Last weekend I was in McKinney, TX as the special guest at a party being thrown by a friend of mine, Don Clark. He and his wife, Paulette, had just finished a three-year build on their Tuscan-themed retirement home, and they were having some of their car friends over to celebrate.

I have known Don for a number of years and actually first met him when we were producing the TNN series, Popular Hot Rodding Television. The second season of that show was shot in a studio in Dallas and Don supplied us with a car to have on the set for one of the episodes.

I learned that this car was just one of several really amazing cars in his collection, and this led to me shooting with him for an episode of My Classic Car in 2002. It was hard to decide what to focus on, but I ended up going with his COPO Camaro and his ’69 Yenko Camaro. Really, how can you go wrong with that pair?

Don is a real car guy and at that time he was hosting an annual party at his place just for friends and fellow car enthusiasts. People could tour his collection and since they all brought their own toys, there was also quite a car show going on outside too.

Don had me down in 2003 as his special guest. I had a great time and that’s where I ran into Darrell Mosely and fell in love with his hot rod ’54 Chevy pickup. In fact, I liked it so much that I did a feature on it in the following season. So when Don called me a couple months ago and asked if I’d come down again for the inaugural party in his new home, I didn’t have to think twice about the answer.

The party was great; nice folks, good food and Don & Paulette’s house is beautiful. But the garage is almost beyond belief. It actually has more square footage than the house itself. Don told me that a lot of the design influence came from an episode of My Classic Car that we did with Tim Wellborn in Alexander City, AL who had built a stunning English carriage house just for his Mopar collection.

Don’s collection had grown since I had last seen it back in ’03. It now sports a number of C2 Vettes as well as a couple Camaros, a resto-modded Nomad and Nova, and a Boyd Coddington ’32 High Boy just to name a few. He also had four late 60’s Honda 305 Scrambler motorcycles which caught my eye.

Amid all this fabulous iron tho, I think my two favorite cars in his collection were Don’s ’63 F85 Olds that he dated Paulette in back when they were in high school and a really rare ’62 Olds Jetfire resto-mod that was to die for.

I think I feel a feature comin’ on. Plus that way, I’d actually get to drive that Jetfire! Watch for ‘em in the 2011 season.

Happy Motoring,