Fun things for “car guys” (and girls) to do on a weekend or longer excursion…

Let’s face it. We’ve all heard about how beautiful the Pacific Northwest is, with towering mountains, lakes and streams with fish that almost want to jump into your net, gorgeous coastline, plus other tourist attractions like the Seattle Space Needle. There are also major league sports teams where attendance can make for a pleasant afternoon or evening. And rumors of too many restaurants to choose from and fresh and interesting seafood dishes make the area all the more appealing.

So you’ve probably had the thought in the back of your head that this is an area you’d like to visit. It may even be high on your bucket list, with you just waiting for the right excuse to pop up to spur you into planning a trip to the northwest.

Well here’s your chance.

Thanks to the enthusiasm, forethought, and generosity of a benefactor in the Tacoma, Washington area, there are two spectacular collections of antique, classic, and other interesting vehicles and memorabilia within a couple of miles of each other, either of which is worth the trip. Together, they’re evidence of collections you’re unlikely to find so close together anywhere in the country.

America’s Car Museum

The late Harold LeMay started out modestly, founding a bus transit company in the early 1940s, part of which he bartered for a trash collection company before spending two years serving in the Navy’s Seabees in World War II. Eventually he met his future wife Nancy, whom he married in 1963, learning that they shared a passion, not only for classic cars, but also for models, sales materials, and other memorabilia related to older cars, primarily U.S.-built models.

America’s Car Museum

Harold and Nancy were shrewd business people, and their waste collection business prospered, allowing them to begin collecting interesting cars in earnest in the mid 1960’s. What started out as a sideline blossomed into a passion, with the collection growing at a dizzying pace. And by 1998, the LeMay family collection was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Largest Antique & Vintage Vehicle Collection” with more than 1,900 vehicles, and at one point they owned more than 3,000 individual vehicles of all types.

With a need for space large enough to store his collection and a desire to share his treasures with other enthusiasts, in the late 1980’s LeMay purchased an estate that had served as both a military academy and a retirement and convalescent community for the Sisters of Saint Dominic. Many of his vehicles were moved there, even as his collection grew, and he also used it as a display arena for period memorabilia that so fascinated his wife Nancy.

America’s Car Museum

America’s Car Museum

Sadly Harold LeMay passed away in 2000, leaving a mandate that his massive collection not be broken up and sold off, like so many others, but preserved and made available to the public to memorialize the legacy and ingenuity of the American automobile. He had already formed the Harold E. LeMay Museum organization in anticipation of the construction of a suitable facility in which many of his cars would be displayed, and where automotive enthusiasts from near and far could celebrate the evolution of the automobile in the U.S.

Drive In Movies at America’s Car Museum

Thanks to a generous donation of some nine acres of prime real estate from the city of Tacoma, the die was cast for development and construction of a new and exciting facility. Nancy LeMay committed some fifteen million dollars as seed money, and promised that nearly a thousand cars from the collection would be provided to form the initial collection.

The effort received substantial support from the collector car community, with corporate sponsorships and partnerships with General Motors, AAA, International Speedway Corporation, NAPA Auto Parts, State Farm Insurance, and Hagerty Collector Car Insurance, among others.