These Vehicles Are Tons of Fun, and Good for Thwarting Road Rage

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS

PORT LAVACA, Texas—Weapons buffs may stock semiautomatics in the gun safe. But nothing makes a statement like having an Army tank in the garage.

Scattered around the country are members of a small fraternity of guys who own tanks. They are hyper-avid history buffs or hyper-edgy investors or just wealthy men who can now afford hyper-sized versions of the toys they played with when they were boys. Tank brokers—yes, there is such a thing—estimate there are several hundred to 1,000 private tank owners in the U.S.

For History Buffs, These Vehicles Are Tons of Fun

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Jim Knerr

Mr. Rubino sits in a M4A1E8 Sherman tank in Belvidere, N.J

"There's always a little boy in the man," says Barbara Bauer, whose husband, Bill Bauer, owns a pristine, 20-ton, World War II Chaffee tank in Port Lavaca.

Lots of people own guns. Tank owners are a rare breed. WSJ's Michael M. Phillips goes for a wild ride in a WWII Chaffee tank owned by Bill Bauer of Port Lavaca, Texas.

Mr. Bauer, the 70-year-old chairman of First National Bank in Port Lavaca, stores his Chaffee, a pair of armored half-tracks and other vintage military vehicles in a climate-controlled warehouse, where his four-man team of mechanics keeps them in showroom condition. On Veterans Day he takes the tank out for the parade, but mostly he just likes to admire it and preserve it for the next generation of history fans.

Brothers Ken and Gene Neal, owners of Bullet Proof Diesel, a truck-parts manufacturer in Mesa, Ariz., once took their 1966 British Chieftain tank into the desert and joyfully drove it over a rusty car, with the turret facing backward.

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A World War II tank

When their insurance agent inquired about their plans for the tank, the Neal brothers emailed back, "We are going to use it to take over the world."

Says Ken Neal, 45: "A tank is cool."

A tank is also expensive, with good ones going for the price of some houses.

Lance Miller, a 41-year-old from Loudonville, Ohio, sold his elegant little Stuart, a tank famous for its service in the Pacific, for $200,000 to raise money to restore his dream tank—a 1943 Sherman. "It's sort of the pinnacle of military-vehicle collection to have a piece of armor," Mr. Miller says.

He says he has put about $280,000 into his Sherman so far and expects to spend as much as $75,000 more. "You get a tank, you end up with an ex-wife," warns Mr. Miller, who has one of each.

Fellow Ohioan Dick Mastin, 73, a retired corporate pilot, admits he was "always envious" of Mr. Miller's Stuart and jumped at the chance to buy it. He doesn't expect to turn a profit. "I have owned quite a few military vehicles in my life, and I have never made a dime on any of them," he says.

A set of rubber tracks for a Chaffee goes for about $6,000. A Chieftain gets about 250 miles on 200 gallons of diesel. Mechanics say vintage tanks require an hour or more of maintenance for every hour of operation. A turret-to-tracks restoration can require 2,000 man-hours or more of labor, at $50 or more an hour. That's not including the cost of hard-to-find tank parts.

At times, vintage tanks have proven good investments. In 1993, a top-notch Sherman went for $75,000, according to the Illustrated Tank & AFV [Armored Fighting Vehicle] Buyer's Guide. Now Dave Uhrig, a Chillicothe, Ohio, tank broker, is offering one for $387,000. There's a 1943 Hellcat tank destroyer—like a tank but with an open-top turret—on the market for $385,000.

"The guys who buy tanks don't worry about losing their jobs or making their house payments—they don't have either," says Mr. Uhrig.

"It's the same thing as people who own Ferraris and Lamborghinis," says Bob Rubino, owner of Mil-Spec Vehicle Restorations in Belvidere, N.J., who has three tanks in his shop and five more waiting their turns in the parking lot. "Poor people don't own these things."

Andy San Clemente, 43, a tank restorer, races his Chaffee around his 27-acre property in Northboro, Mass., knocking down trees and churning up dirt. He says prices have recently flattened or even fallen slightly. Through his company, Northeast Military Vehicle Services, he sells about a tank a year. "The economy is killing us," he says. "This spending is optional spending."

World War II U.S. armor is among the most sought-after. But treaty restrictions designed to stop weapons proliferation make it hard to bring old American tanks back from Europe to the U.S., particularly weapons supplied under President Franklin Roosevelt's lend-lease program. The State Department is in the process of easing those rules for pre-1956 tanks, among other weapons.

Novices often buy British Chieftains, a good starter tank because, though it weighs more than 50 tons, it is generally cheaper than a Sherman or Stuart. The Neal brothers bought theirs in 2011 for $65,000, in need of restoration. Plus, the State Department doesn't restrict imports of British armor.

"Every kid wants a toy tank," says Phil Josephs, who imported a Chieftain to catch the eyes of passersby at his Army-Navy store on a busy road in Delran, N.J. He found the antiaircraft gun he had outside before just didn't do the trick. Would-be tank importers must prove the weapons have been disabled.

A tank in the U.S. can have operational guns, if the owner has a federal Destructive Device permit, and state laws don't prohibit it. The permit costs $200, and the applicant must swear he hasn't been a "fugitive from justice," "adjudicated mentally defective" or convicted of "a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." A local law-enforcement official, usually a sheriff or police chief, has to sign off on the application.

Tanks generally aren't street-legal, so owners usually drive them off-road or on other private property. Some say local authorities sometimes make exceptions for parades, a quick test drive or a trip to the gas station.

Tank owners point out that criminals have hardly ever used tanks for nefarious purposes. One exception came in 1995, when Army veteran Shawn Nelson stole a Patton tank from a National Guard Armory and, for 30 minutes, rampaged through San Diego streets, before being shot dead by police.

Still, local authorities sometimes look askance at 20-ton weapons on their turf.

Earlier this month, Mr. Bauer, the Texas banker, took his Chaffee out for a spin in his warehouse parking lot. He had rigged the .50-caliber machine gun on the turret with a propane system that generates the noise and muzzle flash of gunfire, without the bullets. He fired off several bursts.

Minutes later, two Port Lavaca police cruisers pulled up. The first officer rolled down the window and asked dryly: "You know why we're here, right?"

Mr. Bauer assured him that no actual rounds had been fired. Still, the officer said, "we had multiple calls—people get scared."

The second policeman, Jeremy Marshall, got out of his car and eyeballed Mr. Bauer's tank. "Awesome," he said.

Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Ken and Gene Neal drove their Chieftain tank forward over a rusty car in Arizona, with the turret facing backward. An earlier version of this article and an accompanying photo caption incorrectly said the Neal brothers backed the tank over the car.

A version of this article appeared February 28, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: These Vehicles Are Tons of Fun, And Good for Thwarting Road Rage.