Visiting the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum

Whenever I travel somewhere I always look for some sort of automotive museum visit. In this case I was heading out on a cruise with my family departing from Tampa Bay and discovered The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum, located in the Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg area of west central Florida.

The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum is super neat and features some really unique European vehicles including a Tracta, Citroen and even a Mathis prototype. (which I been personally looking for one stateside) There’s even a DeLorean (Back to the Future time machine car) and an all-wheel drive Ford Mustang. There is some really, really neat stuff in the museum that I’ve never seen anywhere else, but I don’t want to completely ruin it for you so you’re going to have to visit.

The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum is privately owned and yes the owner does get the vehicles out and drive. Unfortunantely, I didn’t get a chance to personally meet the owner, but the two gentleman working full-time at the museum are absolutely amazing. My only regret is that I didn’t bring a recorder to record the vast amount of knowledge they could share about each of the vehicles on display.

This museum is worth the visit for any automotive enthusasist. If you can spare a few extra hours before or after your cruise out of Tampa like I did, a stop here is a no-brainer.

Believe me the pictures I took do not do this place justice, but just in case you won’t be able to visit anytime soon I hope you enjoy the gallery.

Image via Sean Mathis

Sean Mathis

Creator/Author

Sean Mathis is the Founder of the Miles Through Time Automotive Museum in Clarkesville, GA, and the creator of the Automotive Museum Guide.

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Visiting Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum

The Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum in Colonial Heights, Virginia is a fantastic automotive museum full of over 150 antique tractors, more than 60 antique trucks (and growing) as well as vintage fire trucks and classic cars.

The founder, Keith Jones started this museum from a personal passion and made his collection available for visitors who have an interest in not only agricultural history, but trucking and general automotive history. The museum curator Alan “Bones” Stone is extremely knowledgeable and often times found on the museum flow talking with visitors about the collection.

I was fortunate enough to visit Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum myself and while I was there I got a personal tour of the entire collection. I’ve never seen so many pristine vintage tractors, including one-offs. The massive big rig trucks on display look amazing and when you walk over and see the collection of vintage fire trucks it takes you forever to inspect the vehicles just to get a grasp of how they were used so many years ago.

Besides the tractors and big rig trucks, there is also a collection of classic vehicles, including some really nice hot rods as well as many displays that if you really looked at everything you would be there all day. The good news is if you are there all day there is a restaurant on-site with views looking into the museum.

The Keystone Museum is large at over 70,000 sqft. and while I was there they were Keith was actually making the building even larger adding about 30,000 more sqft. to house more of his big truck collection.

With admission only being $10, a restaurant on-site, 100,000 sqft museum with a nice gift shop, I’d say the Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum is a fantastic way to spend a little bit of money and enjoy the day around automotive history.

Enjoy the gallery of some of the photos I took while spending some time at the museum and honestly the pictures do not do this museum justice.

Image via Sean Mathis