Charlotte, North Carolina—the spiritual home of stock car racing in America. I’m traveling along U.S. Route 29 past its Mecca, the 95,000-seater Charlotte Motor Speedway. This iconic track has played host to legendary American racecars like the Dodge Charger, Plymouth Superbird, Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Oldsmobile Cutlass, Ford Thunderbird, Pontiac Grand Prix—even the Buick Regal—over decades of storied NASCAR racing around its high-banked 1.5-mile oval.
Suddenly, my jaw is dropped by a 1967 Lamborghini P400 Miura in lobster red (aka Rosso Miura) driving by. My brother owned a highly detailed diecast model of this supercar—it was his pride and joy—and as a kid, I coveted it more than anything. And here it was, in the flesh in 1:1 not 1:24th, its V12 motor burbling contentedly as the owner cruised around outside the racetrack.
That owner is Michael Jetzer, and the car (No. 19 of 764) has led a colorful, globe-trotting life—a world away from North Carolina. Originally sold by a Lamborghini dealer in Milan, Italy, it spent the early 1970s in California before heading back to Europe in the 1990s with owners in Germany and Belgium. After being seized by the Belgian government, it was sold at auction in 2001 to a Canadian auto dealer and brought back to North America. Jetzer bought the car unrestored that same year and began a meticulous restoration.
Brought back to former glory, you might assume it spends its days as a garage queen. You’d be wrong: “I think it’s the most well-used Miura in the United States,” said Jetzer. “I’ve had it for 25 years, I’m on my second set of tires, which I think proves something, and it does have some road rash, you can’t avoid that. I do love driving it, it’s a fun car, but not for too long a journey because it’s not that comfortable! It’s fun to drive up here in the hills.”
The occasion is the third annual Heritage Invitational, held for the first time at the all-new Ten Tenths Motor Club—a sprawling 100-acre complex featuring a multi-circuit road course and a 20,000-square-foot clubhouse, built in a former parking lot of the ‘big track’. The centerpiece? A 70-strong concours display featuring some of the greatest automotive creations on earth. It also attracted some big names: Ed Bolian, Wayne Carini, Rory and Cam Ingram, Patrick Long, Alwin Springer [below], Jay Ward, and Bill Warner to name a few.
Picking a headliner isn’t easy, but Rick Hendrick—one of the world’s largest car dealers and the force behind NASCAR powerhouse Hendrick Motorsports—just takes the honor. Hendrick co-hosted the event along with Speedway Motorsports boss Marcus Smith (the son of racing promoter Bruton, who created Charlotte Motor Speedway along with Curtis Turner at the end of the 1940s) and the track’s president Greg Walter.
Hendrick brought along not only one but two Mercedes-Benz AMG Project One hypercars (one silver, one black) along with his Porsche 918 Spyder and the new 911 S/T Rennsport, Ferrari’s Daytona SP3 and LaFerrari, McLaren Senna GTR, Lamborghini Sian, Hennessey Venom F5 Revolution, and a Corvette ZR1.
“When I saw all the cars here today, and all the people that are my heroes, if I started naming names, we'd still be here in an hour,” said Hendrick. “Some of the who's who of the world of collector cars, and some of the most expensive cars in the world, are here. When we came in, I said to [my wife] Linda, on earth this is called car heaven.”
A sublime plethora of Porsches were on display across the other side of the main stage, curated by marque expert Rory Ingram. Among them was a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, a 1959 Porsche 718 RSK, and a 1960 Porsche Abarth Carrera GTL, the collaboration between Porsche and Italian designer Carlo Abarth, and a 1964 904 Carrera GTS. Moving into more recent times, Revs Institute brought along its fabulously battle-scarred Martini-liveried 917 from 1970, while Bruce Meyer’s 1979 Kremer 935 K3 was sandwiched by a Lowenbrau-hued 962 from 1987 and Porsche Penske Motorsport’s current 963 racer.
“My late father and Mr. Hendrick were incredibly close friends, and I've just gotten to know this NASCAR Mafia down here in the last two years, and you think of it as all blue ovals and yellow bow ties, but there's a lot of black stallion emblems and there's garages down here full of Ferraris and Porsches,” said Ingram. “You know, Porsche is a family story, my father got his first Porsche at the age of 50 with never the intention or impetus to have two simultaneously, and the hobby turned into a sickness. We went through the stages of hoarding, collecting, and connoisseurship.”
