1962 Chevrolet Corvette in the opposite lane.

“Not that I remember stuff like this,” Yager says.

That moment inspired a lifelong passion.

About 10 years later, he borrowed $500 to start selling Corvette manuals and accessories out of the trunk of a borrowed car. Since then, Mid America Motorworks in Effingham, Ill., has revved into a booming business.

Yager now owns a collection of Corvettes, which he displays in the museum his company operates. The company also hosts an annual Corvette Funfest that attracts tens of thousands of fans like Yager — though few quite as obsessive — to celebrate what is America’s first sports car. (This year’s Funfest, which ended Sunday, attracted 15,000 cars and about 50,000 people, Yager says. The featured guests included noted car customizer George Barris, who created TV’s Batmobile.)

Yager’s Corvette compulsion even led him to write “The Corvette Bible,” which was No. 2 in the automotive section of Amazon.com at the time this story was published.

Perhaps the popularity is understandable.

The Corvette is an indelible part of American culture, with music (“Little Red Corvette”) and movies (“Corvette Summer”) paying tribute to its allure. Even Barbie drove a pink Corvette.

Chevrolet may win even more fans soon. For 2008 the carmaker bumps up the Corvette’s power. Its small-block V8 now churns out 30 hp more for a total of 430 hp.

Plus a highly anticipated super-performance version of the Corvette, nicknamed the Blue Devil, has finally been confirmed for production and is expected to debut on the 2008 auto-show circuit. Get a peek at it here.

Reported to have more than 600 hp, this new ubber-‘Vette is just the sort that enthusiasts crave, and it is sure to amplify the mystique of this long-running model line.

Here we chat with Yager about his vehicular “addiction” and some of the most notable Corvettes in his collection, including the one from “Corvette Summer.”

ForbesAutos: Do they really call you Mr. Corvette?
Mike Yager: Yeah, that’s one of the nicer things they call me. …My job is the American Dream of the American-Dream sports car, the Corvette. I found out that there were lots of people that were as passionate as I am about the Corvette and the hobby and just the whole social side, so I started a business that I thought would pay for my habit. My drug of choice was cars.

It’s probably one of the healthier ones.
Yeah, and you probably spend a little less money at the end of the day.

How many Corvettes do you own?
I’ve owned as many as 50 Corvettes at one time and now I probably have around 35.

Where do you keep all of them?
We have a museum here on our corporate campus that’s open to our customers.

The customized 1973 Corvette from the 1978 movie “Corvette Summer” is part of your collection?
Yes. It may be the world’s ugliest Corvette. But there’re a lot of people who think it’s cool — just because it’s a celebrity.

Do people recognize it from the movie?
It is the absolutely most recognized, most requested car in my collection. Unbelievable. The funny thing is I bought that car from a museum in upstate New York. I bought maybe 10 or 15 cars, some I wanted, some were part of a package deal. I kept this one because it was odd. I had no clue it would be the most popular car in my collection. We even have people who aren’t Corvette fans who search on the Web and find out we have it and call up to see if they can come and take pictures of it. That’s how you measure the worth of something. It’s kind of cool. But it’s kind of ugly.

Do you have any other famous cars?
Well I have two Volkswagen Beetles from “Herbie Goes Bananas” the old Walt Disney movie — the old Herbie car. I also have one of the current Herbie cars from the Lindsay Lohan movie. We participated with Disney in helping them build the twenty-some movie cars, so in turn they gave me one of the cars from the movie. And then I have the second ugliest car ever made, a car from “Death Race 2000,” it’s got big ol’ dinosaur teeth on the front of it. It’s shaped like a Corvette on a Volkswagen chassis, it’s purely a movie car. It’s got some of the heritage in Volkswagen, some of the heritage in the Corvette body shape.

Do you ever drive any of them around?
This past weekend my wife and I took out a 1954 Corvette that’s worth upwards of half a million dollars. We drove it on a date.

Do you get a lot of attention when you drive these old cars around?
When you drive a vintage anything around, you get a lot of attention. And certainly in a vintage Corvette you get a lot of attention. Do you remember when you were a little kid — did you ever go to a gas station where if you jumped on the hose the bell would ring?

Yes — I had forgotten about that…
We have an old gas station here at Mid America, an old 1910 gas station with one of those hoses with a bell in the driveway. A five year-old kid will come up and know exactly what that hose is all about — you catch him jumping! How does he know? That is an unmapped gene that no doctor has discovered. ...So what do kids do when they see you from the playground in an old vintage Volkswagen Beetle? They flash a peace sign at you.

What do you drive normally?
A new Corvette, a Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG, a new Cadillac Escalade. Did I tell you I have a lot of cars? It’s my business. That’s my life. And I also have a Ferrari F360 Modena. So anyhow, I just like cars!