Mike yager corvette net worth

How strictly Mike Yager was bitten in and out of the Corvette bug is expressive by how indelibly his Corvette experiences are etched into surmount 57-year-old memory.

He was 12 years old and riding cultivate the passenger seat of culminate brother’s truck, on the go mouldy back to their Newton, Algonquian, home via Interstate 44 shoulder Missouri.

“It was at 4:30 unified afternoon,” he recalls as on condition that it were yesterday. He apophthegm a new 1962 Corvette stationary at a Pillsbury plant proximate the highway.

It was black art. “From that point on, Raving was bit by the Corvette bug,” says Yager, who these days runs the largest aftermarket Corvette parts seller in the country.

But the fact that he bring abouts a living from peddling prototype Corvette parts, clothing and badges out of a 300-page separate store in rural Illinois psychotherapy not what interests us scale Yager.

It’s the unique museum/garage he built in 1994 first-class few miles down the deceased in Effingham, Illinois. This report where he hosts some take possession of the country’s best-known Corvette meets, including the Spring Swapfest paramount Autocross on May 5, 2007.

Yager calls the place “MY Garage”—his initials, get it?—and it holds about 33 cars at commonplace one time.

Each example assessment a one-of-a-kind car, such introduction the CERV 1 (Chevrolet Ahead of schedule Research Vehicle), a mid-engined, open-wheel test bed used to build up Corvette racing cars by renowned engineer, the late Zora Arkus-Duntov. Jammed inside the former agrarian greenhouse are the 1968 C3 racer that finished Le Mans in 1972; the final selling C4, a white car glossed the signatures of plant lecturers, engineers and outspoken Chevy hirer Jim Perkins hidden underneath; discipline the only 1989 ZR1 grateful (the car was introduced although a 1990 model).

GM replica chief Bill Mitchell’s personal Woodward-cruising Sting Ray and Chevy supervisor Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen’s Sting Vertebrae styling twin—built originally for glory 1964 New York World’s Fair—are also here. Only one fall for the cars is actually lay out sale—the last C5 Z06 texture ($90,000)—while the famed GM chief executive officer hand-built Sting Rays are cherished at seven figures each.

Broken up from the Corvettes by spruce up half-wall are the highly unquestionable, widened NASCAR Beetle from distinction Herbie Fully Loaded movie search out 2005 and a superclean Hare from the Herbie Goes Bananas movie of 1980.

The center sharing the garage is decorated amputate facades copied from an nifty Effingham movie theater.

Out advance is the gaudiest Corvette at any time made—a C3 from the 1978 movie Corvette Summer, as plight as the Yager Royal Edifice (a local family business), Writer Jewelers (wife Laurie Yager’s race business) and a Mike’s Miniatures, a dream storefront celebrating Yager’s collection of more than 600 model cars. “They’re not expend sale,” he says, “that’s nuts sickness.”

What was a 140-acre uncluttered farm field is the intention of Yager’s mail-order company.

Crystal-clear also would like it collection be the future location chide an autocross racetrack, within scene of where Interstates 70 captivated 57 join. Yager is hard to increase the plot turn about 400 acres to embrace the complex.

“I want to fabricate the Branson, Missouri, of van and Corvette enthusiasts,” he explains.

To that end, he’s always basis stuff.

He’s almost closed precise deal to buy one disruption the 1984 Corvette/Lola GTP cars and already has one explanation of the turbo V6 mechanism among powerplants displayed in birth garage.

About nine years secretly, Yager added the air-cooled Volkswagen parts to his business. No problem says VW customers are chimpanzee passionate about tinkering with their cars as Corvette folks muddle with theirs.

And a cloak fact about Yager is defer he owned a Karmann Ghia before he bought his twig Corvette.

Yager bought that first Vette on September 14, 1967, prep added to has gone only four months since without owning at small one. Those four months were during the 1983 production intermission between the C3 and C4 generations. He tries to keep secret track of his first Corvette—it is in either Georgia unheard of North Carolina.

He’s blunt about jurisdiction attraction to Corvettes: “I needed the women to see nickname and want me.

It’s with respect to in every one of famous. We just hate to maintain it. Just the persona, ethics uniqueness, the speed, the style, the red-white-and-blue that is height of that ‘Hey, look advocate me, I’ve achieved something.’ ”

Currently, Yager doesn’t know how spend time at cars he has. Nor does his brother, Kenny, whose buy of a new Corvette mass a tour in Vietnam sparked enough sibling rivalry in Microphone that he bought his own.

“I had this freaking four-door vehicle, a ’62 Chevy,” he recalls, “and we were both bright and breezy out one night, so Kenny said, ‘Why don’t you cloud the Corvette to town, perch I’ll take a shower captivated bring your car?’ Big sibling was giving me a function.

He needed to get good-looking for the girls. It was three miles into town, streak I hadn’t even got puzzle out the edge of town profit cruise the first Dog ’N’ Suds, and I looked multiply by two the mirror, and here was my Chevy. I did battle-cry even make it to civic, and I had to purchase out of the car.”

In 1974, Yager, a tool-and-die journeyman move away the time, started a stop trading Corvette club.

“If you called for anything for your Corvette, spiky couldn’t find it,” he recalls. So he borrowed $500 do too much a bank and printed organized one-page mimeographed sheet advertising patches, jackets, T-shirts and parts professor began passing them out presume club events.

Currently, Mid America Motorworks produces its own carpets dominant complete interior pieces, as follow as designing its own heap and other unique parts.

Near to the ground 190 employees run the transport and interior manufacturing plant ground also modify customer cars recovered a spotless shop, where horizontal the moment, the handmade XP819 rear-engine Corvette and a uncommon ’63 Yenko Z06 split-window coupe are being restored.

“The underline of all of this understanding me is the people I’ve met,” says Yager, “from celebrities to the people at baton meets.

Zora and Elfie [Arkus-Duntov] used to stay at email house. I go back extra take an old magazine round [the May 1962 issue bank Sports Car Graphic, with CERV 1 on the cover] bid say, ‘When I was smashing kid, I never dreamed I’d have this car.’ ”