Ray Lambrecht, 96, Collector of Chevrolets

[Bob Of Burleson]

By BRUCE WEBER
The New York Times

Ray Lambrecht, a small-town Chevrolet dealer who became far better known for the cars he kept than the ones he sold, died on Sept. 22 at his home in Pierce, Neb., across the street from the auto dealership he owned and operated for 50 years. He was 96.

His daughter, Jeannie Lambrecht Stillwell, confirmed the death.

Mr. Lambrecht, who sold hundreds, maybe thousands, of cars and trucks in his career, had an eccentricity or two built into his business plan. Though he took trade-ins, he wouldn’t resell them. He sold only new cars. And quite often, he simply took a liking to a slick new model and wouldn’t sell that, either.

He ended up amassing a collection of several decades’ worth of Impalas, Corvairs, Cameo pickups, Vegas, Bel Airs and Corvettes, among other Chevy models — more than 500 cars in all — most of which he kept parked on a farm just outside of town, where trees and overgrowth hid them almost entirely from passing traffic.

“If you flew over in a helicopter, you might be able to see some of them around the edges,” the sheriff of Pierce County, Rick Eberhardt, said in an interview on Tuesday.

When Mr. Lambrecht finally put his collection up for sale last year, it was auctioned off for $2.8 million at an event that was televised on the History channel and that Sheriff Eberhardt said had drawn about 25,000 people to Pierce, a town of 1,700 in the northeast of Nebraska.

A good portion of the proceeds came from the 50 or so “new” old cars — known as barn finds or survivor cars in the argot of auto collectors — that Mr. Lambrecht had kept indoors and that had rarely if ever been driven. They included a 1958 Cameo pickup, with 1.3 miles on the odometer, that fetched $140,000; a 1964 Impala, with 11 miles on it, that went for $97,500; a 1978 Corvette (4 miles, $80,000); and a 1977 Vega (6 miles, $10,000).

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