Over the last few weeks, I’ve mentioned a few of the largest automotive museums in the USA. Gilmore Car Museum is a huge campus made up of 8 total automotive museums, including Gilmore itself, and the LeMay Collections at Marymount in the northwest has a collection of over 1,500 vehicles.

I can only imagine the logistics and behind-the-scenes work necessary to keep such large museums operating smoothly. I suppose I was lucky being able to create a museum with only one car.

I didn’t have to worry about a thousand cars, or a bunch of employees and volunteers, it was just me and a car I thought was special. The growth of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum has been steady and consistent enough that I’ve been able to learn and pivot as necessary.

When I first opened Miles Through Time, admission was $5. It wasn’t much, and there could be an argument made for it being too much at the very beginning, but I had to find a way to generate some kind of income. I was all by myself for the first three years, so the museum was only open Wednesday through Saturday, April through October.

It was not uncommon to have no paying visitors multiple days a week, and if I had ten visitors on Saturday, I considered it a great day. Eventually, I started to become responsible for the electricity bill, which was always over $500. Despite it being a small building with LED lights and minimal HVAC use.

You can do the math and see how difficult it was to pay the electric bill, much less any other bill and a salary of any kind was out of the question. Fast-forward to today, I would love a $500 electricity bill. 

Steady and consistent growth is usually paired with a steady and consistent increase in expenses. I went from one car on display with $5 admission in a 7,500 square foot building with about $1000 a month in bills to about 130 cars on display with $16 admission in a 47,000 square foot building, but it cost over $200,000 annually to keep the doors open to the public.

Even at $16 admission, we do not have enough visitors to cover operating expenses alone. Over the years, I’ve seen almost every museum listed in the guide have to increase their admission. I’ve seen admissions go from $5 to $10, $10 to $12, $12 to $15 and $15 to $20. 

There are even a handful of the largest institutions that have even higher admissions, but again, I can only imagine what it costs to operate such large organizations.

The Northeast Classic Car Museum is the largest automotive museum in the northeast with over 200 vehicles in a repurposed 89,000 square foot factory. This museum opened in 1997 with only 45 cars, and has grown substantially ever since.

Dragonman’s is a recent addition to the Automotive Museum Guide. This is not your typical automotive museum. In fact, if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was just a gun store with a shooting range.

Which it is, but so much more. There is a huge military-themed museum full of military vehicles and the founder/owner, Mel Bernstein, has also added his hot rod collection to the museum.

When you think of the birthplace of the automobile in the USA, most people would say Detroit. The Detroit Historical Museum is a large museum that shares the history of the automobile, but also so much more from Detroit’s history. 

I do my best to keep automotivemuseumguide.com up-to-date, and this email helps me manage it. Even the last museum I mentioned needed to be updated. It’s always a good idea to reach out to the museums you want to visit directly to verify hours and admission, so there are no unwanted surprises.

If you want to see more, visit the Weekly 3.

Plan your next trip, discover your new favorite, or find the nearest museum

 Sean Mathis
Creator of Automotive Museum Guide
Founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum

P.S. Make sure you follow AMG on Facebook and join the FB Group to see what’s going on at all the museums.