Military vehicle collector, philanthropist, engineer
Jacques Littlefield (November 21, 1949 – January 7, 2009) was the founder of the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation (MVTF), also called the Littlefield collection.
Jacques Littlefield collected many vintage military vehicles including a Panther tank, several M4 Sherman tanks, a SS-1 Scud launcher, and a propeller of the ship Lusitania.[1] He had over 220 military vehicles to his name.
Biography
Littlefield shows some of his tanks to visiting students from the Woodside Priory School, May 2004.
Littlefield's fascination with military vehicles started as a child, when he started building plastic models of them. In college he built his first remote controlscale model tank. He obtained his first full-size military vehicle in 1975, a World War II era M3 Scout Car. In 1998 he set up the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation to manage his collection of over 150 vehicles and restore more.
He grew up in Burlingame and attended Norma Moore Grade School in Burlingame, the Carey School in San Mateo, and the Cate School in Carpinteria before studying at Stanford University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1971 and an MBA two years later. He worked for Hewlett Packard for five years as a manufacturing engineer before focusing solely on building his museum and restoration facility.
Following a decade-long battle with colon cancer, Littlefield died on January 7, 2009.
On July 11 and 12, 2014, 160 vehicles of the Littlefield collection were auctioned off to fund the creation of a new museum to display the collection.[4] The American Heritage Museum at the Collings Foundation headquarters in Stow, Massachusetts, had its grand opening in May 2019 and displays over 85 vehicles of the Littlefield collection.[5]
