Yellowknife (Aug 23/06) - Gerry Pye says he can trace his personal history through the cars he's owned and with 300 and counting, this Yellowknife collector has had an eventful life.

It all started back in 1956, when an 18-year-old Pye, with $700 in his pocket, purchased his first car - a chrome-laden behemoth known as Chrysler's Desotto.

Yellowknife's biggest rare-automobile collector, Gerry Pye, with his prize wheels, a 1963 Studebaker Avanti. - Jason Unrau/NNSL photo

Spending most of his adult life on the road playing in a rock'n'roll band, Pye was "living the dream" until the day he returned home from touring to find his Desotto - along with three other classics, including a 1949 Nash and 1954 Studebaker - gone along with his wife.

"I don't know where they ended up, the wreckers probably," he says.

Women trouble may be one thing for Pye, but finding rare cars for great deals is something he seems to have no trouble with at all.

Sitting at his kitchen table, Pye recalls the day he got a 1974 Peugeot for nothing and his real love affairs with a string of Nash Metropolitan automobiles - a now-defunct British car maker that attempted unsuccessfully to cater to the American market.

"There's just something about it I liked from the start," he said of the tiny car made from 1949 to 1957, which resembles a squished Cadillac. "It was kind of an opposite response to huge American steel."

While many car collectors focus on classic muscle cars or brand names that have continued producing cars today, Pye prefers cars whose makers have become extinct.

His prize pieces are a 1956 Hudson Hornet and a 1963 Studebaker Avanti, which he calls his feistiest ride.

"They only made it two years, 1963 and 1964," he explains. "In the first year they clocked in on the (Utah) Salt Flats at 198.6 mph. Not kilometres but miles per hour."

Parked outside in his driveway under a tarp, Pye says the Avanti is the most valuable car in his collection. Last year, during the Barret Jackson Car Auction, a similar model - "without leather seats and not in as good condition," according to Pye - went for $157,000 US dollars.

"That one had 43,000 miles on it," he says. "Mine's got less than 1000 and is in mint condition."