In early 2020, I was trying to reopen Miles Through Time Automotive museum. I had shut down the museum in the original location in October 2019 and basically started over from scratch in an unused portion of a flea market in an old textile mill.

Despite all the setbacks, the museum still officially reopened by May. Even though the world was not in the best place, it was my first taste of museum freedom. For the previous three years, if the museum was open, it was because I was there. I did everything by myself and it was exhausting.

At the new location, the museum was tucked inside a flea market, and the flea market staff sold tickets to visit the museum. My only expense was given a portion of the admission to the owner of the flea market. In my mind, this was an awesome arrangement.

I would learn a lot over the next 15 months, that would change my mind about how awesome the arrangement was. However, before I would question what I had gotten myself into, I did it to myself again in another way.

I live one hour away from Miles Through Time Automotive Museum. The commute isn’t bad, but it racks the miles up quickly and fuel expenses definitely have to be accounted for.

I know I’ll get some hate mail, but, I have always wanted a Tesla Model S. For a four-door sedan, it is a good-looking car and it’s fast. The bonus is the electric aspect, but honestly, if it looked the exact same and was just as fast with an internal combustion engine, it would still do it for me.

I came up with a proposal and presented it to my wife, to explain how buying a used Model S would be a smart decision for me to commute back and forth from the museum.

My presentation was solid, and my wife gave the green light. Of course, I had already found the potential car when I gave my presentation, so the next steps came quickly, and before long I was the owner of a 2014 Tesla Model S P85.

Teslas were a lot less common back then, and I thought the car was pretty special, so I started to see what unique things I could do, and I went down the rabbit hole of Guinness World Records.

I learned the was a record held by China for the Longest Tesla Parade.  The number to beat was 145 Teslas. In my mind, I was like, “there is way more than that around where I live, I could break that record.”

Next thing you know, I’m in way over my head organizing a parade of Teslas in December 2020. An amazing thing happened though. I met a bunch of great people. The record was annihilated with 340 Tesla, and we raised over $10,000 for Operation Underground Railroad. You can see the Tesla Record HERE.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with the Tesla record, just like I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with Miles Through Time or even this Automotive Museum Guide, but with enough passion and effort, things have a way of happening.

The Jeep Guy Museum is a family’s passion for Jeeps. The museum has over 80 Jeeps on display dating back to 1941. The museum is a tribute to Jeep and you can see they are truly passionate. Rumor has it, the museum is growing.

Greg Miller is another passionate guy. He has a passion for Land Cruisers, so much so that when he found out that Toyota does not celebrate his favorite vehicle well enough, Greg took it upon himself to create the Land Cruiser Heritage Museum.

The goal is to have every model of the Land Cruiser represented in the museum. That number is over 100, and the museum is well on their way to making it happen.

The Museum of Off-Road Adventure, or The MORA was founded in 2018 by a group of passionate off-road enthusiasts. The group that founded the museum saw that there was nothing quite like what they wanted to create to share their off-road vehicle passion, so they made it happen themselves. The museum is open on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month.

I do still own the Tesla, and now it has about 140k miles on it. However, my wife has commandeered the car, so I very rarely ever drive it up to the museum now.

The odds are you have some sort of automotive passion running through your veins. You do not need to start a museum, but visiting an automotive museum will help feed your passion.

If you have the time, I also highly recommend volunteering at your local museum. The volunteer docents are what can take visitors from looking at a decent collection of vehicles and turn it into an unforgettable museum experience. Anyone can help make that kind of impact, and your passion will be shared with people from all over the world.

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.