QOTD: Best Car Museum

by Tim Healey

Published: February 21st, 2023

Between Corey's trip to the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville and a tweet I saw from a prominent industry person over the long weekend, I've been wondering -- what is the best car museum in the country?

Personally, I've been to the Gilmore in southwest Michigan*, the Auburn museum (and its sister museum across the parking lot) in Indiana, the Petersen in L.A., a private collection of Hondas outside of Milwaukee, and a few other, smaller museums that I don't recall the name of. The Gilmore and Auburn were part of a birthday trip for me that my lady friend put together and both are totally worth the time and money.

Taking things international -- I still remember going to Ireland on vacation with my dad when I was a teen and us stumbling across a random car museum in Killarney -- we stayed dry on a rainy afternoon as we checked the place out.

Sadly, a quick Google search wasn't helpful in determining the name of the place -- the nearest car museum that shows up is a bit out of town, and I recall this collection being within Killarney itself. Well, it was over 20 years ago, so things change.

*The Gilmore was showing a video of the Chevrolet Corvette C8 launch when we visited. Although you can't see me, I was in that video, covering the event for this very site. A bit of a surreal moment.

Anyway, I digress. And this QOTD is meant for North American car museums -- we can talk about what's across the pond some other day. Let's limit this to the U.S. and Canada since most of our readership resides in those two countries.

What's your pick?

Sound off below.

[Image: Grassmemo/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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3 of 29 comments

3SpeedAutomatic on Feb 22, 2023

Have been to the BMW museum in Munich; Audi in Ingolstadt; MB & Porsche in Stuttgart; Skoda in Mlada Boleslav; and VW in Wolfsburg.
However, I found Peterson in LA the best, especially a tour of the downstairs vault with cars in storage, waiting to be displayed, or in the process of restoration. Wide selection in era, type, purpose, and county of origin. Well worth the extra few dollars.

Like Reply
Tassos on Feb 22, 2023

I've been to many US and overseas auto museums. In the US I was in CA for 8 weeks in 2003 and saw both the Petersen AND the even more impressive NETHERCUT Collection north of LA. In MI I have seen the free Stahl's small but great collection twice, the volunteers there are very well informed and answer questions they do not in any other museum. Last Feb I went to the Duesy-Auburn-Cord one, that was OK too. I want to see the Gilmore, and any better ones. I would not bother to go to Nashville again just to see their damned auto museum, it's a long drive from MI.

The big question you need to answer in your replies, for me at least, is if your pet museum has just Detroit Junk, or, like the Nethercutt COllection, has iconic, classic cars from the best auytomakers in the world. If it is the former, I would not bother wasting time and $ to visit.

1 Reply
- ToolGuy on Feb 25, 2023
  
  @Tassos, it seems the joke is on you, because the Lane Motor Museum specializes in.... European cars! (also motorcycles and 'flying' and 'floating')
  On one of my visits there they started the LARC-LX and ran over a car with it -- and fired up an Indy car.
  But I'm fine if you stay away. U of M parking lot is way more interesting. 😉
  
  Like

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