CAVE OF WONDERS
Taking a tour of one of Canada’s greatest car collections,
“Take the second entrance and make an immediate right. Drive to the mailboxes and wait there. Someone will meet you at 7 p.m. sharp.”
A prairie thunderstorm is just blowing itself out over in the foothills toward Canmore, the sky blue and black, and filled with drama. It’s late in the day and the dropping sun lights up the yellow canola fields in a startling contrast. In this vast and open landscape, the buildings are squat and boxy, secretive and filled with treasure.
When I arrive, there’s already a cluster of people waiting for their guide. A new Porsche Cayman shows up, its slender driver wearing a sharply-pressed suit. There’s a minivan, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, trucks aplenty, an orange 1970s Porsche 911 and a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT.
Right on the dot, a little Fiat 500 Abarth shows up, snorting with cheery forced-induction hooliganism. The driver, a dark-haired young man, leans out the window.
“You can just follow me,” he says. The convoy forms up, tailing the little Fiat out to a hidden parking lot.
We all climb out of our cars. There’s a silver Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG wagon parked over by one of the outbuildings. Crunch across the gravel. Reach for the door handle. Fred Phillips opens it up. “Hello,” he says with a grin, “Welcome! Glad you could make it.”
Beyond him is an Aladdin’s cave of wonder. There are three more warehouses to follow, collectively containing perhaps a hundred or more cars. One-offs. Icons. Forgotten prototypes. Tiny Italian race cars and wedgy 1980s poster pin-ups.
Before we can go any further, let me just say that I’m not going to list all the cars in this collection, nor show you photo after photo of gleaming metal to blow your mind. This is not merely in deference to Phillips, who is somewhat private about his collection. It would be a disservice to you.
The thing is, unlike almost every other collection of this nature, these nested boxes of wonder aren’t secreted away from the public and covered up. Instead, every so often Fred throws open his doors and gives a guided tour of his collection. If you happen to be in Calgary at the time, do everything in your power to attend.
You won’t just be getting access to one of the most fantastically varied car collections in the country. You’ll also be getting access to Fred Phillips. Trust me, this is well worth the price of admission — a donation to AARC, the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre.
So, we’ll pull back the curtain a little here, but make touring this collection near the top of your bucket list.
“Cars,” Phillips starts off with an exaggerated sigh, surrounded by three tiers of stacked vehicles. “They’re like terminal cancer for me.”
Certainly it’s been a spreading disease. Phillips has his four buildings of cars sorted into approximate themes, but to the untrained eye, it just looks like he buys anything that takes his fancy. How else, I ask you, does someone come to park a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller next to a Rally Red Oldsmobile W30 442?
But Phillips has a story for every car — a personal anecdote ranging from a particular drive or dream come to fruition. Microphone in hand, he’ll talk nearly non-stop for the next four hours. Not a droning docent, but a true car- guy drawing from a deep well of personal stories.
He’s not what you’d think your typical high-end car collector might look like. There’s no whiff of Pebble Beach finery. Just a pair of plaid shorts, an affable air and a pair of redrimmed reading glasses which he uses to read us excerpts about the essential liveliness of a prewar Alfa Romeo.
Phillips also says “dude” a lot. He doesn’t gloss over into dry facts and figures. Every car comes with a first-hand tale: what it’s like to drive, why it’s important to preserve this one and how he chased the car for years.
“Death, divorce, and taxes are my best friends in getting cars,” Phillips chuckles to his audience. “They make people do silly things.”
In the first barn, there are a number of AMC products, ranging from drag racers to prototypes, to a Renault wearing a Classic Car Adventures rally number. Parked near a custom-bodied Bentley once purchased for a mistress of the King of Spain, there’s one of the most ungainly looking machines AMC ever produced: an SC/Rambler. But not just any Scrambler.
This is one of two fourwheel-drive versions cam- paigned by the maverick Baja racer, team owner, and genuine hotshoe James Garner. Ten American International Racer (AIR) cars were entered into the race, with just two getting the 4x4 upgrade. There’s 410 horsepower from a builtup 390 cubic-inch V8. At 225 km/h across the Mexican desert with the engine thumping at 7,000 rpm, it’s pure 1960s mayhem.
“It’s the most ignorant thing on the planet,” Phillips enthuses.
The second bay is horsepower heaven, starting off with a featherweight Lola racing car and including a huge multi-car stacking bay filled floor-to-ceiling with muscle cars. If you ever had one of those plastic Hot Wheels carrier-cases from the ‘‘70s and ‘‘80s, this is just like that — except with full-sized machines. Will you find Ford’s most-famous Le Mans racer here? You might even see more than one.
To pick a single example, there’s a green 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS from Manitoba, the most powerful factory muscle car in 1970. With a 454 cubic-inch LS6 V8 fed by a four-barrel Holley carburetor, this thing punched out an underrated 450 horsepower in factory trim. But how can you tell if it’s a real one?
Happily, Fred explains, Canadian cars come with documentation that U.S. General Motors products lack. Anything brought across the border was subject to sales tax, and thus options lists are a matter of record. In the U.S., the VIN number doesn’t show what was ordered, so establishing provenance can be tricky.
On to bay three, which Phillips describes as being filled with the products of guys who had a vision. Thus there’s plenty of DeTomaso machines, a collection of the tiny but hilariously enraged gnat-sized racing cars of Carlo Abarth and an entire squadron of little-known Kurtis speed machines, including Frank Kurtis and Virgil Exner’s thesis car, which Phillips calls “the Enzo Ferrari of North America.” This last one comes with a special treat — a folder full of original Exner sketches and plans, hand-delivered by the designer himself. Ask Phillips how he got his hands on them.
Time for bay four. “I like bay four,” Phillips says. Well how could you not? There’s a Ferrari F40 and two — TWO — Lambor … I’ve said too much. Wait and see for yourself.
As he talks, Phillips puts us all in the passenger seat with him, chasing a prewar Alfa Romeo into a canyon road in Colorado. We can feel the icy, eye-watering wind, the squelch of rain-soaked seats beneath us, the clench in our stomachs at triple-digit speed on 1930s-era tires and suspension.
We’re there, too, when he tells us of the personal connection with AARC and how the centre helped his family personally.
“The cars are really the keys to me opening your hearts,” he says to the crowd.
As a last act, Phillips auctions off a charity ride in one of his fantastic machines — your choice of a weekend breakfast run to Canmore, a Tuesday European Cars & Coffee meet or attending Wild Wednesdays hot-rod/muscle night.
“Who pays for breakfast?” somebody jokes. The winner ends up shelling out $500 for the privilege.
At the end of the tour, it’s back to the first room, where people line up to sign the guest book. Some have been here several times, each goround getting a new story and seeing something new as the collection shifts and changes.
Phillips is last to leave, shakes hands with everyone, talks project cars and wild tales from the road; essentially, he acts like he’s showed up to a Cars & Coffee meet with one old machine and not the owner of four warehouses full of wonder.
“In the car-collecting world, I’m still in Junior High,” he says, “I hope to earn professor emeritus someday.”
When we sign the guest book, we’re asked to put a favourite car down beside our name. But don’t ask Phillips to choose.
“Every one’s my favourite car at that given moment,” he says.
Some he’s driven only a single mile. Some are faded and paint-blasted from longdistance rallies. Some are just too plain scary to drive.
It’s obvious Phillips gets a kick out of every single one. And, if you’re lucky enough to get him to show you around, you’ll get a kick out of them too. You have to see it to believe it.
Interested in a tour? Enquiries can be made to tour the Fred Phillips collection right here or by sending an email to tours@focusauto.com.