Favorite car museum?

I recently spend a sunny Saturday at the Lane Motor Museum, and you can see some of the photos here. So, a question for the rest of the class: What's your favorite car museum?

It was the Schlumpf museum in Mulhouse. I believe that some of the cars have been sold since I saw it some years ago, but it remains one of the best in the world.

Harrah's in Nevada was darned good back in the old days too.

Owl's Head in Maine is the best one that I've been to.

It's a tie for me:

Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum

I'll agree on the Lane museum. What a fantastic place with all sorts of vehicles you'll never see anywhere else.

I haven't been to enough car museums to really have a "favorite" yet. So far I've been to:

The Simeone Museum in Philly (most have heard of it by now)

Seal Cove Auto Museum on Mt Desert Island in Maine (great collection of brass-era cars and motorcycles) http://www.sealcoveautomuseum.org/

Eastern Museum of Motor Racing in York Springs, PA, which is an interesting collection of mostly roundy-round dirt track racing, but some other interesting stuff: http://www.emmr.org/

I definitely want to get to the Lane museum at some point.

My vote is for the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu Abbey England. Not only is this a hundreds of years old abbey but the current owners have quite a slew of cars on display. Hundreds actually.

If you want to see an original John Player Special F-1 winner or perhaps an original London to Brighton Rally competitor they are here and often driven. Did you ever hear of the Bluebird world speed record cars? During my last visit, they had two of them on display.

The fun thing about going to Beaulieu is you never know what you'll see on the roads nearby. Almost the entire collection is "exercised" on a regular basis. On a nice day there will be several exotic and/or ancient cars out driving on public roads during their exercise session. And of course since you are in the New Forest there is lots of wonderful scenery to see as well.

(The New Forest was the place King William II was killed in the 11th century.+-) Not exactly "new" by our standards but it was called "new" then and still is.

Hayne's Motor Museum in England

http://www.haynesmotormuseum.com/

Mazda museum in Hiroshima Japan.

I was in Japan for short trip when I was in the Air Force not long ago and had to check it out after seeing all the youtube videos of it.

You can view it in google street view now too, a lot of the big museums are doing this now it seems: https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.360407,132.483047&spn=0.005553,0.011362&t=m&brcurrent=3,0x355aa1972f683891:0x8f171aa893a71634,1&layer=c&cbll=34.360366,132.48301&panoid=NqQ6Gywz3BY2yodcHmzPBg&cbp=12,266.31,,0,3.82&z=17

Mullin Automotive Museum.

Automotive and art museum that focuses on one of my favorite style period. Art-Deco. Artsy enough that you can bring your significant other and she won't spend the time moaning.

The Studebaker Museum in South Bend always pulls me back...............I live near by some great car museums but that is my favorite.

The Gilmore, in Hickory Corners, Michigan. I like all kinds of cars, so any museum is of interest, but the setting of the Gilmore is just great on a sunny afternoon.

Petersen is great; but the Auburn Cord Dueseberg museum is awesome.

I'd have to say the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn with an honorable mention to Porsche's in Stuttgart.

The Swigart Museum

http://www.swigartmuseum.com/

I'm a bit biased becuase it is located in Central Pennsylvania near where I grew up. Lots of brass cars, a 1929 Dusenberg, not one but 2 Tuckers and an actual Herbie, the Love Bug, just to name a few in the collection.

Donington

Fantastic place.

The LeMay auto museum is the world 's largest and arguably the best in the in the US if not the World. http://www.lemaymuseum.org

Dougie

One of the more interesting museums I've visited is the BMW museum in Munich. They show the BMW time line in an unusually designed building. It's like all the cars are parked on the up-ramps in a parking garage.

One I really miss from when I was a teenager was the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn. Unfortunately it burned down.

They did "demo" rides on the high speed oval. The driver would get the car up to speed then take his hands off the wheel for a full lap. That's a lot more impressive than it sounds if you're sitting in the back seat and he is turned around talking to you the whole time! And no, there were no seat belts in the car either!

Mine are the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart:

http://www.mercedes-benz-classic.com/content/classic/mpc/mpc_classic_website/en/mpc_home/mbc/home/museum/home.flash.html

the VW Autostadt in Wolfsburg http://www.autostadt.de/en/

And the Ferrari Museum in Maranello

http://museo.ferrari.com/

Couple of more "don't miss" museums if you're in the area:

1) Shelby American collection in boulder, Colorado - only open on Saturdays. Amazing collections of cars and related Shelby stuff.

2) Chaparral collection at the Petroleum museum in Midland, Texas. Every Chaparral Jim Hall ever built, and you can get within about 2 inches of them before the proximity alarms go off. You can learn a lot from examining them closely, and you'll be surprised at how small they are - the 2C is actually similar to my AW11 MR2! You always expect legendary cars to be bigger than life.

3) For a very nice non-sports car oriented museum, the Gateway Canyons museum in Gateway, Colorado (which is in the middle of nowhere southwest of Grand Junction) has an excellent and well-presented collection of around 60 American cars, arranged by decade. This belongs to the guy who owns the Discovery Channel and related channels.

4) I haven't visited this one yet, but I've heard good things about the Clive Cussler museum in Denver. Only open one day a week I think, but features lots of the cars he slips into this books, as well as others from his collection.

Although I have great respect for a large, well-curated museum, I love the quirky little "museums" you run into when traveling that are more like giant swap-meet assemblages illustrating their collectors' weird psyches and enthusiasms. One of my favorites is the Cotswald Motoring Museum, which piles major picturesque points onto the package.

Margie

Marjorie Suddard wrote: One of my favorites is the Cotswald Motoring Museum, which piles major picturesque points onto the package. Margie

Margie,

I haven't found anything in Bourton On The Water I don't like! BTW: I hope you also toured the Wallops, Hether, Nether, etc. And who could resist St. Just Church and Bar!

The Junk-Yard!

I could (and often do) spend all day there looking over the rusty gold that sits in those places whilst searching for a hidden gem, or buried treasure. Pop the hood of a couple different generations of the same models and look at how the manufacturer adapted to different regulations, design shortcomings, and flaws. Look at the progression from carburetors to rats nest vacuum lines and on to modern multi-port fuel injection (soon we'll see Hybrids!). From solid axles to independent suspension. Why does the Z-car have IRS in '71 but that '85 RX-7 has a solid axle? Pull a rotor out of that RX-7 and see how a Wankel works (take it home for a souvenir). Grab a turbo off that Volvo and see how IT works. Is that an Eaton M90 supercharger on that Buick? Is that Boat of a Cadillac REALLY front wheel drive? What were they thinking? Will those disc brakes fit my car? (Pull them off, find your model and check!) That FJ40 inline six looks a LOT like that Chevy inline six over there...

I digress: As far as real museums go, The LeMay takes the cake for me. I remember visiting them when they were still in the basements and garages of a closed down Catholic school. I was so excited when they finally got their building that I bought a paver with my name on it. But now that everything's settled I kind of miss their old place...

Another is the national Corvette Museum especially in conjunction with the Factory Tour. Even if you are not a fan of the Corvette, this is a great place to visit.

http://www.corvettemuseum.org/