Car collectors play with their treasures in different ways, and for Paul Burt, owner of the West Lake Financial Group, the journey of restoration is part of the fun. “My wife does everything she can to keep the collection small,” says Burt, who began collecting in 1998. “If it wasn’t for the investment aspect, she’d probably consider it pretty extravagant. But I know cars like most fellas know stocks.”

Extravagant, 125 cars and counting? Surely not. But, a few years ago, Burt did begin to notice that the maintenance of all those cars was starting to become “an onerous expense.” “I was outsourcing one car to one shop, one to another shop—I started to think, ‘wouldn’t it be great if I could hire mechanics just to work on our cars?’” So he did, building a large storage facility in Lake Forest to house The Burt Collection. Recent additions to the new space include a crisply styled, Kenosha-built ’66 AMC Rambler Rogue.