You have likely never heard of R. David Glenn. Unless, of course, you’re a diehard Porsche aficionado well-versed in every aspect of air-cooled models in general, and 911s in particular. In such circles, Glenn was royalty—a master mechanic, tuner, restorer, historian, and generally good guy—who lived and breathed Porsches. His credentials were impeccable. Beginning November 3, the David Glenn Porsche Collection, a massive, unprecedented assemblage of road and race Porsche cars, engines, gearboxes, tools, body parts, and memorabilia that Glenn stocked in his personal shop over the past 13 years, will be offered for sale at no reserve on Hagerty Marketplace.

How massive, exactly? It took six tractor-trailers to transport it all.

More about that in a moment. First, you should know something about David Glenn. Bring him a broken 911, and he could fix it. Or restore it. Or make it go faster.

A lot faster, even.

Already an accomplished mechanic, Glenn entered the world of Porsche motorsports in 1975, initially with Kremer, a team that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979 with drivers Klaus Ludwig and brothers Bill and Don Whittington.

Glenn’s central claim to fame, though, came after he moved to Germany in 1985 to join RUF Automobile GmbH, the Porsche tuner and independent manufacturer, as director of engine building.

Almost immediately, Glenn and company head Alois Ruf Jr., who inherited the business from his father, began working on the powertrain for the RUF CTR (Group C, Turbo Ruf), which would be based on the 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2. The CTR’s engine, though, was developed as a 3.4-liter, twin-turbo intercooled flat-six.

The CTR was a remarkable car, but RUF was a small company and lacked marketing resources. That changed when Road & Track magazine assembled nine supercars in Germany for the 1987 edition of its irregular “World’s Fastest” feature, to be tested and compared by R&T contributing editor, and 1961 Formula 1 champion, Phil Hill.

Along with the new, unproven CTR, candidates included two Ferraris, a Lamborghini, an AMG Hammer, two Koenig-tuned Porsches, and two existing RUF Porsches, one of which had won the previous “World’s Fastest” competition at 186 mph. The CTR was painted a radiant yellow, and photographer John Lamm began calling it “the Yellowbird.” It stuck. Hill drove the Yellowbird to 211 mph—this was in ’87, mind you—embarrassing the balance of the field. Writer Peter Egan, Hill’s passenger, was “absolutely astounded” by the acceleration.

Though some other customer-owned 911s were comparably modified, RUF produced only 29 Yellowbirds from scratch, all with engines built by Glenn, who carefully logged details and the identification number of each car and engine in a leather notebook—something entirely in character for the ultra-organized mechanic—which he kept. That notebook became a valuable reference regarding which Yellowbirds were the originals, especially when a car would be offered for sale.

That occurred on March 7 at the 2025 Amelia Island Concours, when the Gooding Christie’s auction included a 1989 RUF Yellowbird, number 26. It sold for $6.055 million, which Hagerty called “stunning,” and a “huge chunk of money for a car of this era.” It was also a decent investment, as RUF marketed those Yellowbirds for about $150,000.

The Yellowbird, Glenn wrote on his LinkedIn profile, “put RUF Automobile on the map.” You could argue that it also did the same for David Glenn.

Just 19 days after that auction, and 95 miles south of it, Glenn died unexpectedly. He was 72.

Glenn was a native of Daytona Beach, Florida, and despite his travels abroad, home beckoned. He owned a small local company called Competition Cars, a Porsche street and racing shop, before moving to Germany in 1985 to be Ruf’s Leiter motor-Abteilung, which translates to Director of the Motor Department. That lasted seven years, until he returned to Daytona to care for a massive classic car collection amassed by the family of Chapman J. Root.

Root, who died in 1945, owned the company that designed, patented, and then built the enduringly popular Coke bottle. His son, Chapman Shaw Root, was a dedicated motorsports fan, and his company backed multiple entries in the Indianapolis 500. Chapman S. and his wife were avid collectors of everything from vintage vehicles to five restored train cars to 800 teddy bears, and as you might expect, thousands of items with “Coca-Cola” on them. In 1988, the collection was donated to the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, where it is displayed today.

And in 1990, Glenn was hired to oversee the Root car collection. By 1999, though, his love for Porsche racing led him to hire on with Porsche Motorsport North America, for which he had worked on the side since 1993, at the behest of Alwin Springer, who took over Porsche Motorsport North America after division head and racer Al Holbert was killed in a private plane crash in 1988.

Springer, one of the founders of the ANDIAL Porsche tuning company, assumed control of Porsche Motorsport North America with a heavy heart, as he and Holbert were close friends. But Springer needed some assistance.

“I decided to ask David if he could help us out—with Daytona and Sebring coming up, we had a lot of engines to do. So he packed up his tools and came to work for us to help us get that work done. Later in the ‘90s I asked him if he wanted to run our parts department at the racetracks, and he worked with us for a while doing that. We became good friends. I very much appreciated the depth of his knowledge, and the way he dealt with people. He was a very nice human being.

“And then he moved back to Florida. And while I was retired from Porsche, I stayed on to consult, so I would see him from time to time.”

Glenn found a long, narrow strip of heavily wooded land in a rural area north of Daytona that backed up to a river. He built a large shop on the property, and then a house, and then another house. The driveway entrance was heavily camouflaged by trees, and there were no signs: You either knew where it was, or you didn’t. All through the property were towering live oaks, and on the thick branches of many of them hung staghorn ferns so enormous that it would take a forklift to move them.

