Classics wasting away

There are hundreds of them, no, not classics but classic car collections. This was ok for a while but there is a car museum in every town and several in each city. Collections are hidden eveywhere if you care to look. I am beginning to wonder if it is all too much. The market is saturated, if you ask me. The recent thread of the museum in Grand Cayman was appreciated but seeing a row of modern Ferraris just sitting there is sort of sad, too. I used to go to a car museum and walk past row on row of cool cars and then walk out never having learned much of any one model. Now I go to a car show and spend 15-30 minutes with an interesting car and chatty owner. I might learn about 4 or 5 cars and just have walked past the rest. I have yet to be able to do this at an automobile museum. Get your money's worth and see them all but really see none of them. My museum would have the flavor of the week with 1 to 5 cars on display and the curator showing them and rotating each week. One would be unrestored or in process.

Just thoughts. Cheers Ron

Yeah, but ... I want to pick the cars I spend time with, not depend on the curator's choice.

I don't live in one of those cities having several car museums, so my trips to the museums are limited. If the next trip happens to be during the display rotation of one I've already seen ...

The closest car museum - actually just a wing of a museum - is the Chaparral Gallery of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, in Midland, Texas. Several Chaparrals on display all at once.

The problem is you don't get quality time with any model in most museums. Look but don't touch. The featured models would be shown in detail and the others as usual.

Cheers Ron

I simply don't get much out of museums. I like to hear 'em run!

Your idea about rotating the displays makes sense. I used to live in Reno and would go to the Nationlal Automobile Museum which housed what was left of the Harrah Collection. Every month or so they change the display off the main areas with cars loaned from collectors but the cars in the main four rooms never change. Great for visitors but you can't keep a place running on visitors only. The first few years I lived there I'd go twice a year but got tired of the same (admittedly wonderful) cars. So did the locals. Rotating a collection keeps the locals involved.

Ron,

I totally get where you're coming from, the most fun car-anything display to me is the annual Georgia Tech Autoshow. Why? Because I can chat with the owner of his Ford GT and then climb in. The owner of the Ferrari dealership in Atlanta shows up with a few of his cars, one year he came with his Enzo (granted he trailered and dropped it off) but he also let a few lucky kids the chance to climb inside. While I like the supercars that show up, my favorites always end up being something I've loved for years but never seen in the flesh, like an R34 Skyline, an ACR Viper, a Delorean (daily driven), the list goes on and on as it changes every year.

One more fun part was that you can bring your car, we ended up parking our half-finished, primered XR4Ti next to a GT3. This is one show where more people wanted to know about the XR4 than a GT3...

I agree with Tom, you need to see and hear cars run to truly appreciate them. Vintage race, Club rally or Saturday Night parking lots are more fun for me.

mike

Y'all need some better museums. http://www.emmr.org/

Some of the unexpected collections can be delightful.

I was in France a few years ago and visited a chateau in Monbazillac or Sausignac (east of Bordeaux in the Dordogne) and what did I see but a whole barn set aside for the owner's car collection, including the usual oddball French cars plus some jewels - AC Bristol, great motorcycles etc.

You just never know what someone may have squirrelled away and it is always worth looking.

I suspect this guy had put them all in one building and charged to see them just to stop his wife's complaints about his collecting hobby ("See, they make money!").

Hmmm - wonder if that would work for me.....

As I recall my time in Germany that most of the cars in the museums had dirt on the fenders and mudflaps.

Around 15 years ago I was on vacation in Wells Beach, Maine. There was an auto museum in a nondescript building on Route 1. I wouldn’t even have noticed it except what caught my eye was a red Bugeye Sprite with fender flares and a roll bar on display inside the front window, just wasting away. What a shame. I’ve never been back to Wells Beach, Maine. I wonder if that Sprite is still there?

Good observation Ron. I have often agreed with this opinion. I would rather be driving a classic than looking at it. The Lane Motor Museum in Nashville has it nailed. They have an interesting collection AND drive all of the cars. There are not any ropes around the cars and a tour of the basement is pure nirvana. Jeff Lane has assembled a world class collection of cars and has found a way to enjoy them all.

Check it out sometime, you will love it.

I always like to stop and take in an auto museum will traveling. I usually don't stay long if nothing interests me. I did enjoy this one on the way to Goodwood in the UK. http://www.beaulieu.co.uk/beaulieu/lotstosee-national-motor-museum

Dougie

slaintvalient, i been to that midland tx, museum. Jim Halls collection of ground breaking Chapperals, that shook the very foundations of motorracing in the 1960s, officials BANNED everything he came up with.

suckers cars , movable rear wings connected to the gas pedal, multispeed auto transmissins and some others innovations. YUP he was ahead of the CURVE before they entered it!!