More Than Just a Car: Inside Mike and Debbie Rogers’ Collection
The incredible fleet of Velocity Collectors Mike and Debbie Rogers has a story to tell
Every car ever built has had the capability to take you somewhere. That’s the basic job description. But some cars don’t just take you somewhere down the road. They take you somewhere in your soul, a place that you may have forgotten. They take you back to a time when the promise of youth lay all around you, even if the financial opportunities didn’t.
Few know that better than Mike and Debbie Rogers, this year’s Velocity Collectors at the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance & Motoring Festival. For them, the true beauty of a car lies in the story it tells you when you turn that engine over. It’s a journey Mike has felt with every one of the dozens of cars he’s added to the collection over the years.
“My equation for adding a car is to look at somebody who went into the dealership when that car came out, and at 20 years old were just slobbering all over themselves, thinking about how badly they want it. They just didn’t have the money,” said Mike. “So 30 years down the road, that 50-year-old has made some money, and he’ll pay five or six times what that thing would have cost him brand new. But he does that just to relive his youth. To be able to take his sweet wife he’s shared a home with for 40 years out for a drive on Sunday.”
Viewing a car through the eyes of the person whose story it may eventually tell is a byproduct of the Rogers’ constantly shifting collection. Growing up on the west side of Charlotte, Mike saw Datsun Z cars coming and going from his father’s body shop.
“He made a living buying and selling them, and I would go to my dad’s body shop and work till 5 o’clock. Then I would leave there and go to UPS and work till 10 o’clock. And I did that solid for two years, but unlike a lot of other kids, I always had nice cars,” he said. “These old collector cars are assets. I mean, they’re tangible assets. The whole key to collecting cars, in my opinion, is rarity.”
In what is every car collector’s dream, he found that his wife, Debbie, immediately understood how a collection could become self-sustaining with the right buyers.
“I started getting into cars when I met him. He took me to Barrett-Jackson one year, and I sat there and watched an entire week of people filing in and filing out, spending ungodly amounts of money on cars, and hearing their stories,” she said. “They’d talk about being able to enjoy the cars, sell them and make money. People always have great stories.”
While they are happy to sell some of the collection and turn a profit, there are precious machines in their garage that tell stories of their own and are thus off the table. During the Concours d’Elegance they will share their stories with the crowd as this year’s Velocity Collectors.
For example, there’s the 2007 Ferrari 599 he’ll have on display. During an era when Ferrari fully embraced Formula One-style paddle shifters, his is one of just 30 that were built with a manual transmission. The bulk of his cars, however, will tell the singular story of an automotive genius named Carroll Shelby.
“He was an American icon. I mean, this guy was John Wayne and Elvis Presley all melded together. He was a badass, salesman and a self-promoter who did a lot of great things,” said Mike. “He was a California hot rodder, and he would take different cars, put big motors in them and make hot rods out of them.”
Shelby’s legacy is written across hundreds of different models, some of the rarest of which will be on display as part of Mike’s collection. There’s the 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra, one of about 10 that remain in the “narrow hip” design. There’s the 1999 Shelby Series 1, whose expensive Aurora V8 engine, carbon-fiber body and aluminum chassis proved too expensive to mass-produce, leaving just 249 in existence. There’s one of just 25 50th Anniversary Shelby 427 S/C Continuation Cobras. And the kicker: Shelby’s swan song, the Shelby 1000 Mustang, built just months before his death.
For Mike and Debbie, the Concours is a chance to share these stories with an appreciative audience while enjoying a weekend with their fellow collectors.
“It’s something we can do together. We’ve got friends at these shows that we do not see unless we’re at a car event. So it’s always like a little reunion,” said Debbie. “You see people you haven’t seen all year … and you just spend a long weekend catching up with people and looking at beautiful cars.”The incredible fleet of Velocity Collectors Mike and Debbie Rogers has a story to tell
Every car ever built has had the capability to take you somewhere. That’s the basic job description. But some cars don’t just take you somewhere down the road. They take you somewhere in your soul, a place that you may have forgotten. They take you back to a time when the promise of youth lay all around you, even if the financial opportunities didn’t.
