A Better Solution for Car Buyers
Our Team
Clint is the President of Collectors Financial Services. In this role, Clint oversees developing and managing specialty lending programs, related technology, lending services, ideation, and strategic growth initiatives.
Clint's interest in cars began early in life, having picked up the "car bug" from his father, who tinkered with cars and had a fondness for all things mechanical.
Not long after college graduation, while still working for a broadcasting company, Clint and two partners founded The duPont Registry Magazine. They saw the magazine as an opportunity to fill a void in the marketplace for car guys, allowing them to reach other car guys in an upscale environment. It was an instant hit!
Years later, Clint sold his interest in the magazine, returning to broadcasting as a turnaround specialist, eventually managing 24 West Coast radio stations that were later sold to Clear Channel.
Clint rejoined his former partners at duPont Publishing, becoming president in 1999. In 2011 he joined Hagerty (NASDAQ: HGTY) as Chief Marketing Officer and became Managing Director of Hagerty Financial Services. In his role, Clint oversaw developing and managing non-insurance business investments, using the company's vast data resources. One of the practices they developed was a consultancy to auction houses, manufacturers, private equity, investment bankers, and lenders.
After leaving Hagerty, Clint designed and spearheaded the launch of Mecum Financial, a captive finance company for the world's largest collector car auction house - Mecum Auctions.
Clint identifies lending solutions, processes, and the people necessary for finance and technology businesses, and he develops go-to-market sales strategies, product positioning, and business acquisitions.
Collectors Financial also provides lenders and estate fiduciaries with the regulatory documentation necessary to authenticate and value automotive assets using historic vehicle sales data, and Collectors Financial also manages the orderly sale of large collections.
Today Clint is an investor and Board Chairman of AmeriDrive, a flexible car subscription service. He sourced the initial capital for the current ownership group and growth capital of over $100M. He's also an advisor to, and he oversees the development of HyreCar Finance for HyreCar (NASDAQ: HYRE)
Additionally, he's an active investor and board member of YiedTech, a new tech finance solution for credit unions, helping credit unions solve their loan-to-share gap.
Clint has more than 25 years of business growth experience specializing in global marketing, brand strategy, public relations, event marketing, digital commerce, broadcast media, print and digital publishing, valuation, data, analytics, and finance. He is well versed in both the national and international arenas.
Lee’s passion for classic cars and motorsports began as a boy growing up in the wooden grandstands and dusty infield pits of the Northeastern sprint car tracks. He spent his childhood in Eastern PA, directly between Langhorne and Trenton Speedways, where he could often climb into 1960s Champ car’s cockpits sitting on open trailers in local motel parking lots. His father was a United States Auto Club (USAC) Life Member #53 who raced midgets and sprint cars. Lee would travel with his dad to Indianapolis for qualifying weekends and the Indy 500 throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s. He recalls hanging on the crossing gates of the Speedway’s Gasoline Alley, watching racing legends walk from the garages to the pits because he was too young to get into either.
Those early motorsports roots expanded into an interest in “all things cars” through his teen and college years. However, it wasn’t until graduate school, where he wrote his MBA thesis on developing High-Performance Driving Schools, that he had the opportunity to become directly involved in developing a significant IndyCar sponsorship program. For the past twenty-plus years, he has been a collector and restorer of vintage and classic cars. Lee also has competed at the highest levels of vintage motorsports across the country while he raised a family and managed an institutional investment career.
Lee has participated in the evolution of the collector car world over the past three decades as cars, technology, auto-related investments, and buyer interests have all changed dramatically. His passion and experience in the collector car world, coupled with his institutional finance background, is now reshaping the financial access for others with like passions for unique cars through Collectors Financial.
Today Lee manages the day-to-day operations of Mecum Financial Services, a business incubated and created by Collectors Financial Services.
While attending the Pebble Beach Concours in 2014 with Hagerty, the CEO of a major European OEM asked if we would review their lending process for collector cars.
At the same time, art lenders and hedge funds from New York interested in lending to prominent blue chip collectors asked for our help. We worked with the leaders of these companies, along with underwriters and lawyers, to develop a new way to lend to a wide range of collectors against their new or existing cars and collections.
Three years later, the CEO and President of two large collector car brands asked if we could develop a classic car lending platform for loans from $10,000 to more than $1,000,000. It needed to be fast and allow for pre-approvals, so buyers knew they had funds available before purchasing vehicles at auction, privately, or from a dealer.
The process also needed to consider that some applicants' credit is better than others. For example, one of the CEOs mentioned that their current lender only approved 27% of applicants. So our goal was to do everything possible to extend a loan to eighty percent of applicants at a fair rate, with concierge-level service.
So that is what we built, using today's technology, for yesterday's collector vehicles. We immediately started working on our first product, Mecum Financial Services, to support the largest collector Car auction, Mecum Auctions.
