Segerstrom Shelby Event Center Opens Amid Copious Cobras, Many Mustangs

When he was just a spry Southern California teenager, Ted Segerstrom got his first Mustang—a 1966 coupe—as a hand-me-down from his sister, and he has not strayed from the corral since. He has been collecting Mustangs about as long as he’s had a driver’s license, and was joined by wife Rae when they got married in 2004. Now they have a collection of Mustangs, Shelbys, and Shelby Mustangs that is bumping up against 100 or so cars, almost all rare or limited editions.

When we first visited the Segerstrom collection five years ago, it was in a huge warehouse in Orange County, Calif., with all the cars lined up parking lot-style in a huge concrete tilt-up building. It was well-lit and there were informational signs in front of each car. It was a nice collection, but no one could go in and see it. At least not then. But the Segerstroms had bigger plans for it.

“When we relocate the collection, it is our plan to open it as an event center and museum; it will be open to the public,” Ted Segerstrom said at that time in 2016. “Our life work now is to start a foundation to support the Shriners Children’s Hospital in Pasadena. All financial profit from the foundation will be used to benefit the hospital.”

He wasn’t just talking. That life work progressed for the next five years. First, the old building was sold because the timing for that got to be just too good. Then for three years the collection was scattered “all over” in buildings and warehouses around Orange County. And the search was on for a new home. They finally found one, on Whatney Drive in Irvine, Calic., in between the Mercedes Classic Center, where great Mercedes of yesteryear are brought back to glorious life, and Lance Stander’s Hillbank Motor Corporation, where continuation Cobras are lined up like automotive candy for anyone with six figure-car lust for power and glory. Whatney itself is wedged in between streets named Oldfield (as in Barney) and McLaren (as in Bruce) just up the hill from the Irvine Auto Center, home to everything from Lamborghini of Newport Beach and Tuttle-Click Hyundai. So it’s in the right place.