June 5, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, like many others, Miles C. Collier fell in love with automobiles in an instant. Today, he runs the world-renowned Revs Institute—widely considered the best car museum in the world—and is the author of The Archaeological Automobile, a book that explores American material culture through the lens of the vehicles and artifacts we leave behind.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story from one of the top car collectors in the world.
Miles Collier is the founder of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida,
which has been named America's best car museum by wrote
in Track magazine. And today we hear from Miles about
his own story with cars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The only thing I will say about my racing career
is that years later I was accosted by a representative
of the ASPCA, which is the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Automobiles, and they suggested that I
probably shouldn't be driving anymore. It's cruelty automobiles. You don't
know the SPCA. They lurk around racetracks and that they
(01:02):
find you doing mean things to your car. They say,
stop that, son, you ought to be on the beach.
I'm totally incompletely facetious, the point being that I am
not the embodiment of Tatsio Nouvalari, not that I was terrible.
I wasn't terrible, but I just drifted away from it.
My high point was I was awarded the first SVR
(01:26):
A Driver of the Year award. Even the blind Pig
eventually finds the corn. The thing about cars is that
they have the unique property of reaching out and grabbing
the susceptible person by the throat the point being a
(01:47):
sociology researcher whose materials I read basically said cars pick
the people that are interested in them, not the other
way around. And that's not necessarily true of golf or
fly fi or flying model airplanes or any of these
other things. Cars have this property where analogously we think
(02:08):
of wind in the windows. Remember how mister Toad the
first time he saw a car and all of a
sudden his eyes started rotating in his head, and is
all he could say was poop, poop or whatever it was,
and he was just completely blown away by the automobile. Well,
that is literally how automobiles attract their following. So what
(02:29):
was my Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus event Well,
is all I can say is my dad was a
racer back in the day. Sadly he died in nineteen
fifty four, but I remember some years after that when
my family moved back to New York City where I
was going to school. One weekend or something, I came
(02:52):
across a box full of old road and track magazines,
and I pulled him out and I started flipping through them,
and I can recall even now there's one article on
a Jowat Jupiter. Now there's a terrifying confection. A Jowat
Jupiter is a particularly nasty English confection with a four
(03:13):
cylinder water cooled horizontally opposed front engine. And the Jowett
mark was prevalent in its last gas were prevalent in
the UK in the nineteen fifties, and their high performance
sportscar version was the Jowat Jupiter. And some small voice
in the back of my head said, now it's time
(03:33):
to get interested in cars. Never looked back so long
roundabout way of saying that cars reached out and grabbed me.
They did it through the medium of magazines. Well, I
think the way people get involved in cars as idiosyncratic.
It depends on the person. And as a former girlfriend
(03:56):
of mine said, Myles, you can over intellectualize anything that
was a relationship. There was not going anywhere. I can
over intellectualize anything. So I got interested in cars first
of all because of their obvious glamour, romance, attractiveness, all
the things that everybody loves about cars, and then the
(04:18):
more interesting thing to me was the context and the connections.
So context and connections which I have been able to
push to the extent of what you see today, where
we have one of the world's great library collections and
one of the world's great car collections, and all kinds
of things that combine together allow us to really understand
(04:40):
the autobile as a human and social and cultural phenomenon,
which is where I'm particularly interested, and that's why I
have ended up writing a book called The Archaeological Automobile.
But the point is, the Archaeological Autobile is essentially about
thinking about the automobile as material culture. Material culture are
(05:04):
the things that mankind produces in ordinary life in ordinary use,
and material culture varies around the world as a function
of the culture from which it comes, and so something
from Japan is going to be different from something from
Germany or something from South America. But it is basically
(05:27):
the material remnants that we leave behind as our species
travels through time. The automobile is completely underrepresented in the Academy.
It is completely underrepresented among our normal cultural institutions, for
reasons that absolutely no one I've been able to find
can articulate. The autombile is just something that nobody wants
(05:50):
to talk about. You know, I did an enormous amount
of reading for my book, and the gist of academic
commentators who comment about the autobil interview and far between
is that we find it inexplicable. Normally, the amount of
published materials roughly is congruent with the importance of the
(06:14):
thing being written about. This is not true of the
automobile is enormously important and nobody writes about it. In fact,
it's generally viewed as one of those subjects. It's a
third rail of the academy. Okay, you write about automobiles,
you're immediately suspect. I guess I would say the problem
(06:34):
with the automobile is it's way too stimulating, it's way
too interesting, it's way too charming, it's way too engaging,
and therefore it can't be serious. So, you know, we
can talk about the evolving morphology of Barbie Dolls over
time and the self perception of women as a sociological paper,
(06:56):
but we cannot talk about the autobile in any way,
means or form. And now you know, it's changing a little,
and there are some academicians out there. I mentioned Dale Dannifer,
who did sociologic research on how to car enthusiasts become
car enthusiasts. There are people, you know, academicians who are
writing about the influence of the autobile on society in
(07:17):
various ways, but generally the focus is on the automobile
is a social change agent because that lets you deal
with the automobile in the abstract. It's a social change agent.
