While waiting for my luggage to appear on the carousel at Albuquerque airport, I wandered over to the local Tourist Information stand, and my eye immediately fell on a flyer about a local automotive attraction, the J & R Vintage Auto Museum, no less. I picked up the leaflet, and resolved to include it in my plans for my stay in New Mexico. Here is a report on what I found.
The Museum is tucked away in an unlikely place. It’s in a large building, well off the NM Route 528, about 2 miles off the main I25 Freeway, some 12 miles north of Albuquerque. It’s open daily during the summer months, but not on Sundays during the Winter Season. This is an unpretentious place, full of cars owned by the proprietors, who have decided to make their collection available for more people to enjoy. It’s not a flashy sort of place, at all, with simple hand-written signs telling you what the cars are, and with a little bit of history. The vast majority of the exhibits have been restored, and there is a workshop attached, where several more vehicles were in “for surgery” at the time I was there.
1912 Buick Model 28
1926 Ford Model ‘T’
1914 Ford Model ‘T’ Touring
1915 Dodge Touring
1924 Ford Model ‘T’ Roadster
1926 Ford Model ‘T’ Pickup
1914 Ford Model ‘T’ Depot Hack
1933 Plymouth 4 Door
1934 Chevrolet Master
1932 Ford V8 Coupe
1934 Ford V8 Cabriolet
1935 Ford V8 Roadster
1956 Ford Thunderbird
1940 Ford PickUp
1950 Ford Custom deLuxe CrestLiner
941 Plymouth Special de Luxe
1923 Mack Type ‘C’
1932 Diamond T
1938 Mack EH
1939 Mack ED
1935 Buddy Stewart
1962 Ford Unibody
1947 Lincoln Continental
1953 Ford F100
1959 Studebaker Transitor
1959 Ford F100 Custom
Packard
1916 White
1934 Ford V8 Roadster
1922 Marmon Speedster
1932 Packard Roadster
1917 Marmon Chumany
1932 Hupmobile
1931 Ford Roadster Pickup
1931 Ford Model ‘A’ Cabrio
1931 Reo Speedwagon
1941 Cadillac
1948 Ford V8 Super deLuxe Convertible – this is the only survivor of a series of 10 cars that Ford built specially to transport tourists over the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, in Michigan
1931 Packard
1930 Packard Model 733 Convertible Coupe
1932 Packard Coupe Sedan
1927 Marmon
1932 Chevrolet deLuxe Sports Roadster
1931 Reo Royale
1928 Ford Model ‘A’ Special Coupe
Ford
1931 Ford Model ‘A’ 400
1929 Ford Roadster Pickup
1929 Ford Sedan Delivery
1936 Ford V8 Phaeton
1938 Buick Century Phaeton
1929 Buick
1926 Rickenbacker
Unspecified
1927 Peerless 6-90
1923 Buick 55 Sport Touring
1964 Mercury Comet Caliente Convertible
1931 Devaux
1928 Willys Knight – famous for a sleeved valve technology that never caught on elsewhere
Marmon
1960 Studebaker Lark Convertible
1979 Ford Thunderbird
Mercury Eight
1935 Ford deLuxe Touring
1923 Page 7 Passenger Phaeton
Well worth seeking out if you are in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area of New Mexico. And if you are not, well there’s plenty of other attractions in the area to make a visit to New Mexico an enjoyable experience. After all, the strap-line on the licence plates is: “Land of Enchantment”.
2009-12-12 20:25:32
