Classic car collector loses rare vehicles to fire

Rod Hanggi owns about 30 collector cars. The vehicles are from 1904 to 1976.

"I never had one in college and I never had one in high school so when I was able to get a car I went over board."

Hanggi says he was lucky to find a motor head for a wife. The two have been collecting for nearly 40 years. Their vacations are in the cars, as they cruise the country.

"A lot of people restore these cars and they're trophy hunters and I am absolutely not a trophy hunter."

This is video from Tuesday when Hanggi's building caught fire. He had 3 rare restored vehicles inside.

"Stuff happens; yeah I hate to see it and it kind of hurts."

The piece that's still hard to swallow for Hanggi 5 days after the fire is that if the fire would have started just a couple of hours later, all of the vehicles would have been out of the garage."

"I had a friend’s car in the back and he was coming at 4 o'clock to get it so I had to get the other cars to get it out and as long as I had them out and running I was going to put them away for the winter."

Hangii is unsure what he'll do with the vehicles. Keeping a good attitude, the fire just limited his selection of cars to drive.

Tags: reporter stories, todd kurtz, classic cars, auto, history, hanggi, horace, fire, news