We don't need to get into it anymore. Okay, so
now we can talk about society and how society changes
with this amorphous, undefined thing social autobile social change agents. Like,
(07:40):
no picture of the autombile is created, there are no
analysis of the autombile exists. We just talk about it.
It's influence, so that that seems to be relatively safe.
If you start talking about the autobils material culture, boy
are you in trouble, because that's where you know everything
suspect happens. So naturally, my books about the automobile is
material culture, and it's a hugely important piece of our
(08:03):
material culture. The thing we need to remember about the
automobile and much other material culture is the same way
is that it has a function has a nominal function,
and the automobile's nominal function is personal mobility and mobility
of goods. But it has other functions that are implicit,
and one of them is social signaling. Human beings have
(08:27):
evolved over millions of years to be sensitive to other
human beings across vectors of power, status, and wealth. People
are social animals. You stick them all in the room,
they immediately want to know what's the pecking order here,
and we have a zillion signaling modes to do that
(08:53):
so that you know, it becomes a you know, a
natural and easy things to do, and is everything from fashion. Ok,
you can have a you know, one hundred and fifty
dollars suit from Walmart, or you can have you know,
totally customed silk blend blah blah blah, and you can
tell the difference. So you know, it's clothes, it's houses,
(09:13):
it's furnishings, it's you know, all of those kinds of things.
And one of the most effective has always been transportation.
So the man on the horse was always in a
superior position to you know, all the peasants that were
standing around, pulling on their forelocks and making nice noises
to him. The glittering carriage with a perfectly matched pair
(09:37):
and a coachman and a footman. You know, pretty much
let everybody know where you stood. The automobile did the
same thing, and it doesn't to the same thing today. Right,
you see some beat up Toyota high Lucks with a
bunch of garden equipment in the bed of the thing.
It's like, oh, okay, I kind of know what the
story is there and is next to you know, some
(10:00):
portion nine to eighteen pipercar. Right, It's like, okay, if
that's not social signaling, I don't know what is. I mean,
you know, people say, oh, no, that's just that's a
terrible thing. I got news for you. I don't care
if it's terrible or not terrible. We have evolved that
way genetically. We are sensitive to status and power and
(10:20):
wealth because evidently it worked over ten thousands of years.
So whether it should be or could forget that, I mean,
that's that's a mugs game to play.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And you've been listening to Miles Collier, the founder of
America's best car museum, the REVS Institute. The automobile it's story,
it's cultural as an artifact and as a fact of
life here on our American story.
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story from one of the top car collectors in the world.
Miles Collier is the founder of the REVS Institute in Naples, Florida,
which has been named America's best car museum by wrote
in Track magazine. And today we hear from Miles about
his own story with cars.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
The only thing I will say about my racing career
is that years later I was accosted by a representative
of the ASPCA, which is the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Automobiles, and they suggested that I
probably shouldn't be driving anymore. It's cruelty automobiles. You don't
know the SPCA. They lurk around racetracks and that they
(01:02):
find you doing mean things to your car. They say,
stop that, son, you ought to be on the beach.
I'm totally incompletely facetious, the point being that I am
not the embodiment of Tatsio Nouvalari, not that I was terrible.
I wasn't terrible, but I just drifted away from it.
My high point was I was awarded the first SVR
(01:26):
A Driver of the Year award. Even the blind Pig
eventually finds the corn. The thing about cars is that
they have the unique property of reaching out and grabbing
the susceptible person by the throat the point being a
(01:47):
sociology researcher whose materials I read basically said cars pick
the people that are interested in them, not the other
way around. And that's not necessarily true of golf or
fly fi or flying model airplanes or any of these
other things. Cars have this property where analogously we think
(02:08):
of wind in the windows. Remember how mister Toad the
first time he saw a car and all of a
sudden his eyes started rotating in his head, and is
all he could say was poop, poop or whatever it was,
and he was just completely blown away by the automobile. Well,
that is literally how automobiles attract their following. So what
(02:29):
was my Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus event Well,
is all I can say is my dad was a
racer back in the day. Sadly he died in nineteen
fifty four, but I remember some years after that when
my family moved back to New York City where I
was going to school. One weekend or something, I came
(02:52):
across a box full of old road and track magazines,
and I pulled him out and I started flipping through them,
and I can recall even now there's one article on
a Jowat Jupiter. Now there's a terrifying confection. A Jowat
Jupiter is a particularly nasty English confection with a four
(03:13):
cylinder water cooled horizontally opposed front engine. And the Jowett
mark was prevalent in its last gas were prevalent in
the UK in the nineteen fifties, and their high performance
sportscar version was the Jowat Jupiter. And some small voice
in the back of my head said, now it's time
(03:33):
to get interested in cars. Never looked back so long
roundabout way of saying that cars reached out and grabbed me.