Few know that better than Mike and Debbie Rogers, this year’s Velocity Collectors at the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance & Motoring Festival. For them, the true beauty of a car lies in the story it tells you when you turn that engine over. It’s a journey Mike has felt with every one of the dozens of cars he’s added to the collection over the years.
“My equation for adding a car is to look at somebody who went into the dealership when that car came out, and at 20 years old were just slobbering all over themselves, thinking about how badly they want it. They just didn’t have the money,” said Mike. “So 30 years down the road, that 50-year-old has made some money, and he’ll pay five or six times what that thing would have cost him brand new. But he does that just to relive his youth. To be able to take his sweet wife he’s shared a home with for 40 years out for a drive on Sunday.”
Viewing a car through the eyes of the person whose story it may eventually tell is a byproduct of the Rogers’ constantly shifting collection. Growing up on the west side of Charlotte, Mike saw Datsun Z cars coming and going from his father’s body shop.
“He made a living buying and selling them, and I would go to my dad’s body shop and work till 5 o’clock. Then I would leave there and go to UPS and work till 10 o’clock. And I did that solid for two years, but unlike a lot of other kids, I always had nice cars,” he said. “These old collector cars are assets. I mean, they’re tangible assets. The whole key to collecting cars, in my opinion, is rarity.”
In what is every car collector’s dream, he found that his wife, Debbie, immediately understood how a collection could become self-sustaining with the right buyers.
“I started getting into cars when I met him. He took me to Barrett-Jackson one year, and I sat there and watched an entire week of people filing in and filing out, spending ungodly amounts of money on cars, and hearing their stories,” she said. “They’d talk about being able to enjoy the cars, sell them and make money. People always have great stories.”
While they are happy to sell some of the collection and turn a profit, there are precious machines in their garage that tell stories of their own and are thus off the table. During the Concours d’Elegance they will share their stories with the crowd as this year’s Velocity Collectors.
For example, there’s the 2007 Ferrari 599 he’ll have on display. During an era when Ferrari fully embraced Formula One-style paddle shifters, his is one of just 30 that were built with a manual transmission. The bulk of his cars, however, will tell the singular story of an automotive genius named Carroll Shelby.
“He was an American icon. I mean, this guy was John Wayne and Elvis Presley all melded together. He was a badass, salesman and a self-promoter who did a lot of great things,” said Mike. “He was a California hot rodder, and he would take different cars, put big motors in them and make hot rods out of them.”
Shelby’s legacy is written across hundreds of different models, some of the rarest of which will be on display as part of Mike’s collection. There’s the 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra, one of about 10 that remain in the “narrow hip” design. There’s the 1999 Shelby Series 1, whose expensive Aurora V8 engine, carbon-fiber body and aluminum chassis proved too expensive to mass-produce, leaving just 249 in existence. There’s one of just 25 50th Anniversary Shelby 427 S/C Continuation Cobras. And the kicker: Shelby’s swan song, the Shelby 1000 Mustang, built just months before his death.
For Mike and Debbie, the Concours is a chance to share these stories with an appreciative audience while enjoying a weekend with their fellow collectors.
“It’s something we can do together. We’ve got friends at these shows that we do not see unless we’re at a car event. So it’s always like a little reunion,” said Debbie. “You see people you haven’t seen all year … and you just spend a long weekend catching up with people and looking at beautiful cars.”
Mike and Debbie Rogers’ collection is rich in automotive history, with Carroll Shelby’s legacy taking center stage. Among the rarities is a 1999 Shelby Series 1, foreground, one of just 249 produced. A selection from the Rogers’ collection will be featured at this year’s Concours, where the couple will serve as Velocity Collectors.
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