Meet Bill Sefton, muscle car collector bar none by Dar Davis
This article was originally written by Dar Davis of The Herald-Palladium, a newspaper distributed in the Southwest Michigan region. If you want to learn more about this article, please contact Dar at dn143@sboglobal.net.
William (Bill) Sefton is an avid car collector and successful businessman. For the majority of his life, when he wasn’t working for his company Naperville, Illinois, he was dedicating his time to his passion — cars. Spending time between Chicago, Illinois, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan, his car collection has been greatly reduced but he still has many gems in his garages.
It can be said that Bill Sefton, from a car guy standpoint, has lived a charmed life. How many car buffs do you know that have owned more than 200 cars, most of them to-die-for performance cars, and presently his two daily drivers are a 2019 Corvette Z06 coupe and a 2018 Dodge Challenger Hellcat? I know, not too many.
I first met Bill a few years back, at the local Lake Bluff Concours car show. In the past year Harbor Country resident and mutual car friend John Nordquist arranged for me to meet up with Bill for a breakfast get together in Harbert, and a little later I arranged for the three of us (along with mutual friend Peter Loveland) to meet up in South Haven to visit the terrific Red McFadden car collection. At the Harbert get together I made arrangements with Bill to sit down with me for an interview sometime in 2019. Over cold beverages at Mickey D’s in Bridgman recently, I spent an hour or so being amazed and delighted as Bill shared his very interesting life story; a life filled with hard work and following his dream of owning some truly fabulous performance cars from the 1960s and ’70s.
Bill resides in Phoenix in the winters and nearby Sawyer in the summer. He grew up in the Chicago area and got his electrical engineering degree from Michigan State. He’s married with one daughter and two grandkids. In 1988 he founded a company that contracted with banks to track credit card loyalty programs. His success with the company enabled him to retire seven years ago at the age of 61.
His love of performance cars was forged early on. When he reached the driving age of 16 in 1967, it was the apex of the American muscle car era. Pretty much from the get-go he was a performance car buff and recalls with great joy being a young man who reveled in hearing the throaty roar of the V-8 engines and seeing the myriad of exciting muscle cars on the streets and
highways in his hometown. It should be no surprise that his first car was a performance pony car, a 1971 Ford Mach 1 fastback. He estimates since the Mach 1 purchase that he’s owned more than 200 cars. As I alluded earlier, Bill’s daily driver here in Michigan is the 2018 Dodge Challenger Hellcat with wide body option. For those not in the know, this is the pony car that has 707 horses under the hood. His daily steed out in Arizona is a 2019 Corvette Z06 coupe with 650 horses making noise under its fiberglass hood.
I asked Bill if he had a bias for MOPAR cars, because from first glance at the performance cars in his collection, there are a lot of Chrysler Corporation products. “I’m a brand X guy and like all American muscle cars,” he replied. He explained that if he does have a bias toward the MOPAR performance cars it’s because ChryCo had seemingly so many more choices for buyers, such as
Roadrunners, Chargers, Barracudas, Demons, the Duster 340, etc. Bill went on to say that he collects two types of cars: dead stock and resto-mods “I like resto-rods because they have the looks of the old cars and the drivability of new cars”. For the uninitiated, a resto-mod automobile has been upgraded with improved suspension systems, fuel injection, radial tires, disc brakes, etc.
Over the past few years Bill has whittled his once enormous collection of 160 performance vehicles to just 20, and most reside in the Chicago area. His eye-popping favorites include a 1967 Corvette (427/435), 1968 Super Stock Dodge Dart with race Hemi, 1968 Dart hardtop (440)(…they only made 48 of them), 1968 Dodge Dart 340, 1969 Plymouth Barracuda Mod Top coupe (his
holy s**t car, people who know what it is are amazed to see the rare car, those who are unfamiliar say same thing because they think it’s ugly), 1971 resto-mod Dodge Demon Hemi, 1969 resto-mod Mustang with Ford GT motor, 1978 Little Red Express PU with 360 V-8 (15,000 miles, all original survivor), 1971 Dodge Demon Super Stock (Chrysler was going to build and release this
car but changed its mind — Bill got together with designer Tom Hoover and recreated it. It has a 426 “Wedge Motor”), 2011 Challenger Super Stock (not streetable) with V-10 from Viper (Chrysler built 50 of them and Bill’s is №50. This car was prepared by Roush.)
I asked Bill during our meeting what he would pick if he could have a “wish car” in his garage. No surprise here, he picked a current McLaren F1 streetable supercar. The most beautiful car to Bill? His 1967 Corvette convertible with the 435 horsepower big V-8 under the hood. His pick of the 1968 Dodge Charger 4-speed Hemi R/T with bumble bee stripe (black with red interior and red stripe) was the answer for his nominee for the most successful, iconic muscle car of all time. Bill revealed that other car collectors referred to him as the “black hole.” For a long time he never sold a single car from his collection. “Once I bought a car, eager potential buyers could look at it but I would never sell it.” This went on for 15 years after he started his collection in the late 1980s.
He did finally decide to whittle down his collection. In 2013 he asked Dana Mecum to handle the sale of 44 of his cars at the big Indy Mecum affair. It took six Reliable Transport Company semi trucks to deliver all the vehicles. By the way, Bill bought his cars at both auction houses like Russo and Steele, Mecum, RM, Sotheby’s, tc. and from private owners.
Bill in retirement keeps busy. He Is one of the founding owners of the annual Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals that are held in Stephens Center in Chicago the weekend before Thanksgiving. This event attracts the best of the best muscle cars, stock or modified. Now in its 10th year, thousands of attendees make their way to this show. The organizers select the vehicles from the many submitted. Prizes and awards are given. Bill has entered up to 18 cars per year to this show. Performance buffs unfamiliar with this successful event should visit www.mcacn.com and plan a trip to Chicago come November.
Dar Davis funded the Lake Bluff Concours and chaired the event for many years. He has been writing this column since 1999.