Meyer’s Porsche 935 K3 won the Chairman’s Choice Sport award, and the co-founder of the Petersen Automotive Museum said: “This has been, really a religious experience. This car really walked the walk. It won Le Mans in 1979. It’s restored by Bruce Canepa at his shop. We’ve taken it to various track days. We’ve shown it around the world, and it’s worthy of that. I can take no credit for what it’s done; I’m just a custodian.”
Among the Italian masterpieces on display, there was none finer than Frederick Fischer’s 1957 Ferrari 250 GT, which finished second in the Tour De France driven by Francois Picard and Maurice Trintignant. It deservedly won the Chairman’s Choice d’Elegance award. Another stunner was the 1974 Ferrari 365 GT4 BBLM, the last competition car built by the North American Racing Team (NART), which finished third in class in the 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Speaking of Le Mans, we can’t overlook Rob Kauffman’s Alfa Romeo 8C, the outright Le Mans winner in 1934. Famously, it’s the car that the team used chewing gum to plug a puncture that developed in the fuel tank allowing Luigi Chinetti and Phillipe Étancelin to triumph. “When you think about Charlotte’s big racetrack, the drag strip and the dirt-racing track, I think exposing those folks to this corner of the car world is good and fun,” said Kauffman. “It’s great for the overall interest, and Charlotte is a big city, and it’s got a lot to offer and maybe people don’t realize.”
Kauffman also took part in the historic Trans-Am events that were held on Friday, the first-ever sanctioned races around the Ten Tenths 1.1-mile short circuit: “That was a hoot,” he reflected. “You could tell that this track has been designed by people who run racetracks for a living. This is a really top-notch event, it’s got a flowing track, and I can’t wait to bring some more cars up from my place to try the bigger layout.”
This inaugural event at Ten Tenths marks the beginning of something very special. Marcus Smith (who is partnered with Hendrick in the project) sees potential for growth, having visited established venues like Thermal and Miami’s The Concours Club, and with the Heritage Invitational in mind, he speaks in awe of his trip to Goodwood in the UK a decade ago, which he says very much inspired him. But like everything seems to be in Charlotte, his event is built on family tradition.
“We've been hosting the Autofair car show at the big track, that has been going on since I was a little kid, since 1978,” said Smith. “It’s a really big car show, with a swap meet, a RADwood event, and there’s even an Elvis impersonator competition over there! I used to get so excited about Autofair when I was a kid because we had carnival rides, corn dogs, and funnel cake, and then we would go to the car auction with my dad and we'd bid on cars, and he would tell us what was good or what was not. He would tell us if we could bid or not, so fantastic memories.
“That's where we hosted the Heritage Invitational for the past two years, a show within a show, and we started to develop this friend-network of car collectors and enthusiasts, mostly East Coast-based, and then going out to Monterey and hanging out at Car Week and meeting other friends in the car world, we've kind of grown our group of people that are here this week.
“This has now moved from the middle of the Charlotte Motor Speedway to the Ten Tenths Clubhouse and track, and so it feels a lot different this time than it has the last several years. It's pretty cool how this rolling art can be enjoyed in this way. And the Charlotte region, when you talk about motorsports and automotive, it's like Silicon Valley is to technology, so you’ve got everything you need right here.”
Charlotte may be steeped in NASCAR history, but the Carolinas’ collector car scene is thriving. Just ask four-time NASCAR Champion, and Hall of Famer, Jeff Gordon, who won the Heritage Invitational’s Pro-Am driving event (which raised more than $250,000 for Speedway Children’s Charities), and whose personal 1960 Mercedes SL Roadster graced the “Cars of the Autobahn” display.
The Queen City is no longer just a shrine to stock car racing’s teams and drivers—it’s fast becoming a destination for the world’s most passionate car collectors too. With the Heritage Invitational carving out a new lane in the high-end automotive event space, and Ten Tenths offering a perfect playground, it can become a capital of car culture in every sense.
