Last month LeMay – America’s Car Museum (ACM) opened its downtown Tacoma location.  The location can hold up to 350 vehicles, many from the LeMay collection, but others are there, too, making it one of the world’s largest automotive museums.  However, as Ann pointed out, it isn’t so much a museum as a gallery.

The building complex is four levels and uses a parking garage as its organizational metaphor.  Visitors begin on a main, very spacious area with curved wooded beams that have a nice warmth.  As you walk slightly upwards on this main floor, the vehicles at the pinnacle are a Dusenburg and a Tucker.  As I’ve mentioned, I always wanted to see a Tucker in person and I wasn’t disappointed.  Fortunately, the car is positioned so you can walk around the entire vehicle, unlike most of the vehicles.

Once the first level is complete, visitors can walk down ramps as they begin the descent into the garage portion.  A ramp leads to a flat floor, then another ramp leads down further until the bottom floor is circled.  At that point, visitors begin ascending  the other side with another set of ramps that lead back to the surface.

My main goal of this trip was to see the Tucker and explore the museum.  I didn’t expect to see any jeeps, because my last review of the museum’s online records didn’t indicate there were any.  However, on one of the underground floors we were pleasantly surprised when we spotted the familiar WW2 grille.  Unfortunately, as we got closer, I discovered this was a poor example of a jeep.  Even the sign said the vehicle was “titled a 1945 MB, but made with parts from 1941-1944”.   Problems with this included a passenger side fender had lots of rust underneath (not evident in the pics).  Brackets were welded on to the rear and sides of the body.   There was no windshield.

Despite the jeep experience, the museum is beautiful with a large number of mostly American cars.  Poor Ann had to listen to my occasional frustrations about how the museum was missing opportunities to educate and entertain people.  She bore my rants well, as usual. Guess that’s why I’m marrying her 🙂

Note, due to the low light and the banning of tripods, Ann had to use her cell phone to take pictures, so these aren’t as good as usual.

We just got back to Seaside, Oregon, after a long trip down the Oregon coast.  During our drive we squeezed in a visit to the Tillamook cheese factory, visited the Blue Heron cheese store, and dropped by to see the jeeps and planes at the Tillamook Air Museum.

The building at the Air Museum was very cool, as it is the largest wooden structure in the world.  According to the website, “Stationed at NAS  Tillamook was Squadron ZP-33 with a complement of eight K-ships. The K-ships were 252 feet long and filled with 425,000 cu. ft. of helium. With a range of 2,000 miles and an ability  to stay aloft for three days, they were well suited for coast patrol and convoy escort. Naval Air Station Tillamook was decommissioned in 1948.”

The facility is now an air museum with thirty air craft.  Also housed at the museum are two jeeps. One jeep is a very nice CJ-3A that may (or may not) have been used by the Navy.  No documentation is provided to show what its history was, but its paint job suggests a Navy affiliation.

The second jeep, according to the documentation, is a “1944 Willys Jeep. However, you can quickly see this is a militarized CJ-2A. The only military Item I could see was the front grille.

Here are a few pics:

I learned today that Mark Smith opened a museum a couple months back in Georgetown, Ca, at what I believe is the Jeep Jamboree Headquarters.  At this point, it isn’t so much a museum as a collection of some rare jeeps, but they are nice looking jeeps.  According to the Jamboree website, Mark organized the first Jeep Jamporee in 1954, traveling across the Sierra Nevada Mountains by way of the Rubicon Trail.  It sounds like he is still going strong!

You can view all of them here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150857454023765.513239.143647533764&type=3

Glenn forwarded this unusual and rare Snow Tractor from the early 1940s located at the Wright Museum in New Hampshire.

The M7 was conceived as an Army Air Force rescue/utility vehicle. It was found that most plane crashes occurred on the climb out of or approach to an airport. With the large number of northern bases in remote locations, getting to these aircraft was difficult at best – impossible at worse. Shown above with M19 Trailer.

Manufacturer: Allis-Chalmers
M7 Snow Tractor (SNOCAT)
Crew: 2
Engine: Willys MB, 4cyl. (134.2 c.i.)
Horsepower: 63
Date Manufactured: 1944
Number Produced: 291
Weight: 2, 620 lbs
Range: 160 miles

I ran across the cool picture below at roderblog.com during a search for collages.  It was taken by Jeff Roder at the Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum in Pueblo, Colorado.  Neither Ann nor I have been there, but I’m sure in our travels we’ll wander through there as the ‘Eilers Bar’ is in Pueblo.

From Roderblog.com:

Here is a photo of the MB that I found on Flickr.  It was taken by jwm1049.

Blaine forwarded this picture of this jeep from the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force at Falcon Field in Mesa, Az.  Since Ann and I will be staying in Mesa and will be down there a couple days before this year’s FC Roundup, we plan to visit the museum.

Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, this is a mix of CJ-3A and M-38 parts. Once again, the reason for a jeep museum.  Hopefully, the airplanes are more accurate.  Looks like I need to schedule a meeting with the curator.