Lenny Shiller’s Incredible Collection of Classic Cars

Lenny Shiller is a collector of vintage cars. His collection goes back to the ‘30s and he keeps the cars in a garage in Brooklyn.
Some of the cars may be even familiar to you: for decades, Shiller has rented them out to film productions (most recently, Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies”), music videos and photo shoots. Schiller has been collecting, restoring and maintaining his priceless collection over a few decades.

Schiller has been collecting, restoring and maintaining his priceless collection over a few decades.
Maybe it’s too much to own 12,000 sq ft garage, especially in a place like Brooklyn, but for this collector of classic cars and his 58 vehicles, it is a necessity.

In addition to his 58 cars, among which you can find rare Hudsons, Packards and Nashes , in the garage there are also countless bikes, motorcycles and many boxes of spare parts. In his garage you can find cars as varied as a 1929 Durant rumble – seat coupe, 1953 Packard convertible, 1979 Checker (former NYC) taxi,  and trucks such as a 1947 International soda truck (replete with original seltzer bottles) or even a 1965 Ford Good Humor Ice Cream truck.

His original idea for the collection was to have one car from every year, from the period between 1936 and 1958. The ’50s were a huge transitional period and in 1949 they started needing design changes. That is when he got the wonderful cars like the bullet-nose Studebaker from 1950. The dominant brand in his collection now is Chrysler.

Shiller’s grandmother had 1936 Chevrolet and this is when he became interested in old-school automobiles. His grandmother kept the car in her barn and in 1967 she gave it to Shiller. The following year he bought a relatively new model, a 1954 Mercury Monterey.

Shiller says that the most important car in his collection is a 1951 Hudson Pacemaker with only 15,000 miles in unrestored condition. It’s a four-door sedan and has its original tires from 1951. He says that the car never had a flat tire and that he never took the spare one out of the trunk.

Some of his vehicles have become celebrities, like the ’54 Chrysler that was in the music video for “Smooth” by Carlos Santana, and his 1965 Chrysler 300 convertible was “as big as a whale” in B-52’s video for “Love Shack.”

He also says that he is not interested in muscle cars because he doesn’t care about horsepower or the engine or performance. He cares about styling, design, and mechanics. Shiller has a four-wheeled vehicle for every occasion, but he gets around town on a two-wheeler: his 35-year-old Fuji bicycle.

He advises people not to buy cars at auctions because you can never know mechanically what the car is like under the hood.
Shiller says that some people suggested that he should make the collection a museum to beat the real-estate tax. But he wants it to be his own personal museum and to do what he wants with it. He also added that if someone wants to buy his cars, he wants to know they are buying it as a collector.