Lemay Collection ( He's one of us).

I took the family to go see the Lemay Family collection this weekend and it was the BEST car museum I have ever seen.

Harold Lemay started a garbage collection company and shortly there after got the sickness. He started buying every car he could get for a deal and when he died in 2000, he owned nearly 3500 collector cars. His family donated some of the "cooler" cars to a trust and they started the Lemay museum in Tacoma, WA by the Tacoma Dome. The cars there are pretty cool, but are closer to the standard car museum fare. Definetly a great museum.

What I really liked was the Lemay Family Collection at Marymount. It had building after building of amazing cars of every type. I saw a Yugo, great Jag's, a rare blacked out 1942 Chevrolet, cadillacs, a fiero, one of those goofy Maserati powered Lebaron's, the #7 Tucker, a 1990 Woody Lebaron convertible, trash trucks, army trucks, a few ferarri's, lancias... And then I realized, Harold Lemay was one of us. He bought cars, boats, trailers, chainsaws, outboard motors and all kinds of stuff he liked and didn't care about what other people thought.

He had the sickness so bad that he in 1976 he went to Chicago to pick up a special garbage truck at a trade show(painted for the bicentennial) and while he was driving the truck back home with his wife they stopped and bought a 1914 Chevrolet sedan. They made some ramps, owpened the back of the garbage truck and used it to haul the car back to Washington. Sickness.. Sickness my friends.

The museum in Tacoma:

The inside of the Musuem:

At Marrymount they had some cool stuff.

Many were unrestored..

There were cars and boats and construction equipment, everywhere. Between the two locations they have 900 cars on display. The tour guide says there are 1000 more in storage all around Tacoma. They don't have the ability to display them all.

TL:DR Man has success in business, buys tons of varied and awesome cars... Becomes a hero. You need to go.

WTF is that bonkers looking moon buggy thing? I want to live in it.

Lemay collection? No B-29s or B-52s?

The car are awesome though.

Harold Lemay was a very cool cat.

My wife and I got a personal tour of the collection at Marymount when I was caught peering through the windows on a day they were closed.

One of the long-time volunteers unlocked the doors and took us through the place by ourselves. I got to sit in the Tucker and make "vroom" noises.

They have EVERYTHING in that museum. Chain drive Mack trucks, outboard motors, a Powell pickup and even an Aztec.

Shawn

Pretty awesome

If I had the storage I'd be like this. I see $3-5k cars all the time that I'd love to buy and drive for a bit and then just save because I like them.
But where do I put them? That's always the issue.

mazdeuce wrote: If I had the storage I'd be like this. I see $3-5k cars all the time that I'd love to buy and drive for a bit and then just save because I like them. But where do I put them? That's always the issue.

Thats what this guy did. He didn't care about where to put them, just bought them and figured it out later. It was only after years of collecting that he got space.

Yeah, I see a pink Geo Tracker in there somewhere....

I like the vertical storage. I want to know what machine or process is used to get the cars up and down from the shelves.

David

Very cool stuff there. Back in the '80s, I did a lot of work on cars from that collection, and he would have a annual car show where he'd bring out his favorites (mostly he liked fire trucks back then) and we'd all participate. Much fun. He had warehouses stacked with cars in restored and unrestored condition and would open them up for the car show.

I went to the museum last fall when I was up in Seattle anyway and I really, really liked it. Have to go visit the other location the next time I'm up there.

Very nice images MegaDork! thanks for sharing!!!

I live 5-minutes from there and love every bit of the place. I definitely miss the days when the cars were stuffed in random garages and the basements of a local school, but it IS nice to see them finally have a "home" (I even bought a paver a while back)

I tried to pull a picture of my Impala at a cruise in there, but photobucket is acting up

It needs a walkway for the upper level cars. I'm being lazy right now (could look it up); what's the addmission fee?

gjz30075 wrote: what's the addmission fee?

I don't remember. I used a groupon deal for the family.

Rumor has it that he claimed to have only ever sold five cars...Three of which he bought back.

Here is a fun way to kill some time: Lemay Collection Searchable Database