As a salesman traveling all over the country, Jim Jackson had plenty of seat time looking through a windshield out over vast ribbons of asphalt. By the mid-Seventies, he’d found what he believed to be the perfect car for that task — the 1975 Chevrolet Malibu — which is why he assembled a dozen-and-a-half colonnade-era Chevrolets in a collection slated to disperse at auction next month.

“He had four of them back then,” said Dan Jackson, Jim’s son and business partner. “The first two were company cars he wore out completely, then a third he bought from the company and later gave to my brother, Steve. The fourth he bought new and later gave to me.”

What Jim — and Steve and Dan — loved about the cars boiled down to their capabilities. The full-framed cars handled well, braked well, could easily cruise up to 100 mph on the highway, and could swallow up any size engine one could think of, Dan said. “They were like Buicks are today,” he said. “Good-sized and comfortable.”

One super-fan hoarded 125-plus classic Chevys. And now almost all of them will be up for grabs.