British Motor Museum, Gaydon, Warwickshire
Oliver Green is revved up by revamped displays that add nuance to the story of automotive manufacturing in the UK
Twenty-five years ago, the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust set up a public display of its remarkable collection of historic cars. The Heritage Motor Centre, an exhibition and conference venue, opened in 1993 at what had been Rover Group’s test and research site at Gaydon, near Warwick. Now, with a £1.1m refurbishment of its original display facility and a new £4m collections centre next door, it has reopened under the more appropriate name of the British Motor Museum. The rebranding follows the award of Museum Designation in 2014 – belated recognition of the collection’s importance.
What started as a group of cars set aside by British Leyland (BL) and its predecessors has grown to encompass more than 300 vehicles from the classic, vintage and veteran eras right up to today. The museum now houses the world’s largest collection of preserved British-built cars, from familiar mass-produced models to one-offs, experiments and prototypes. Among them is the very first postwar Morris Minor, an original Land Rover, the one millionth Austin, the first and last classic Minis, and the last Rover 75 assembled at the Longbridge plant in 2005, as MG Rover was liquidated in a sorry scandal of mismanagement.
These iconic vehicles are evocative markers of the British motor industry’s wobbly progress, from back-street enterprise to vast industry employing hundreds of thousands, to perpetually mismanaged strike-hit basket-case. But the industry has shown a remarkable capacity for reinvention and recovery.
The automotive business in Britain is now producing and selling cars at record levels for the UK, but the sector has changed fundamentally in the 25 years since the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust was set up. None of the major car-building companies in the UK today are British-owned. The current Mini displayed here, for example, was built on the Cowley site where the iconic originals were once produced by the British Motor Corporation. But the factory is completely new, the operation now part of BMW.
Does that make the Mini British or German? Does it matter? Motor manufacturing is now a multi-national industry, ownership and country of origin are no longer critical factors. I was intrigued to find on display the first car badged as a BMW – the Dixi of 1928. This is in essence the then standard British Austin Seven built under licence in Germany. The wheel comes full circle…
In any motor museum, the cars are inevitably the stars, and the wider context showing how cars have shaped our lives is often lost. The British Motor Museum’s new format works hard to engage a broad audience, from petrolhead to casual visitor. It would have been easy to follow the well-established “speed, luxury and glamour” narrative that still characterises much car advertising. Instead, the motor industry’s problems can be explored alongside its successes.
The main exhibition area, which before had the look of a giant car showroom, has been reconfigured to create a Time Road around the outer edge: touchscreen interpretation accompanies cars in a chronological traffic jam.
A series of display zones explores different themes including Design & Concepts, Motor Sport, Film & TV and the stories of historic individual marques, such as Jaguar. Some of the zones have a distinctive layout and design – concept cars are raised on big yellow boxes that allude to the Dinky Toys packaging of the 1950s, while Land Rovers climb an off-road “mountain”. A lively hands-on area for children looked pretty good to me, though I can’t judge its appeal to the post-Grand Theft Auto generation.
Finally, a walk-through section covers aspects of the British motor industry and its people, from self-made moguls such as Herbert Austin to engineers and shop-floor workers, from wartime factory experiences to the industrial strife of the 1970s.
I found this car-free section the most interesting part, with great use of archive film, oral history, a range of smaller exhibits and terrific early advertising. Sensibly, the museum does not attempt a single historical narrative or a plod through the bewildering model changes. The range of material touched on suggests some wonderful opportunities for creative research, interpretation and display.
The new Collections Centre will reach its full potential over time. Here, every car in the collection can be viewed without a special appointment – great for the enthusiast, but the lack of labelling and interpretation is confusing for others. Giving visitors a view of workshop bays where volunteers may or may not be restoring vehicles must have seemed like a good idea, but it is not much more enlightening than watching a Kwik Fit mechanic check your tyres.
At its most basic level, the open-store concept never quite works. Volunteers lead guided tours, but the museum is still experimenting with effective ways to present this space. A guide’s individual approach is more welcoming and entertaining than a label, but can be hit-and-miss. I asked why the museum had two identical black official Rover P3s; the answer was a memorable non sequitur: the first was used by Harold Wilson when he was prime minister, and they couldn’t get rid of the smell of his pipe. That wasn’t a problem with his non-smoking successor Edward Heath’s allocated motor, so the museum decided to keep them both. Well, it’s a good story.
This is a big step forward for Gaydon, and the new museum is proving popular. Education programmes are being tested to attract schools, and broader partnerships are being developed with further and higher education. The emphasis on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects and the wider themes of manufacturing and design offer big opportunities. The next step must be to open up the museum’s fantastic archives, film and photographic collections through digitisation. The British Motor Museum is heading down the right road.
