In the past 19 years, John McMullen added a few cars to his prized collection of six classics. It didn’t seem like a lot each year, something averaging about 7 cars a year. However, today he has 130 very nicely restored examples of America’s finest, from an 1899 Columbia electric antique to late classics of the 1970s, and even some special sports coupes of the 1980s. All of his collection is displayed in the seven garages that he built at his home in rural Michigan. The total space needed for this expansive, chronologically ordered collection is 36,000 square feet, but it’s all arranged around winding drives and courtyards meticulously decorated to match the décor of the original thoroughbred horse farm where the McMullens moved when he began collecting cars.

“I thought it would be nice to have maybe six or seven cars, so I converted this barn 18 years ago,” he explains about the single existing horse barn on the property. A machine shed was down the driveway from the barn and house, all of which are surrounded by 485 acres of wooded land. “I built a third building, then I said, ‘That’s absolutely the last one.’ Then you see what happened, I built onto it.” he recalls. But each time he found out about a special car, his instinct to adopt the car was a calling he couldn’t refuse. He always reasoned that he had enough acreage to expand his garage village.

So he built a fourth building. Then a fifth, sixth, and finally, a seventh. Two of the garages gained additions, as well. “Each time I said, ‘Oh oh, I’m running out of room again,’” he explains. “The thing is, when you find a beautiful car you have got to have a place to put it.” The growth happened about every other year, and now, for the past few years, he’s been a caretaker and adoptive parent to pretty much every branch of America’s automotive history. American car club members several times annually fill McMullen’s large, fenced-in front yard as they park after traveling on invitation to visit the private collections.

Many of McMullen’s cars have won awards at shows, and many of 130 means a lot of trophies, usually displayed on the floor in front of each car. Being a Pontiac dealer, he felt a loyalty to keep a modern Pontiac collection, with prototype Trans Am wagonbacks, and rare Fiero GTs, and he has classic Pontiac pickups, and even older Pontiac touring cars. He has an addition to one garage that contains only electric and steam cars. “I just sort of took a liking to the electric car because it’s very little maintenance, but I have more electric cars than anyone in the world right now.”

All of the garages are decorated inside and out with period signs, memorabilia, trinkets and collectibles. Wandering through this massive collection would take more than a day to take in all of the history. There is a garage for 1950s and early 1960s cars, with a diner built into the corner. “We grew up with this era,” he explains. In the collection is the first ’55 Thunderbird. There’s another garage with high-end Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, and Pierce-Arrow restorations, including the Duesenberg portrayed in the movie The Aviator in which Howard Hughes used the car to tow gliders and launch them in the air.

His original converted barn contains only antique brass-era cars, including a rare one-of-two Model T. When he started his collection, “I cleaned the barn out and I put my first car in there, which was a 1932 Packard. I never thought I’d have a Packard, but my uncle worked at Packard Motor Car company and he used to drive Packards.” McMullen had the car restored, and showed it at the Meadowbrook Concours in the 1980s, and won a trophy. “That inspired me to get going. I took it to Pebble Beach and won ‘Most Elegant’ and also first place. So that got me all excited.” His next car was a Cadillac V16, a one-off with a body built by the Mercury coach company. “When it was done, I put it in the barn.” Bit by the show bug, McMullen realized that he wasn’t going to let a lack of space deter him from acquiring cars he loved.

The collection grew because during the lengthy time period for each of his cars to be restored, he would stumble upon other cars he liked, and buy them. “In the meantime,” he explains, “while they were being restored I picked up two or three cars here and there. It’s amazing how when you do get interested and you really want to put a collection together, a lot of people will call who have cars.”

Despite the rapid growth of his collection, all of the cars are in top shape. “I’ve done so much of it, that after a while you sort of get pickier.” All of the cars run, too, so the collection is not just a museum.

However, 2007 is the final year that private visitors will be able to rewind automotive history with a 30-yard walk between each of these garages. McMullen has enlisted a couple dozen staff from RM Auctions, one of the few large special car auctioneers, to cull his collection by about 85 or so cars at the pastoral setting of McMullen’s home this June 9; interested car nuts need to phone 800-211-4371 for the location.

McMullen doesn’t keep batteries in the cars, instead he has a few gel cell batteries charging near the doors to each garage that he drops into whichever car he wishes to drive at the moment. “If I was to sell this collection I would have to come up with a lot of batteries,” he notes. Keeping up the maintenance of 130 cars takes a lot of his time. “Fuel pump gaskets, brakes, they all go bad.” Only one of the seven garages—the working shop—is not carpeted. “Carpeting is civilized,” he says, “but I think if I was to do it again I’d probably put some kind of tile down.””

McMullen originally bought the large horse farm because he likes hunting, not because he wanted to collect cars. “I really bought this place, with no intentions whatsoever of cars, but I just love this space.”

“My dad was a mechanic, and I was always helping him with cars,” McMullen recalls. He began his career, however, as a salesman, and opened a Pontiac dealership outside of Detroit in 1966, then expanded to a second dealership in the city of Pontiac, and eventually opened three more dealerships in Florida. “At one time I had 7 dealerships and I just felt it was time to shrink down, so I sold all the dealerships with the exception of the first one.”

McMullen tries to buy his cars already restored, figuring they’re better investments that way. “A lot of people come in here and tell me more about my cars than I ever thought.” His favorite Duesenberg was one originally owned by comedian Joe E. Brown and then by Howard Hughes. Hughes had the car modified with a large hook on the back to attach tow lines for his gliders, and the rear bodywork of the car had been removed. Los Angeles Times owner Otis Chandler bought the car from Hughes, and restored it to its original specifications and then took it to the Pebble Beach Concours, and after that McMullen bought the car from Chandler. McMullen has shown five of his own cars at Pebble Beach, as well as other shows around the country. Every car he’s shown has won an award.

Although the enormous garage village McMullen has created takes a lot of time to maintain, he credits his wife, Dora, with all of the careful decoration of the compound. “My wife has taken an interest in the yard, so she does all the yard and I do the cars, and it works out real well.” Mrs. McMullen, then, is responsible for the only foreign car on the property—a 1971 VW Beetle, which doesn’t run, but is used as a planter in one of the gardens. “I have no import cars,” he says. “That’s a different market entirely and I just didn’t want to get into it.” His Rolls-Royce, of course, was built in Springfield, Massaschusetts.