Henry Ford Museum

Katrina and I have been on the road recently and visited some of the most impressive car museums in the Country. Over the next few weeks we will be taking you inside the private, not open to the public, GM Heritage Collection, the Chrysler Museum and the Auburn, Cord Duesenberg Museum. In addition we will be showing you video and photos of some of the cars we found to be extra special in each museum.

Today, we will start with the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn

Michigan. I want to start by thanking Carrie Nolan Media Relations Manager for setting up or tour of this very special collection. It is more than a collection of cars it is a fantastic museum with some extremely rare and valuable items. Although our purpose was to study the cars; and even though we were blown away by the collection of cars, we found ourselves overwhelmed by the entire museum and spent the entire day there!

Today’s post will provide you with insight as to what the car portion of the museum is all about. In future posts we will show you highlights of the entire Henry Ford Museum and more. When we left the Ford complex we had a renewed respect for the Ford Motor Company and saw first hand examples of why Ford was able to survive without Government bailouts. A business model that can put this kind of complex together has the vision, talent and community interest to succeed.

The biggest surprise when entering the automobile portion of the Henry Ford Museum is the selection of cars. My first thought was that the museum will be filled with historic and significant Fords. After all, there is no shortage of Ford cars important to the history of the automobile! There are such cars in the Museum but there are also may other makes in the Museum ranging from Chevys to a Rambler, to a Bugatti and Presidential Limos.

No matter what your taste in cars or mode of transportation you will likely find at least one item on display that will take your breath away and make you just stand there, think back to another time and remember some special moment. I had many such moments as we walked through the collection.

There was the Nash Rambler convertible that was just like my sister’s first car; the Le Mans winning Mark IV; the VW Camper and vintage Holiday Inn room, maybe the most moving was the actual bus that Rosa Parks road on during the civil rights movement. You can even sit in the very same seat (in the front of the bus) that she went to jail for sitting in.

There are many more highlights of this visit that I will bring to you in future posts.