Last month LeMay – America’s Car Museum (ACM) opened its downtown Tacoma location. The location can hold up to 350 vehicles, many from the LeMay collection, but others are there, too, making it one of the world’s largest automotive museums. However, as Ann pointed out, it isn’t so much a museum as a gallery.
The building complex is four levels and uses a parking garage as its organizational metaphor. Visitors begin on a main, very spacious area with curved wooded beams that have a nice warmth. As you walk slightly upwards on this main floor, the vehicles at the pinnacle are a Dusenburg and a Tucker. As I’ve mentioned, I always wanted to see a Tucker in person and I wasn’t disappointed. Fortunately, the car is positioned so you can walk around the entire vehicle, unlike most of the vehicles.
Once the first level is complete, visitors can walk down ramps as they begin the descent into the garage portion. A ramp leads to a flat floor, then another ramp leads down further until the bottom floor is circled. At that point, visitors begin ascending the other side with another set of ramps that lead back to the surface.
My main goal of this trip was to see the Tucker and explore the museum. I didn’t expect to see any jeeps, because my last review of the museum’s online records didn’t indicate there were any. However, on one of the underground floors we were pleasantly surprised when we spotted the familiar WW2 grille. Unfortunately, as we got closer, I discovered this was a poor example of a jeep. Even the sign said the vehicle was “titled a 1945 MB, but made with parts from 1941-1944”. Problems with this included a passenger side fender had lots of rust underneath (not evident in the pics). Brackets were welded on to the rear and sides of the body. There was no windshield.
Despite the jeep experience, the museum is beautiful with a large number of mostly American cars. Poor Ann had to listen to my occasional frustrations about how the museum was missing opportunities to educate and entertain people. She bore my rants well, as usual. Guess that’s why I’m marrying her 🙂
Note, due to the low light and the banning of tripods, Ann had to use her cell phone to take pictures, so these aren’t as good as usual.
