12 car museums worth a detour

National Corvette Museum

The National Corvette Museum opened in 1994 and includes automotive memorabilia, the Corvette Café and, of course, plenty of vintage and brand new Corvettes.

The National Corvette Museum is just down the road from the General Motors plant that’s been assembling Corvettes since 1981. On display are more than 80 examples of this classic American sports car, including the only 1983 Corvette in existence, race cars, milestone cars (including the 500,000th, one millionth and 1.5 millionth Corvette cars made) and many one-of-a-kind concept vehicles that never reached production.

Get a ticket: The National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., is open daily and includes many interactive exhibits and a Corvette “nursery” where new Corvette owners can arrange delivery of their cars.

Courtesy Mullin Automotive Museum

This Bugatti sat at the bottom of a lake for 73 years.

Opened in April 2010, the Mullin Automotive Museum displays art deco furniture and decorative art along with about 50 historic French classic cars from the 1920s and 30s, including Bugattis, Delages, Delahayes, Hispano Suizas, Talbot-Lagos and Voisins. A highlight of the collection is the unrestored 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Modifeé, which sat at the bottom of the Swiss end of Lake Maggiore for 73 years.

Get a ticket: The new Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, Calif., is currently open to the public one Saturday each month, and tickets must be purchased in advance. But don’t be shy: Museum officials say they’re willing to open the museum on other days by appointment.

Courtesy of the National Automobile Museum

Jeff Mahl sits in the Thomas Flyer, the car his great-grandfather, George Shuster, was driving when crossed the finish line in the 1908 New York to Paris car race.

More than 200 antique, vintage, classic and special interest cars are displayed in galleries and on themed “streets” inside this downtown Reno museum. Highlights of the collection include one of the oldest American-built automobiles, the 1892 Philion steam road carriage, and many other rare and one-of-a-kind automobiles, including cars once owned by Elvis Presley, James Dean, Frank Sinatra and other celebrities. The museum also displays the 1907 Thomas Flyer, the car that won the 22,000-mile New York to Paris race around the world in 1908.

Get a ticket: The National Automobile Museum is open daily in downtown Reno. Through October 2010, the museum’s Motoring Tourist exhibit celebrates auto camping gear inspired by the National Park-to-Park Highway that connected 12 National Parks in the early 20th century.

Tony Hassinger, Wheatstone Production

This 1905 Cadillac is one of the treasures among eight decades of cars, buses and motorcycles displayed in this Smithsonian Institution-affiliated museum.

A showcase for car memorabilia, automotive collectibles and special exhibits, the Antique Auto Museum in Hershey, Pa., displays eight decades of cars in themed settings ranging from an art deco hotel to a gas service station and a drive-in movie. In addition to 100 vintage cars, the museum displays motorcycles and is home to the Museum of Bus Transportation, which features 12 full-sized buses.

Get a ticket: The Antique Automobile Club of America Museum is open year-round and houses a model train display and what the museum believes is the only “Alphabet Ford Collection” — Model T’s with letter designations — in existence.

J. Huber, www.charlotteharbortravel.com

Corvettes lined up at the Muscle City Car Museum.

It takes a 99,000-square-foot building once occupied by a Walmart store to display the Muscle Car City Museum’s collection of more than 200 classic cars and hot rods dating from the 1950s to the 70s. Along with automotive memorabilia that includes vintage gas pumps, road signs and traffic signals, the museum display Camaros, Chevelles, El Caminos, Pontiac GTOs, Chevy Corvettes, Oldsmobile Cutlass 442s and other high-horsepower muscle cars — all in pristine running condition.

Get a ticket: Located midway between Tampa and Naples, Fla., on the southwest Florida Gulf Coast, the Muscle Car City Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, year-round. A free car show is held on the 3rd Saturday of each month.

Michelle Andonian, Michelle Andonian Photography

This giant hot-dog car, a rolling commercial for Oscar Mayer, is one of the cars at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich.

Perhaps the best place to explore the history of cars and their impact on American culture is inside the 10-acre Henry Ford Museum, which currently has more than 140 vehicles on display. Collection highlights include an original Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, Mustang serial number 001 and its prototype, Henry Ford’s Quadricycle (the first automobile he ever built), the 15 millionth Model T, the bus in which Rosa Parks bus refused to give up her seat and the limousine in which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Highway billboards, neon signs, a gas station and other artifacts relating to car-culture are here as well. The farmhouse where Henry Ford was born and a replica of the factory where he built his first cars are next door, at Greenfield Village.

Get a ticket: The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich., is open daily. A fun hands-on activity is the museum’s “Build a Model T” program: Visitors can grab a tool and help build a real Model T, which gets completed by the end of the day and disassembled by morning, so visitors can start building it again.

Courtesy Indianapolis Motor Speedway and visitindy.com

The Marmon "Wasp" won the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911 with Ray Harroun at the wheel. The car was featured on a postage stamp in the U.S. Postal Service's Transportation Series.

Located on the sprawling grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame and Museum displays trophies, timing and scoring equipment and vintage motorcycles and cars made in Indiana. On-site, there’s also an old-style garage, a NASCAR exhibit and more than 30 cars that have won the Indy 500, including the Marmon “Wasp”, which won the first Indianapolis 500 race in 1911. Visitors can also get their photos taken behind the wheel of a real racecar.

Get a ticket: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame and Museum is open daily and is one of the many transportation-themed stops on the Indiana 500 Tour.

Courtesy Lane Motor Museum

This two-headed Citroën Cogolin was designed by a French fire & rescue squad that wanted to avoid having to turn around on narrow mountain roads.

Housed in a former Sunbeam Bakery building, the Lane Motor Museum has a collection of more than 300 European vehicles and is the largest such collection in the United States. Among the cars and motorcycles dating from the 1920s to the current decade are amphibious cars, propeller-driven cars, cars that fold in half and the Peel P50 which, at 53 inches long, 39 inches wide and 53 inches tall, is listed by the Guinness World Records as the “Smallest Street-Legal Car.” The museum’s 1952 Citroën Cogolin is made up of two welded-together front sections and, with two engines, can be driven forwards or backwards. It was created by a French fire and rescue team which needed a car that could maneuver easily up and down narrow mountain roads.

Get a ticket: Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum is open daily and displays about 150 of its more than 300 cars and motorcycles at any one time. Ninety percent of the vehicles run and receive annual tune ups and oil changes.

Do you have a favorite car museum? Tell us about it in the comments section below.