The Weekly 3

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. This week, I want to share with you automotive museums that have helped the museum I founded, Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

I may not have had any business starting an automotive museum in 2017 with only having one car I inherited, but despite the odds, the museum has grown into a pretty substantial museum.

I joined the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM) in 2017 in hopes I would get some sort of guidance on this journey I knew nothing about, other than my automotive passion.

For years, I didn’t have much time to really get involved with NAAM, but because I was a member, I slowly started to make connections. Then I moved the museum to its current location and was able to keep the museum open without having to be at the museum myself.

This change allowed me to start attending the annual NAAM conference, which also coincided with managing the Automotive Museum Guide. I put automotivemuseumguide.com together with my initial research in 2017, but it wasn’t until after 2020 that I really started to add all the museums to the guide and ensured information was current.

These two things introduced me to someone at pretty much every automotive museum. It is not uncommon for automotive museums to share vehicles among each other. It’s a great thing to do and allows visitors in other areas an opportunity to see things they may not have otherwise. It also helps get some vehicles out of storage so they can be enjoyed.

Being the new museum on the block, it was hard to imagine I could ever borrow anything from such amazing museums, but now, Miles Through Time Automotive Museum has earned its place among so many great automotive museums.

However, there is a financial burden that prevents MTT from borrowing vehicles from other museums.  There is a cost to shipping cars, and someone has to pay for it.  When individuals loan vehicles to the museum, they bring them, and they take them home when it is time. 

A museum isn’t going to do that, and it wouldn’t make sense for them to. It would be the receiving museum’s responsibility to cover the cost of transportation, and the museum isn’t there yet. 

Truth be told, I don’t know if MTT will ever borrow cars from other museums. There are no shortage of vehicles waiting to go on display and, because the majority of the vehicles on display are temporary and privately owned, exhibits have to be flexible and work with what we have.

There are other wonderful automotive museums that are way more structured than MTT and create specific exhibits with the best vehicles available. Savoy Automobile Museum is probably the best example of constantly curating specific exhibits.

MTT may not be able to borrow vehicles from other museums, but I have a massive amount of pride in being able to display vehicles that have been donated from other museums.

Lane Motor Museum has the biggest representation on display at MTT. Lane Motor Museum is one of my favorites I’ve been able to visit, as well as my most visited museum. I have the honor of receiving 10 vehicles donated to MTT over the last few years, four this month. 

I told Jeff Lane last week that I’m going to have to give him an entire room in the new building and call it the Jeff Lane Collection.

The AACA Museum is also represented at MTT. If you remember the TV show Monster Garage with Jesse James, they built a snowmobile out of a Mini Cooper and raced it against Richard Petty. The AACA Museum donated that car to Miles Through Time.

The Studebaker National Museum had an extra Avanti that needed a good home and Miles Through Time Automotive Museum was the lucky recipient.  MTT represents Studebaker pretty well now and our visitors are encouraged to visit the other museums.

So many automotive museums have closed just since 2020 and the only one to ever donate anything to Miles Through Time was the Sarasota Classic Car Museum. The museum may be gone, but a part of it lives on at MTT with three cars on display.

Miles Through Time Automotive Museum even received a go-kart from the Petersen Museum and a turntable from the Henry Ford. Both of these items were made possible because of my NAAM membership years ago.

One last honorary mention. Although MTT has not received any donated cars directly from this museum, we do have donated cars on display thanks to them.  The Ultimate Driving Museum, which changes everything annually, is responsible for a couple of BMWs donated to MTT.

Fun fact, The Ultimate Driving Museum is the first museum MTT has been able to share vehicles. I personally shared a motorcycle I built and when I picked it up, I dropped the snowmobile, Mini Cooper, for their next exhibition.

I thought it was a big milestone for Miles Through Time and, again, will always connect MTT to The Ultimate Driving Museum. You can visit Miles Through Time Automotive Museum today and see that the Mini came from the AACA Museum and was also at The Ultimate Driving Museum.  

The next time you visit an automotive museum, see if you can find any cars from other museums.  I bet if you look hard enough, you’ll find a few.

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.