America’s Most Interesting Car Dealership Is Chock Full of Rare Classics—Here’s a Look Inside

There isn’t another dealership in America like Gullwing Motor Cars, tucked away on a side street a few blocks from the baklava bakeries of Astoria, Queens. Nowhere deals in as many classic cars of this caliber, and nowhere makes these dream cars as attainable.

“Ours is a fast-paced volume business,” Anthony Stella, Executive Sales Director at Gullwing Motor Cars, explains. Through the glass windows of his office, row after row of classic cars parked bumper-to-bumper stretch the length of Gullwing’s main showroom. Gullwing has five warehouses full like this, having recently added another building to its growing compound nestled among plumbing suppliers and body shops. There are about 265 cars here at the moment, and Gullwing deals in every price point imaginable.

“It’s almost comical,” says Stella. “It can be a $5,000 engine-out Austin-Healey or a $1.8 million Gullwing.”

Indeed, a few paces past a 1963 Maserati Sebring 3500GTi about to be inspected by a prospective buyer is a dense cluster of cars. In the very back sits a factory black Mercedes-Benz 300SL. “NOT FOR SALE DON’T ASK” reads the placard in the windshield indicating that this is Gullwing founder Peter Kumar’s personal car. Lifting its roof-hinged door exposes its original red interior, the leather creased with age. It smells amazing.

Finding the perfect Gullwing was the guiding star in Kumar’s three and a half decades in this industry. Kumar immigrated to America in the 1980s from India by way of London, landing first in Miami where he sold used cars on the side of the road. Kumar moved shop to New York in 1988 and that was where Gullwing truly began, first with a toy car that still sits on Kumar’s desk. “I fell in love with a 1955 Mercedes Gullwing,” Kumar told Astoria Characters in a 2018 interview. “It was $80,000. I didn’t have that much money, but I did have the $20 for this toy, which I found the same week. I named my business, Gullwing Motor Cars, after it.”

His business has grown so successfully that he can afford an actual Gullwing, this one full-size.

Gullwing has been in Astoria since 1991, and Kumar has been on the road that whole time. “He’s old school,” Stella says. Kumar isn’t in the office, but rather out on another expedition. He is looking for cars and buying cars. “He’s still pounding the pavement.”

That furious pace is unrelenting. Seven cars have just arrived in a single shipment from California. Spilling out of the warehouse and onto the sidewalk is a barn-find Ferrari 308, beside it a Maserati 3500GT still wearing a thin layer of California dirt. The car will fetch somewhere between $200- and $300,000, though Stella expects they’ll wipe off the dust first.

The work that Gullwing does on these cars is minimal. They are not refurbished and no imperfections are polished away.

“Each car sells itself,” Stella explains. “You see the pictures. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

“We almost pride ourselves on doing no prep,” Stella adds. “There’s an honesty to it.”

That honesty has upheld Gullwing’s good reputation in this industry. It also keeps business booming. Gullwing provides cars not only to individuals but wholesalers, auction houses, and even other classic car dealers looking for inventory. Those can be both project cars and barn finds like that Ferrari 308, or even the most immaculate machinery, like a particularly gorgeous Maserati Mistral Spyder with a startlingly rare hardtop. At the moment, it is Stella’s favorite car on the premises. Gullwing is asking half a million for it. You might almost trip over the car, blue like Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, sandwiched between Aston Martins and Porsches and Ferraris.

It’s late-model Ferraris that are hot right now, Stella says, the ones that have the company’s final gated manual shifters.

He also makes sure to point out a classic Porsche 911 in the back, very much unrestored, in camo paint. Whatever your dream car is, you’ll spot it at Gullwing, and it’ll be at the most dangerously approachable price you’ll ever see.

A few rows up sits a 1936 Bugatti Type 57, its paint peeling with age and interior almost gutted. It’s spectacular. This is the absolute pinnacle of the classic car market, the greatest car made by the greatest car manufacturer of the classic era. Only so many were ever produced, racing engines hiding behind hand-formed bodywork constructed with an artist’s eye for delicacy and perfection. There will come a time – sooner rather than later – when every original Bugatti of this period is perfectly restored. This one is as it looked for the decades it sat in storage under its previous owner of 50 years. In immaculate condition, a Type 57 Ventoux will approach a million dollars at auction. It is the kind of car that not just attends the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, but wins its class, as one did in 2009. Bringing this particular Type 57 to that standard would surely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Gullwing prices the car accordingly. Its window sticker reads $367,500, “as is, no dealer warranty.” It is surely the cheapest Bugatti of its kind in existence, for what it’s worth.

This is the unique quality of Gullwing. It’s not in the company’s business model to restore these cars themselves, just to pass them along as quickly as Peter Kumar can source them. That’s how one might find this 1972 246 Dino, which recently sold for $90,000. Sure it burned to the ground at one point in time, but it’s a starting point for someone’s journey to their perfect Ferrari, one that normally might cost $200-, $300-, even $400,000. Gullwing trades in these amazing and enticing possibilities. In terms of rough percentages, Stella estimates a 60/40 split between cars in need of restoration and those that are ready to go.

“There’s value in everything,” Stella explains. “Someone of every means can find their dream car here.”