by Chelle Koster Walton
A young man pushes a cart full of cleaning supplies across the cement floor, stopping to shine the hood on an already impossibly glistening 1955 Camaro. “You have a never-ending job, don’t you?” I ask, looking around at the army of nearly two hundred classic high-performance cars that surrounds me.
He grins widely. “Yeah, and I love it!” he says. “There are a lot of people who want my job.”
He, like his employer Rick Treworgy, has the fever. The obsession. The fixation. Whatever you want to call it. For Treworgy, “it’s just one of those things you get a passion for and can’t let go.”
The passion? General Motors muscle cars from the 1960s and ’70s, all parked in a former Walmart that’s now Rick Treworgy’s Muscle Car City in Punta Gorda. “I started in the mid ’70s restoring and saving them,” says the sixty-something owner. “I’ve got all the cars I really want. I just don’t know enough to quit.”
The rarest in the collection—which includes orderly rows of Vettes, Z-28 and 396 Camaros, Chevelles, SS El Caminos, Pontiac GTOs, Oldsmobile Cutlass 422s, and high-horsepower Impalas—are a yellow 1965 Chevelle Malibu that Treworgy has spotlighted on a turntable, a flashy orange ’69 Camaro, and a ’69 Corvette. They’re worth between $200,000 and $300,000 each and pose with their hoods open, exposing gleaming, spotless engines.
The museum, which opened in March of 2009, claims at least one Corvette for every year from 1954 to 1975. There are sixteen from 1957 alone. From 1975 on, Treworgy owns several of each series, but he’s a muscle-car snob. Some models just weren’t high-performance enough for his standards.
Some of the pieces in the collection reflect the owner’s nostalgic side, such as older models like the 1927 Chrysler and 1929 Chevrolet Woody. Besides cars, memorabilia including vintage ice coolers, gas pumps, and a Budweiser racing boat and hauling rig demonstrate the breadth of Treworgy’s collecting affliction.
Those who share the affliction can purchase nostalgic or car-related gifts in the impressively sprawling Speed Shop and Memorabilia Store. You’ll find everything from a Chevy clock and model cars to an engine block and a $3,000 vintage gas pump. There are logo T-shirts, café tables and bar stools, works of car art, neon signs, automotive parts, you name it. Even vintage cars are for sale in the Car Corral.
The nostalgia theme carries over to the Muscle Car City Diner, a clever 1960s-style diner complete with black-and-white tiled floors, chrome-trimmed chairs, a diner wall mural, and tables decorated with paintings of cars. Treworgy’s background includes restaurant investment, along with real estate, landfills, and a few other lines of work he has collected. He is part of the Punta Gorda–based group that owns Harpoon Harry’s, The Captain’s Table, John Hall’s Goal Post Grill & Sports Bar, and the new Laishley Crab House, so inserting a dining element into his 99,000-square-foot operation on Tamiami Trail was a natural. And the retro motif fit like a key in an ignition.
I pulled in for breakfast before touring the museum and parked myself in one of the colorful red naugahyde booths for a mug a coffee and a half-order of biscuits and gravy. Good thing I asked for a half-order, because that amounted to two large, fluffy biscuits and a mess of gravy that was too good to quit eating when I’d already filled up my tank halfway through. All that for under $4.
Typical diner fare—hot dogs (“the best in town,” the menu claims), half-pound burgers, onion rings, salads, and sandwiches—fills out the lunch menu. Old-fashioned desserts such as shakes, a root-beer float, and an apple cobbler threaten to fill out your waistline. Sandwiches and burger range from $5 to $9.
Since its opening, Muscle Car City has become the headquarters for leagues of people who share Treworgy’s passion. Even on a slow day, it sees upwards of one hundred visitors. During its first short winter season, that number swelled to four figures a day.
Free Cruise-In events pack the 720-space parking lot with classic and vintage cars the third Saturday of each month from 4 to 7 p.m. Cruise clubs from all over the United States also book the space throughout the year. There’s also a monthly Sunday Auto Flea Market from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. the last week of the month, open free to the public and featuring live music and hot wheels.
But with two-hundred mint-condition muscle cars, sixty-four of them cherry Corvettes, Treworgy surely must be finished collecting cars. “I’d still like to do Buicks and Trans Ams,” he admits, “but I hesitate to get started. Once I start a line it becomes an obsession.”
Chelle Koster Walton is the author of The Sarasota, Sanibel Island & Naples Book (Countryman Press).