Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum
Five levels of pure cool
Premier Issue
By Ric Anderson
 |
The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.
Photo by Richard Backus
|
For the record, there is no stairway to heaven.
RELATED CONTENT
Although most people in the mid-1980s thought vintage bikes were just old junk, there were a few en...
Been promising yourself a trip to Alabama’s Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum but keep putting it o...
Vintage motorcycle racing returns to the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, for the 18t...
From Triumph cylinder kits to Arai’s latest helmet, these are six cool products every classic bike ...
You get there by taking Interstate 20 to exit 140, a few miles east of Birmingham, Ala. There, at the end of a parkway that twists through a lush pine forest, you’ll find it.
The sign outside says Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. For motorcycle enthusiasts, it could just as easily say paradise.
Because inside this five-story, 80,000-square-foot building lies one of the world’s largest collections of motorcycles, consisting of more than 900 bikes produced by upwards of 140 manufacturers.
Of the 500 bikes on display at any given time, all but a handful could be fired up immediately and taken for a run on the 2.3-mile track at the adjacent Barber Motorsports Park.
Bikes recently on display ranged from Ariel to Zundapp, from motorized bicycles that could be lifted with one arm to the 794-pound Honda Valkyrie Rune, from board-track Indians to Superbike series Ducatis.
“They’ve got bikes that I’d heard of but have never even seen pictures of,’’ says Jim Nicoletti, who rode to the museum from Pensacola, Fla., as part of a Harley Owners Group tour. “I can’t imagine how many millions of dollars they’ve got invested here.’’
Numerous, suffice it to say. The museum boasts a state-of-the-art machine shop, restoration bay and research library among its attractions, housed in a gleaming building less than two years old.
The star attractions, however, are the bikes themselves; such as Craig Vetter’s 1980 Mystery Ship, a 1912 American, of which the museum’s operators believe there are only two in the United States, one of only three remaining Honda RC161 racers from 1961, a Rikuo, the so-called Japanese Harley, and a wall of European singles from the Fifties. The list goes on. “If Mr. Barber is going to attack something or approach something, it’s going to be the best,’’ says Jeff Ray, executive director.
Creating a masterpiece
Mr. Barber would be George Barber, a successful and unassuming businessman who made his fortune as the head of a family dairy operation and in real estate.
Barber caught the racing bug as a youth and drove Porsches competitively during the Sixties and early Seventies before taking over the dairy business. But his interest in racing stayed with him, and he was soon restoring cars in the downtown Birmingham warehouse where he reconditioned milk delivery trucks for his business.
A few motorcycle projects followed, and Barber started collecting bikes in the Eighties.
“You could never do the best car collection, because it’s already been done,’’ Ray says. “So motorcycles became the target. Plus, from a car standpoint, you can put thousands of dollars into a restoration and end up with a paint job and a set of wheels. On a motorcycle restoration, you get through and you’ve got a work of art. You can see what the designer had in mind, and you can see what the engineer had in mind. And he really liked that.’’
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
Next >>