Oliver Green is a London Transport Museum research fellow
Museum redevelopment
Cost £1.1m
Main funder British Motor Museum
Exhibition design Easy Tiger Creative
Exhibition contractor Workhaus
Admission £14 adult, £9 child, £39 family (two adults and three children)
Collections Centre
Cost £4m
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund (£1.424m); Jaguar Land Rover (£1.3m); Garfield Weston Foundation (£100,000); Jaguar Heritage Trust (£400,000); British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (£700,000)
Project architect Weedon Partnership
Main contractor Galliford Try
Admission Free to visitors to British Motor Museum
What started as a group of cars set aside by British Leyland (BL) and its predecessors has grown to encompass more than 300 vehicles from the classic, vintage and veteran eras right up to today. The museum now houses the world’s largest collection of preserved British-built cars, from familiar mass-produced models to one-offs, experiments and prototypes. Among them is the very first postwar Morris Minor, an original Land Rover, the one millionth Austin, the first and last classic Minis, and the last Rover 75 assembled at the Longbridge plant in 2005, as MG Rover was liquidated in a sorry scandal of mismanagement.
These iconic vehicles are evocative markers of the British motor industry’s wobbly progress, from back-street enterprise to vast industry employing hundreds of thousands, to perpetually mismanaged strike-hit basket-case. But the industry has shown a remarkable capacity for reinvention and recovery.
The automotive business in Britain is now producing and selling cars at record levels for the UK, but the sector has changed fundamentally in the 25 years since the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust was set up. None of the major car-building companies in the UK today are British-owned. The current Mini displayed here, for example, was built on the Cowley site where the iconic originals were once produced by the British Motor Corporation. But the factory is completely new, the operation now part of BMW.
Does that make the Mini British or German? Does it matter? Motor manufacturing is now a multi-national industry, ownership and country of origin are no longer critical factors. I was intrigued to find on display the first car badged as a BMW – the Dixi of 1928. This is in essence the then standard British Austin Seven built under licence in Germany. The wheel comes full circle…
In any motor museum, the cars are inevitably the stars, and the wider context showing how cars have shaped our lives is often lost. The British Motor Museum’s new format works hard to engage a broad audience, from petrolhead to casual visitor. It would have been easy to follow the well-established “speed, luxury and glamour” narrative that still characterises much car advertising. Instead, the motor industry’s problems can be explored alongside its successes.
The main exhibition area, which before had the look of a giant car showroom, has been reconfigured to create a Time Road around the outer edge: touchscreen interpretation accompanies cars in a chronological traffic jam.
A series of display zones explores different themes including Design & Concepts, Motor Sport, Film & TV and the stories of historic individual marques, such as Jaguar. Some of the zones have a distinctive layout and design – concept cars are raised on big yellow boxes that allude to the Dinky Toys packaging of the 1950s, while Land Rovers climb an off-road “mountain”. A lively hands-on area for children looked pretty good to me, though I can’t judge its appeal to the post-Grand Theft Auto generation.
Finally, a walk-through section covers aspects of the British motor industry and its people, from self-made moguls such as Herbert Austin to engineers and shop-floor workers, from wartime factory experiences to the industrial strife of the 1970s.
I found this car-free section the most interesting part, with great use of archive film, oral history, a range of smaller exhibits and terrific early advertising. Sensibly, the museum does not attempt a single historical narrative or a plod through the bewildering model changes. The range of material touched on suggests some wonderful opportunities for creative research, interpretation and display.
The new Collections Centre will reach its full potential over time. Here, every car in the collection can be viewed without a special appointment – great for the enthusiast, but the lack of labelling and interpretation is confusing for others. Giving visitors a view of workshop bays where volunteers may or may not be restoring vehicles must have seemed like a good idea, but it is not much more enlightening than watching a Kwik Fit mechanic check your tyres.
At its most basic level, the open-store concept never quite works. Volunteers lead guided tours, but the museum is still experimenting with effective ways to present this space. A guide’s individual approach is more welcoming and entertaining than a label, but can be hit-and-miss. I asked why the museum had two identical black official Rover P3s; the answer was a memorable non sequitur: the first was used by Harold Wilson when he was prime minister, and they couldn’t get rid of the smell of his pipe. That wasn’t a problem with his non-smoking successor Edward Heath’s allocated motor, so the museum decided to keep them both. Well, it’s a good story.
This is a big step forward for Gaydon, and the new museum is proving popular. Education programmes are being tested to attract schools, and broader partnerships are being developed with further and higher education. The emphasis on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects and the wider themes of manufacturing and design offer big opportunities. The next step must be to open up the museum’s fantastic archives, film and photographic collections through digitisation. The British Motor Museum is heading down the right road.
Oliver Green is a London Transport Museum research fellow
Project data
Museum redevelopment
Cost £1.1m
Main funder British Motor Museum
Exhibition design Easy Tiger Creative
Exhibition contractor Workhaus
Admission £14 adult, £9 child, £39 family (two adults and three children)
Collections Centre
Cost £4m
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund (£1.424m); Jaguar Land Rover (£1.3m); Garfield Weston Foundation (£100,000); Jaguar Heritage Trust (£400,000); British Motor Industry Heritage Trust (£700,000)
Project architect Weedon Partnership
Main contractor Galliford Try
Admission Free to visitors to British Motor Museum