The Texas Museum of Automotive History at Fair Park in Dallas takes visitors on a journey through 100 years of heavy metal. From the 1909 Buick Model 10 Runabout to the 2010 Dodge Viper, the collection of cars is a Sunday drive down the memory lane of classic automobiles.
“We try to have a little something for everyone,” says Wilbert van Grinsven, general manager of the museum. “We have antique cars, muscle cars, race cars, sports cars, and celebrity cars.”
Opened in November 2010, in the shadow of the Cotton Bowl stadium near where Big Tex stands during the State Fair, the museum occupies the former Women’s Building. Van Grinsven says the idea for the museum originated when a group of car collectors got together to trade notes. Even though there were several large and significant private automobile collections in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, there was no permanent public venue for displaying the rare vehicles.
Having pooled their resources, the collectors approached the city of Dallas about using one of the Fair Park exhibition halls that stood vacant most of the year. It is still up in the air what the museum will do during the State Fair this fall, but in 2012 the cars will move to a permanent home in the old Science Building at the Museum of Nature & Science in Fair Park when it moves to new quarters downtown.
Besides the new car exhibits during the State Fair, Fair Park has a long automotive history of its own, says van Grinsven. From 1902 to 1936 there was an automobile race track next to the Cotton Bowl. In 1984, the sidewalks and streets in the park hosted a Formula One Grand Prix.
Now, some of the rarest automobiles in the world call the park home. With a lineup that includes Babe Ruth’s custom 1948 Lincoln Continental, a jet-engine-powered dragster, and a 1966 Ferrari, the exhibit can be dazzling. Van Grinsven says with the number of cars available for loan from private collectors, the museum will be able to rotate the 80 cars on exhibit about every three months. One sponsor, a Ford dealer, could supply a year’s worth of vintage cars by himself without repeating.
Besides the bright-red Ferrari, van Grinsven’s favorite car in the current exhibit is a 1934 Ford Brewster with an art deco heart-shaped front grill. These rarities were the luxury cars of the Great Depression and were produced in limited quantities by Ford. Built to Edsel Ford’s specifications, the car is a gorgeous machine, even by modern standards.
The Texas Museum of Automotive History is at 1221 Midway Plaza in Fair Park. The museum also sponsors a restoration garage in the back of the exhibition hall to train disadvantaged and at-risk kids in automotive restoration and life skills. For more information, call 214/533-4891 or go to www.tmah.org.
1,018th in a series. Collect them all. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of “Day Trips” 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in January 14 • 2011.
