Mick Mitchell owns somewhere north of 400 Jeeps. He quit counting in the mid-200s, which tells you everything you need to know about how this collection happened. One turned into two, two turned into ten, ten turned into who cares anymore, and now the man has a purpose-built warehouse full of flat-fender military iron. He does not think this is a problem.
He might be right.
It Started With Newsreels
Mitchell caught the bug early. As a kid, he watched World War II newsreel footage and fixated on the little utilitarian machines hauling troops and supplies through mud and rubble. The Willys MB and Ford GPW stuck in his head in a way that chemistry homework did not. By eighth grade, he owned his first Jeep. Then he just kept going.
Most of us get into a thing and then life intervenes. Mitchell got into a thing and built his life around it. He worked as an architect, a job that apparently pays well enough to fund a multi-hundred-vehicle habit, and eventually designed the building that now houses the collection. The whole operation sits in Nebraska, documented in a video by Nebraska Public Media that makes it clear this is not some junkyard stash rotting under tarps.
Not a Museum, But Close
Mitchell insists the collection is not a military museum. He says it is about the evolution of the Jeep itself, how the design branched out into civilian life and filled roles nobody imagined when the first prototypes rolled out of factories in 1941. The rows include early production models with welded slat grilles from before the stamped version became standard. There are cutaway examples showing drivetrain internals. There are parade rigs and bone-stock survivors and oddball variants most people have never heard of.
Walk through the place and it looks like Mitchell might actually own one of everything Jeep ever made in the flat-fender era. If a version existed, he probably tracked it down.
Sheltered, Not Stored
The thing that separates this from a hoarder situation is that Mitchell cares about what happens to these machines. Every Jeep in the collection lives indoors, away from weather and the kind of slow rot that kills old metal. Some are restored. Some are waiting. All of them are saveable, which is the point. When one needs to get dragged out for a parade or a show or just because, it will be worth the effort.
That is the difference between collecting and accumulating. One has a plan. The other just has stuff.
The Best Kind of Crazy
Is 400 Jeeps excessive? Obviously. But Mitchell has been at this for nearly 80 years, and if anyone has earned the right to go overboard on flat-fender military hardware, it is someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about it. There are worse ways to spend a career’s worth of disposable income. At least these things still exist because he decided they mattered.
The man is not confused about what he has done. He knows it is over the top. He just does not see it as a problem, and honestly, neither do we.
