Chuck Spielman grew up around cars because his father had a Chevy dealership in New York. He's around cars now by choice.
They're choice, all right.
Spielman has one of San Diego's most admired collections, a rotating cast that currently includes a 1923 fire engine, a 1934 Packard, a 1964 Shelby Cobra, a handful of vintage Corvettes and about two-dozen others.
They are housed in a private Sorrento Valley museum that also showcases thousands of items of automotive memorabilia: road signs, toy models, photographs, gas pumps, posters, owners manuals, parking meters, racing trophies.
"Some people specialize when it comes to cars," Spielman said. "I like a little bit of everything."
His museum will be featured this weekend as the car-collecting world again turns its eyes to San Diego for the 16th annual La Jolla Concours d'Elegance.
The three-day luxury event is best-known for its Sunday display of 150 jaw-dropping automobiles parked on the grassy cliffs overlooking La Jolla Cove. But it also includes a Saturday morning tour — already sold out — in which people tool around San Diego in their classic cars and stop to gawk at several private collections.
Spielman's 30,000 square-foot facility is the first stop on the tour, bright and early. If past years are any indication, it won't be hard to get people to show up. (About 200 are expected.) It will be hard getting them to leave.
At age 79, Spielman understands the pull of what he calls "artwork in motion." He's bought and sold hundreds of collectible cars, following his own sense of style, nostalgia and history. The vehicles aren't always old; his current stable includes a 2022 Corvette and a 2021 Porsche.
He drives them all, often on weekends when there's less traffic kicking up rocks that chip windshields and ding paint jobs.
The red Shelby Cobra is a favorite, in part because it's been in his hands twice. After seeing it at a swap meet, he bought it in 1984 for $36,000, a sum that made his wife, Amy, wince.
"Give me four years," he promised her, "and I'll sell it for $50,000." He was wrong. He sold it for $150,000, and almost instantly regretted it.
Eleven years later, the buyer called and said he was struggling financially. He offered Spielman the Cobra back for the same price he'd paid — but in cash.
Done. Now Spielman said he'll never part with the Cobra because of fond memories it brings involving particular passengers — his children and grandchildren.
He doesn't feel the same way about, say, Duesenberg, a luxury brand from the 1930s. He's owned two, including a 1930 model that he put up for auction a month ago at Amelia Island in Florida.
It went for $3.2 million.
His first love
Spielman still remembers the first car that turned his head. It was a 1960 Corvette roadster, silver with red leather seats. His father gave it to him in 1963 when he was 20.
"I was smitten," Spielman said, "and that was that."
He figured he would go to work with his father at the Chevy dealership one day. He joined the Army first, got sent to Vietnam, and by the time his deployment was over in 1970, his dad had retired.
Spielman went into commercial real estate instead, on the East Coast. In 1973, he made his first foray into collecting, spying a 1966 Corvette coupe for sale in Hemmings Motor News, a trade publication. The car was in Miami. He flew there on a one-way plane ticket, intending to drive back with his new acquisition.
It broke down just outside Miami, introducing Spielman to the temperamental nature of high-end wheels — and to the generosity of other collectors. One spotted him stopped along the side of the road, called a friend who serviced Corvettes, and before too long Spielman was back on the road.
About 20 years ago, he decided it was time to transition into the next phase of his life. He'd done well in real estate and wondered if he could turn his car hobby into a business. He moved with his wife to San Diego and opened a company to service, buy and sell classics.
He said he knew he was on the right track when he was unloading equipment at the shop and a guy walked up with questions about the new enterprise. Spielman explained what he was up to and the guy said, "Great! I have three old Lincolns I want you to restore."
Spielman isn't mechanically inclined himself, so the work was done by others. "If I get in there, I can bleed on your car, but that's about it," he joked.
The service side of the business closed five years ago so Spielman could devote more space to another passion, military history. That's become a side museum in the same building, with artifacts from various U.S. wars, including the one he fought in, Vietnam.
When he came home from his stint overseas, in uniform, he got spit on in airports, he said — a reflection of how polarizing that conflict had become among Americans.
"Some day," he remembered telling himself, "I'm going to do something to fix that." He regularly hosts gatherings of service members, military veterans and school children to share the memorabilia.
A hobby grows
Collectors often zero in on a particular make or style. Muscle cars, maybe. Rolls-Royces. That's why there are multiple classes at events like the La Jolla Concours. This year's featured marque is Bugatti.
Spielman's tastes are eclectic. "Just about anything with wheels gives me joy," he said.
If there's a specialty, it's Corvettes, a nod to his first love. He has five vintage ones from the '50s and '60s, including a duplicate of the 1960 silver roadster with red seats that his father gave him. In front of it is a sign: "Proof that your parents were cool once."
He's had cars that have won trophies at major events such as Pebble Beach, and vehicles that serve mostly to make people people smile, like the Good Humor ice cream truck that's in his museum now.
If there's a common thread that runs through the ones he's owned over the years, he said, it's this: They leave his hands in better shape than they were in when they arrived.
He downplays talk about the money involved, even as he shares stories about some of his biggest financial windfalls. "It's more about the preservation and the history for me," he said. "Every one of my cars, they tell stories."
As such, there's a welcome sign painted on one of the doors at the museum:
Cars from the past are artwork in motion, and they also allow history to unfold in three dimensions. They demonstrate that at one time creative people existed who weren't afraid to make true creations personal and who would have been horrified by the fact that today all cars look the same.
You can be a serial fumbler in the world of old cars and be proud. It doesn't matter if you're not good with tools. You've got two essential irreplaceable ones. They are your eyes. They make interpretation and appreciation possible and wonderful for everybody. Use them!
Walking among the cars, Spielman recites details of each from memory. The type of engine it has. Where he acquired it. What's rare about it.
When he drives one around town, he's often greeted by thumbs-ups and honking horns. Lately, people like to pull up alongside him, cellphones out, to take pictures or videos. They don't always stay in their lanes, which gets a little scary, he said.
But not scary enough to make him stop driving them. Or to stop collecting.
"The best car I've ever owned," he said, "is the next one."
