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The Revs Institute deepens its long-standing connection with Lime Rock Park, on display and on track
A relationship built on shared values—history, authenticity, and the belief that great cars are meant to be driven—takes center stage Thursday through Monday of Labor Day Weekend, September 3–7, 2026.
Miles Collier, founder of the Revs Institute, will return to Lime Rock Park as Honored Guest of Historic Festival 44. He will be joined by Scott George, Chief Curator, as Revs brings a remarkable group of historic cars—some on display, others racing—back to Lime Rock.
This year’s Featured Marque, Alfa Romeo, provides a fitting backdrop. Few marques are as intertwined with both pre-war innovation and post-war competition, and Revs will add to that story with a selection of rare and important Alfa Romeos alongside significant examples from the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) era—cars that connect directly to the earliest days of American road racing.
Two Iconic Alfa Romeos Lead a Stunning Revs Institute Collection of Historic Festival 44, the 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 & the 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ
To understand why this moment matters, you have to begin with the Collier family.
Miles Collier was born into a lineage that helped shape both American industry and American motorsport. His grandfather, Barron Gift Collier, was a pioneering New York advertising figure whose influence on Florida was so significant that Collier County bears his name.
In racing, the family’s impact was just as profound. His father, C. Miles Collier, and his uncle, Sam Collier, were among the earliest champions of sports car racing in the United States during the 1930s, helping introduce and organize a form of competition that was still finding its footing on American soil. They were also among the first to bring MG sports cars into the United States, helping spark early interest in European performance cars.
Alongside his brother Sam, C. Miles Collier competed in the early years of the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA), part of a generation that defined American road racing before World War II.
After World War II, C. Miles Collier returned to a sport that was being rebuilt and helped shape what came next. Together with Sam and contemporaries like Briggs Cunningham, he played a central role in organizing the first Watkins Glen Grand Prix and helped lay the foundation for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA).
That legacy did not end there—it was carried forward.
Miles Collier grew up in that world and made it his own, first as a racer and ultimately as one of the most influential voices in automotive preservation. He spent years competing in vintage cars, earning accolades including the inaugural SVRA Driver of the Year in 1984. But over time, his focus shifted toward a deeper question: how do you preserve machines that were built to move?
Miles Collier comes from a family that helped shape that history, but his own contribution has been just as significant. A racer, thought leader, and lifelong student of the automobile, he has spent decades deepening our understanding of what these machines represent—not just how they look, but how they were used, how they evolved, and why they matter. In The Archaeological Automobile, he describes historic cars as “active matter”—objects meant to be experienced, not simply observed.
That thinking became his life’s work.
Through the Miles Collier Collections and the founding of the Revs Institute in 2008, he established one of the most respected centers for automotive preservation and scholarship in the world. Revs is not a traditional museum. It is a working institution built around the idea that cars should be understood in context—as products of engineering, competition, design, and culture.
The collection includes more than 100 historically significant automobiles, spanning nearly a century from 1896 to 1995. Many are rare. Many are important. All are preserved with extraordinary care, often in their original, “as-raced” condition, allowing each car to retain the marks and character that define its history.
At Revs, these cars are understood as active matter—not static objects, but machines whose meaning is shaped through use, competition, and time. The goal is not perfection, but authenticity, and a deeper understanding of what these cars truly represent.
Revs is also a place of learning. At the center of that work is Revs Archives in Fort Myers, home to more than 120 archival collections, including over 26,000 books, 200,000 issues of magazines and journals, and a growing library of more than 700,000 digitized images, with another 1.2 million pieces still to be processed. Carefully curated to preserve and advance the study of automotive history, the Archives has become one of the most significant research resources in the field.
Through the Revs ARC, that depth of material is paired with emerging AI-powered tools in an integrated research environment designed to make this history more accessible, more searchable, and more useful. Together with its workshops, symposia, and scholarship, it gives Revs a powerful role not just in preserving the automobile, but in deepening how it is studied and understood.
At Historic Festival 44, that philosophy comes off the page and onto the circuit.
Revs will bring a remarkable group of cars to Lime Rock. Some will be shown in a curated display. Others will compete on track. Among them will be cars that connect directly to the Colliers’ early involvement in American road racing, including examples from the ARCA era, joining an exceptional gathering of similar machines from other leading collectors.
This is not a static exhibition. It is a continuation of the idea that these cars are meant to be experienced—seen, heard, and understood in motion.
For Lime Rock Park, it represents both continuity and progression. A long-standing relationship with Revs deepens, while the presence of Miles Collier and Scott George reflects a shared commitment to preserving and advancing automotive history in a meaningful way.
For those who know the Collier name, this is a significant moment.
For those encountering it for the first time, it is an introduction to one of the most important figures in the world of automotive history—and to an institution that has reshaped how that history is preserved.
This Labor Day Weekend, the story comes to life. On the hillside. In the paddock. And on track.
For more information about Historic Festival 44 and Sunday in The Park visit https://limerock.com/events/historic-festival/