“When I would visit, I always told him he lived in the middle of the jungle,” said Springer, now 82 and still a Porsche Ambassador. “But he loved it.”

“He had a green thumb,” recalled Shary, an attorney by trade, and one of Glenn’s three daughters. Aside from his family, Glenn had three primary interests: Porsches, growing things, and cooking meals for friends and family. “He used to say, ‘We’re eatin’ good in the neighborhood!’” Shary said.

That Glenn would end up near his birthplace, working on Porsches, seemed inevitable. Glenn grew up with two close friends he kept until the end—Rick Rugg, now a Porsche 911-owning real estate broker, and Bill Voges, an attorney who was formerly the CEO of the aforementioned Root Company.

Growing up in Daytona Beach, there were a lot of idyllic days spent on the water, mostly surfing, said Voges. Even then, Glenn was particularly talented with mechanics: He fixed everyone’s minibikes, and then they moved to dune buggies. “Everybody else bought dune buggies,” said Rugg, “but David, being David, had to build his own.”

“Nothing mechanical ever stopped David,” Voges said. “He was respected by everyone. He wouldn’t do anything unless it was perfect. Everything had to be exactly right. His knowledge of Porsche was just encyclopedic.”

He began stocking his shop with Porsche parts—complete engines, transmissions, body parts, plus showcase after showcase of memorabilia. They are stacked deep, but always organized, around the perimeter of his shop, and they fill one of the houses on the property, and most of the other one.

“It was his happy place,” daughter Shary said. “He had a really strong work ethic. It’s just how he was wired.” His shop—formally known as Oceanshore Motorsport, but you won’t find a sign that says that—served customers from all over the world. Periodically he’d bring in specialists from Germany to do some work for him, and they’d bunk in one of his houses.

Arguably, Bob Alfonso knows all that best. He grew up in the Philippines, where his father imported cars from Germany, mostly Volkswagens. He was still a child when he saw his first Porsche 911, owned by an automobile broker. “I was just mesmerized,” he recalled. “And that never went away.”

Alfonso got to know David Glenn as a customer; Glenn worked on Alfonso’s own 911. Eager to learn more about the car, he began helping Glenn in the shop when Alfonso had spare time. It turned into a regular thing. “I spent practically every weekend here with David, going on nine years.” Alfonso, who has worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 22 years, plans to retire soon and had expected to join Glenn in the shop during the week. “It’s something David and I talked about for years,” Alfonso said.

Glenn, he said, was a “very quiet guy, but I think he enjoyed my company here, mostly building engines. Normally it was just us. When he was in the zone, he didn’t want to be bothered. And I respected that.

“He wasn’t a guy who wanted to go out drinking every night with friends—this was his heaven right here.”

Before he could legally drive, Glenn began working on cars at a Daytona-area import shop. One day, Alfonso said, a customer came in with a Porsche 356. “He fell in love with it. He would tell you that the sound of an air-cooled Porsche engine is beautiful. ‘Music to your ears,’ he would say.”

Glenn walked the walk, too. Directly above his office, on a small second floor in the shop, sat a dark green, unrestored 1969 Porsche 911 Targa.

“That car is very special—it was David’s first Porsche,” Alfonso said, bought when Glenn “was 15 or 16, still working in that shop.” He never sold it. The numbers-matching Targa “was supposed to be the last vehicle we’d work on as a project, to complete the circle,” Alfonso said. “I was hoping that the kids would keep it, but I guess they’re drawn more to some of the other cars.”

Another 911 that lived in the shop was “BluBell,” a 1972 Porsche 911S Targa painted Gemini Blue Metallic. It was bought new at Brumos Porsche by a Florida firefighter named Jim Montgomery, who drove it 651,000 miles. When Montgomery died, he willed BluBell to Glenn, who performed a thorough restoration on BluBell—so named because the state’s vanity plates can have no more than seven letters, so BlueBell lost an “e.” BluBell won Best of Class at the Amelia Island Concours in 2013. It’s one of the cars that will be auctioned off on Hagerty Marketplace.

Over the years, Glenn amassed an enormous collection of Porsche parts, from engines to transmissions to body parts, plus most everything in between, not to mention precision tools and equipment. It will also be part of the sale, which begins November 3 and ends on December 12.

The David Glenn Porsche Collection—that’s what Hagerty Marketplace is calling it—has taken almost everything from Glenn’s shop and the two additional storage buildings, and transported it to the Hagerty Garage + Social in Savannah, Georgia, a 27,000-square-foot facility that combines an automotive clubhouse with a high-end storage facility.

There are no presales, no reserves. Buyers can either pick up their items in Savannah, or Hagerty will help arrange for shipping.

Besides cars and tools that range from precision micrometers to forklifts, there are literally thousands of period-correct NOS (new-old stock, which means original) Porsche parts, including factory engines, transmissions, mechanical fuel injection systems, body parts—visitors would often tell Glenn he had everything he needed to build a 911 from scratch, and he didn’t deny it.

We’re as curious as you are to see the sale. It’s one thing to see all of David Glenn’s stuff stored at his shop and home; it will be another to see it sorted and cataloged at the Hagerty facility and online.

Only one thing is certain: David Glenn will be remembered and missed by so many. “He was just a really kind man,” Shary said, her voice breaking. “If you were in a bind, he’d do all he could to help you out. That’s just who he was.”

The Collection is now open for in-person previews. To make an appointment, email Hagerty Marketplace Porsche specialists Marvin Waters II at mwaters@hagerty.com, or Ray Shaffer at rshaffer@hagerty.com. Please don’t forget: Appointments only.