When some people think about their first car, a hand-me-down clunker probably comes to mind. For Henry Mann, founder of Manncorp and ELEDLights (a commercial lighting supplier), that wasn’t the case. Being an ambitious, motivated kid, who lived in Philadelphia public housing, Mann worked hard doing odd jobs like delivering groceries, washing cars, and turning in glass bottles for cash. He saved every penny earned with one goal in mind: Buying the perfect car.

To Mann, this perfect car was the 1949 Oldsmobile Rocket 88 Convertible. At 15, in the summer of 1954, he bought that perfect car and drove it to Central High School in Philadelphia. After building his company from the ground up, Mann started his car collection, and the Rocket is still his favorite.

To read more about Henry Mann’s story, you can check out the Wall Street Journal article about him and his car collection: https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-took-a-bus-to-high-school-he-took-a-rocket. Or feel free to reach out to him at henry@hankscars.com.

Henry Mann’s collection now includes 70+ cars, featuring classic muscle cars, Black Series & Gullwing Mercedes, Hertz (and other late model Mustangs), super-charged HEMIs (including a Demon), an NSX, an XLR, a Syclone, a GTR, a ’61 Chevy 409, Avantis, and many classic & new Corvettes.

The stars of Mann's collection, though, are the cars that compose his personal history.