They did it through the medium of magazines. Well, I
think the way people get involved in cars as idiosyncratic.
It depends on the person. And as a former girlfriend
(03:56):
of mine said, Myles, you can over intellectualize anything that
was a relationship. There was not going anywhere. I can
over intellectualize anything. So I got interested in cars first
of all because of their obvious glamour, romance, attractiveness, all
the things that everybody loves about cars, and then the
(04:18):
more interesting thing to me was the context and the connections.
So context and connections which I have been able to
push to the extent of what you see today, where
we have one of the world's great library collections and
one of the world's great car collections, and all kinds
of things that combine together allow us to really understand
(04:40):
the autobile as a human and social and cultural phenomenon,
which is where I'm particularly interested, and that's why I
have ended up writing a book called The Archaeological Automobile.
But the point is, the Archaeological Autobile is essentially about
thinking about the automobile as material culture. Material culture are
(05:04):
the things that mankind produces in ordinary life in ordinary use,
and material culture varies around the world as a function
of the culture from which it comes, and so something
from Japan is going to be different from something from
Germany or something from South America. But it is basically
(05:27):
the material remnants that we leave behind as our species
travels through time. The automobile is completely underrepresented in the Academy.
It is completely underrepresented among our normal cultural institutions, for
reasons that absolutely no one I've been able to find
can articulate. The autombile is just something that nobody wants
(05:50):
to talk about. You know, I did an enormous amount
of reading for my book, and the gist of academic
commentators who comment about the autobil interview and far between
is that we find it inexplicable. Normally, the amount of
published materials roughly is congruent with the importance of the
(06:14):
thing being written about. This is not true of the
automobile is enormously important and nobody writes about it. In fact,
it's generally viewed as one of those subjects. It's a
third rail of the academy. Okay, you write about automobiles,
you're immediately suspect. I guess I would say the problem
(06:34):
with the automobile is it's way too stimulating, it's way
too interesting, it's way too charming, it's way too engaging,
and therefore it can't be serious. So, you know, we
can talk about the evolving morphology of Barbie Dolls over
time and the self perception of women as a sociological paper,
(06:56):
but we cannot talk about the autobile in any way,
means or form. And now you know, it's changing a little,
and there are some academicians out there. I mentioned Dale Dannifer,
who did sociologic research on how to car enthusiasts become
car enthusiasts. There are people, you know, academicians who are
writing about the influence of the autobile on society in
(07:17):
various ways, but generally the focus is on the automobile
is a social change agent because that lets you deal
with the automobile in the abstract. It's a social change agent.
We don't need to get into it anymore. Okay, so
now we can talk about society and how society changes
with this amorphous, undefined thing social autobile social change agents. Like,
(07:40):
no picture of the autombile is created, there are no
analysis of the autombile exists. We just talk about it.
It's influence, so that that seems to be relatively safe.
If you start talking about the autobils material culture, boy
are you in trouble, because that's where you know everything
suspect happens. So naturally, my books about the automobile is
material culture, and it's a hugely important piece of our
(08:03):
material culture. The thing we need to remember about the
automobile and much other material culture is the same way
is that it has a function has a nominal function,
and the automobile's nominal function is personal mobility and mobility
of goods. But it has other functions that are implicit,
and one of them is social signaling. Human beings have
(08:27):
evolved over millions of years to be sensitive to other
human beings across vectors of power, status, and wealth. People
are social animals. You stick them all in the room,
they immediately want to know what's the pecking order here,
and we have a zillion signaling modes to do that
(08:53):
so that you know, it becomes a you know, a
natural and easy things to do, and is everything from fashion. Ok,
you can have a you know, one hundred and fifty
dollars suit from Walmart, or you can have you know,
totally customed silk blend blah blah blah, and you can
tell the difference. So you know, it's clothes, it's houses,
(09:13):
it's furnishings, it's you know, all of those kinds of things.
And one of the most effective has always been transportation.
So the man on the horse was always in a
superior position to you know, all the peasants that were
standing around, pulling on their forelocks and making nice noises
to him. The glittering carriage with a perfectly matched pair
(09:37):
and a coachman and a footman. You know, pretty much
let everybody know where you stood. The automobile did the
same thing, and it doesn't to the same thing today. Right,
you see some beat up Toyota high Lucks with a
bunch of garden equipment in the bed of the thing.
It's like, oh, okay, I kind of know what the
story is there and is next to you know, some
(10:00):
portion nine to eighteen pipercar. Right, It's like, okay, if
that's not social signaling, I don't know what is. I mean,
you know, people say, oh, no, that's just that's a
terrible thing. I got news for you. I don't care
if it's terrible or not terrible. We have evolved that
way genetically. We are sensitive to status and power and
(10:20):
wealth because evidently it worked over ten thousands of years.
So whether it should be or could forget that, I mean,
that's that's a mugs game to play.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And you've been listening to Miles Collier, the founder of
America's best car museum, the REVS Institute. The automobile it's story,
it's cultural as an artifact and as a fact of
life here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.