Road Apples
Aug. 25, 2008

Back to the Barber Museum

By Tim Sanders

Last weekend my brother-in-law Jeff, my son David and I visited the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Leeds, Alabama. Jeff and David had never visited the museum before. It was my second time, unless you count the visits my wife and I paid to the downtown Birmingham museum site in 1997. The new museum is located on the grounds of the Barber Motorsports Park, which also includes a world-class, 2.38 mile, 16-turn racetrack.

One of the first things you’ll notice when you arrive at the spacious 5-story, 80,000 square-foot museum is that for a museum of that size, it is really ... big. You will also notice the carefully manicured lawn surrounding the building, with three sculptured figures out front. According to the plaque, the sculpture, called "The Chase," is made of cast stainless steel, and each of the three larger-than-life, muscular figures weighs over 3,000 lbs. On that plaque, the artist, Ted Gall, explains that his sculpture "personifies the motion, strength and integrity" of the racetrack and motorsports competition. In layman’s terms, the sculpture depicts three huge naked guys, wearing only capes and masks, with their arms outstretched as though they’re swatting at a) insects, b) each other, or c) pigeons. I guess the masks are for protection from road debris and gravel, since from the looks of their capes these guys are really generating some serious horsepower on their wheels. Each one has his very own wheel, a really big, primitive, BC looking wheel with a fat axle running through it, and each huge naked guy has a foot precariously strapped to that axle on each side of his wheel. It doesn’t look like a very practical way of getting from point A to point B, but I suppose those figures represent motorcycle racing in the early Greek days, when nobody wore helmets or riding gear, and when motorcycles, aside from the fact that they had no motor, no carburetor, no handlebars, no frame, no seat, no brakes, no tires, and only one huge cast iron wheel, were just like they are today. We looked at the sculpture until we all got headaches, and then went inside.

The Barber museum has the world’s largest motorcycle collection, with 1180 bikes, and there are always over 500 on display there, some dating as far back as 1904. There are bikes by 140 different manufacturers, from Ariel to Zundapp, and models from 16 different countries. They have familiar old names like Excelsior, Henderson, Indian, Harley Davidson, Vincent, Matchless, Norton, BMW, Brough Superior, Ducati, Honda, Suzuki ... well, you get the idea. There is even an ancient V-twin produced by Iver Johnson, the firearms company. Many of the early models have pedals, just in case their tiny motors died somewhere between the blacksmith shop and the old mill stream. If you like big bikes, there is the ultra modern Honda Rune, an 1800cc behemoth which is so large it must be disassembled and ridden, piece by piece, by a committee. If small is your thing, there’s a folding scooter called a Valmobile, made in 1965, which when folded looks exactly like a Dormeyer toaster, but when unfolded magically becomes ... a Dormeyer toaster on tiny wheels. This model gets 165 mpg, but if you were to ride it to the grocery store this afternoon, you wouldn’t arrive until next August. And when you arrived, someone would have to transport you to the proctologist’s office to have the thing surgically removed from your hindquarters. One of the staffers there said that all the bikes are in working order, and can be up and running within two hours. There are also several racing automobiles, mainly Lotuses (or Loti). George Barber made his fortune in the dairy business, and even after purchasing all of the bikes and autos in his collection, still had enough pocket change left over to build his 740-acre, $63 million complex, which was completed in 2003. I would advise you to take a lunch if you want to see even half of what’s there, but that would be bad advice. This is a very well maintained, spotless museum, and they do not allow food or drinks on the premises (ours were confiscated at the front desk).

We took the glass elevator in the center of the building to the fifth floor to start our tour, and followed the descending walkways to each succeeding floor. David is not a motorcycle enthusiast, but he still admires a good looking bike. Jeff and I have both owned several bikes over the years. He’s been mainly a Honda guy, while I’ve had no particular prejudices except that I can proudly say that I’ve never owned a Vespa. Ironically, while we drooled over many a model with which we’d been very familiar in the past, it was our earliest motorized two-wheelers which brought two grown men very close to tears.

For Jeff, who is a big guy and has owned some large Hondas, including a 750-four and a Gold Wing, it was the wide variety of little Cushman scooters that got his motor running. He could spot a Cushman Eagle from 100 yards, and was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, oblivious to all the classic Indian Chiefs, rare and beautiful Vincent Black Shadows and massive Honda Valkyries surrounding it. "Look, it’s just like the one I had when I was a kid," he’d say. I’d have the same reaction when I happened on a Horex. Very few people know what a Horex is, but that was my first bike. It was a little 90cc bike, made sometime in the early 1950s by a group of sadists in Germany. My dad bought mine for me for less than $100. It had a muffler which Dad welded to the exhaust pipe and stuffed with window screen, and you had to shift gears at the handlebar. It was a very undependable bike, and when I spray painted the tank with a can of Rustoleum from the hardware store, it didn’t really help the appearance much. But it was mine, and I still remember it fondly, due to the fact that no matter how poorly it may have performed, when it did run it was the loudest bike in town. There were at least two Horex motorcycles on display there, and they made me feel all youthful and happy and old and sad at the same time.

So we wandered through the museum, finding a few bikes like the ones we’d owned and cursing ourselves for not having had enough sense to keep them, because, dang, look how much they’re worth today! And yes, we drooled over the old Velocettes and Hendersons and Vincents, and marveled at the delicate beauty of the Triumphs. At the end of our tour, Jeff and I both sat down, examined our bank accounts and our savings, considered our stock portfolios, and agreed that, damn the expense, we’d each make a purchase which we’d treasure for decades to come, regardless of how irresponsible it may have seemed at the time.
I believe in the long run our investments will pay off handsomely. Jeff bought a Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum T-shirt, and I got a very nice cap with the Barber logo above the bill. A century from now they’ll be valuable collector’s items.

David said if it was all the same to us, he’d just save his money for a pair of stylish 1965 Corvette Sting Ray boxer shorts.