Custom Car Museum

Feb. 28 - On the road again on our way to Picton to catch the ferry to Wellington on the north island. We chose to drive the coast road from Havelock to Picton rather than stay on the main highway - a good decision but the road was REALLY windy (as in lots of twists and turns) and steep. It provided us with lots of “Let’s stop here for a bit” moments. The road follows the Queen Charlotte Sound which is very convoluted and full of islands and inlets, so there were lots of cliff top photos taken with mountains in the background. Most of the main roads in NZ have signs to tell you maximum speed on corners, but they had obviously run out of money by the time they got to this road as there were no signs on the corners. However, a real optimist had posted 50 k/hr signs all over the place, even on the windiest sections - it was all I could do to manage 25 k/hr in second gear most of the time! But well worth it. Picton is a tiny place - not sure what I was expecting but it really only exists to provide tourists with a base to jump on the ferry.
However, before we got to Havelock, we hit Nelson. A guy John talked to in a garage way back had mentioned a fantastic car museum to him, but John didn’t write down where it was. As we were driving through Nelson, I noticed a sign to the WOW Classic Car Museum, so off we went. It was a somewhat strange experience - the WOW didn’t refer to the amazing old cars, but stood for World of Wearable Art which was in the same space as the Classic Cars. I’m sure that made sense to someone. Anyway, we paid our money and John went one way and I went the other. The World of Wearable Art is a crazy and creative place - I can hardly even begin to describe the “dresses” which were made of just about everything and anything except normal dress fabric - bed springs, lengths of plastic, metal etc. etc. I looked, I was amazed, I didn’t understand. I wandered around the cars with John for a while and then he paid an extra $8 to be admitted to the inner sanctum (MORE old cars) and I chose to have a coffee and do the crossword in the café. He’ll write about the cars …..
John Writes … It wasn’t my idea to do the Blog, I’m semi literate, I can’t spell to save my life, why do I have to write? Nag. Nag. Nag.
If you are a car or bike fan, don’t come to New Zealand! It will drive you nuts. Where did they all come from?!! They are not only in the Museums, they are on the road in droves. We are not talking old vehicles in poor condition we are talking “Concours” level vehicles touring the winding country roads in groups of 30 or 50! In the course of our travels we saw groups of, Bentleys, 35 of them from old 1930’s lagondas to some more modern 1950 and 60s. They are not doing short trips either. One fellow I talked to briefly keeps an old classic Bentley here for just such occasions. He also has a couple back home in England. I talked to another, “bloke”, I guess I should use the local terms, who was in the Packard run of about 50, we only saw about 30 of these, many of them the old phaetons. We stopped where the was a small portion of a large BSA rally. There were about 20 of them and their vintage bikes, who were touring after the rally. In Christchurch after we had left there was a rally of 1000 Harley Davidsons. We also encountered a Classic Car group who were touring. There were about 30 in this group with all kinds of different cars from Austin Sevens with a top speed of 40 mph the owner told me to really exotic old MGs ,Rolls Royce, and Aston Martins. Who knows how many other groups we missed? One Caravan Park had a collection of 14 Morris Minors although no work had been done to them. When you go into a small town Museum you never know what you might see. One example was a small town, Timaru. It had a small Museum that had a Ford GT40 several Ferarris, an Austin Seven and some race cars all perfect condition as well as a tractor which made an, “around the world trip”. You never know what you will find!
When we were filling the Campervan I was talking to a bloke who had an MG B much like the one we used to have and he mentioned a Museum I should go to see in Nelson. By this time I had seen almost enough Museums so I didn’t mention it to Ginnie. It happened however that about a week later we were driving through Nelson and Ginnie spotted the sign on the highway. It happened to be just off the highway so we dropped in. WOW was the theme for the show they had on but WOW was what you had to say in viewing the cars and some bikes!! In the main show of the Museum there was everything from Ferarri 599 GTB Fiorano with a 6:1 pound/hp ratio, 0 to 60 at 3.7 sec and total comfort up to 200 mph to a 1913 Krit touring, 1936 Auburn 653 Sedan, 1937 BMW Type 328 race car, 1953 Lea Francis, Porsches, De Lorian, 2001 Plymouth Prowler, 2004 Maybach Type 62s 5980cc ultra luxury car built for the 1997 Tokyo Motor Show as a Mercedes-Benz Maybach later just called Maybach (this one had reclining seats for the passengers in the back!) . There were also many other cars of note. This was just in the main part of the museum. For $8 you could see many more they didn’t have room to display, (70 other cars), and also see inside the workshop where work was taking place on many more display cars. This was even better because you could walk around the cars, though they were crowded together, and see inside but don‘t touch.
Here was more of a WOW factor. How often do you get to see a 1 of 4 originally built1912 Mercedes (not Mercedes-Benz yet, until 1926), Stutz Bearcat, Alvis, Lola Concours car, Formula 3 race cars, Maseratis and Ferraris, as well as others too numerous to mention. We did mention earlier the display of bikes at Invercargill, which was totally amazing particularly being in a hardware store.
You just never know what you might see around here. I was talking to a fellow from Israel who said he always keeps his camera ready while he is on the street because he never knows what he will see.
How true.