The car museum with a twist

There’s one such Mini Traveller in the Great British Car Journey Museum, which gave me a chance to wonder at how we ever got in this tiny car in the first place, and to bore everyone rigid retelling the story. Given that there are another 119 exhibits in this new museum, many quite unexceptional, hard-working middle-class charabancs, I’ve got a feeling there’ll be a lot of old and tall tales being told here.

But this isn’t just another motor museum. Great British Car Journey, which opened last month, has a trick up its sleeve. Not only can you relive the moment in the recounting, you can also drive some of the cars to experience what they were like, though sliding out of the rear of a Mini is distinctly discouraged.

It’s a reversal of the age-old drawback of the motor museum (and coincidentally, motor shows), that it is the people who move and not the cars. That’s what has always removed the smells, the sensation of travel and thrills from the equation (for despite MG boss, Cecil Kimber’s instruction to his designers that MGs should look fast when standing still, the fact is, cars just look different when they move). It also adds a welcome dynamism to the day out; book a drive and alongside an instructor you can have up to six laps of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site just outside Belper in the Derbyshire Peak District.

To be fair, this driving-your-dad’s car trend, seen recently on BBC Top Gear, is not so unique. As all museums prepare for the return of visitors, they’re all looking at how to give the public a more fulsome experience. The British Motor Museum at Gaydon, for example is offering a trio of old vehicles in which young drivers between the ages of 10 to 17 can climb behind the wheel, and from Brooklands to Beaulieu, Haynes to Coventry and beyond, reopening museums are upping their game and becoming more interactive.

And what a wheeze it is to take to the wheel of an old car to trundle around the site (actually I reached 50mph) though you might be advised to carry a clothes peg in your pocket to hold open the choke as the engine warms (what’s a choke, Dad?). The 1960 Sunbeam Rapier Convertible I drove had perfectly balanced steering on its skinny tyres and was an absolute original delight, rather than an over-restored showroom Queen. And, even to me, it was a salient reminder of just how hard car makers once strived to make dashboards and facias such a feast to the eye and touch – and of what a warm and humane material Bakelite was. Does anyone, apart from Mini, make such an effort these days?

The museum is the brainchild of Richard Usher, former owner of Auto Windscreens and creator of the Blyton Park circuit. Great British Car Journey is a limited company incorporated in 2019 with Usher and five other directors. Together the project’s backers have put in what Usher claims is around £2 million to restore and convert an old wire-making factory alongside the River Derwent and purchase the 120 exhibits and additional 32 cars on the driving fleet. Many of the vehicles had been part of the extensive James Hull collection, which had been acquired by the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust, although Great British Car Journey has purchased other models at auction and private sales.

It’s been delayed for 12 months due to Covid and illness, but there was a lot of good feeling about the opening with a press day recently, when the museum was introduced to the fourth estate by Mike Flewitt, chief executive of McLaren Automotive.

‘It’s the appeal of nostalgia as much as anything else,’ says Jason Jones, the museum’s sales and marketing manager, who says that early research has shown the public loves the chance to see those cars that were as much street furniture as they were relatives’ wheels. Usher has even persuaded J Sainsbury’s to allow the museum to use pictures of the supermarket’s car parks back in the Fifties and Sixties, which show the variety of long-forgotten models.

While the museum’s collection is eclectic, it’s a clever mix of British-made cars detailing the highs and rather sad lows of the British car industry.

‘We take you on a journey with the cars, the names and the people of the past,’ says Usher, though he admits it’s a journey that doesn’t end well. ‘When you get to the end it’s really quite sad, what with the closing of Longbridge and everything.’

All the vehicles and the posters have stories attached; their significance for the British motor industry, or in the case of what are called the hero cars, famous owners. These include Sir Elton John, Arthur Elvin, the airman impresario who owned the original Wembley stadium and introduced football, dog racing and Speedway to the venue, and Fenton Atkinson who was presiding judge at the trial of the Moors murderers, so harrowed by the experience he retired to Scotland with his Humber estate and chauffeur.

The museum’s layout and theme are that of motor shows of the past, with big display posters hanging from the ceiling, although with regular large roof lights, the space is vastly lighter and airier than a stifling and gloomy motor show. Visitors start with displays of the Austin Seven and Herbert Austin, founder of the eponymous car maker and a key figure in the story of British car making, with similar displays for William Morris of the Morris organisation and the Rootes Brothers, William and Reginald. Visitors are leant handheld iPad-type audio visual displays, and QR codes on the vehicles and posters access audio information on the exhibits with scripts written by Usher that allow deeper levels of information for those interested in particular vehicles or stories.

There are other reasons to visit the site, however, and not just the gift shop or the café, as Jones explains: ‘We’re also one of only three roofed attractions in the area’ – the others being Chatsworth House near Bakewell and Castleton Caves near Matlock and Buxton. For those unfamiliar with the Peak District, it receives significantly more rainfall than the British average – about 40 inches a year.

Can we go back to drive-your-dad’s car here? My old man was a good driver and had some nice cars, but he drives a cloud these days and I think I’d find driving something that I associate with him almost too much to bear. So that’s one drawback, but also, just how does this unbearably media- and baby boomer-friendly construct work for those who aren’t a member of either? Take Luke Henshaw for example, 17-year-old apprentice motor engineer at the museum.

‘Well, it’s very era dependent,’ he says, explaining that his father has a very rare Opel Manta B-series 400 replica. ‘So, for me it means [driving these cars is] definitely not allowed, though when I pass my test, I might finally get a chance.’

Henshaw’s knowledge of how to open the bonnets on 152 different cars of all eras is a thing of wonder, but his driving test has been put off during the lockdown and while he’s passed his theory with flying colours and even has his own Manta to restore, he’s had to wait until September for a driving test appointment (we wish him the very best of luck).

He’s apprenticed to Mark Lawrence, 62-year-old workshop manager, with the two of them looking after the Great British Car Journey fleet.

‘I was looking for an apprenticeship from my last year at school,’ Luke says. ‘They are quite difficult to find and I looked at Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Jaguar specialists, even an HGV workshop. So, when this came along, I felt really lucky.’

Henshaw does one week in four at Brooklands College in the Heritage Skills Academy and says his tutor ‘is quite jealous of my job.’

Discussions about who killed the British motor industry might last longer than a cappuccino in the café afterwards – take your pick: Margaret Thatcher; Derek ‘Red Robbo’ Robinson; the Phoenix Four; or British management and our education system, or just the British public. But this is a good day out, an excellent primer into how British car companies once ruled the roads, and a chance to experience what we’ve lost.

Photography by David Rose and Andrew English