America’s Car Museum – The LeMay Collection – Part 1 of 2
You may not be aware that the Guinness Book of World Records lists the LeMay collection as "The largest privately owned automobile collection in the world." His vast collection of several thousand collector cars was assembled over a lifetime of passion for the automobile. Harold LeMay died in 2000 but his legacy of this mind-boggling array of collectible automobiles will soon be displayed for public viewing in Tacoma, Washington at the Harold E. LeMay Museum.
At present the collection is housed in multiple buildings on an acreage near the family home. A few miles away from the home is the former Marymount Military Academy.
This property was acquired by LeMay and now houses hundreds of the cars in the collection.
The Harold E. LeMay Museum is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the LeMay Collection of automobiles and memorabilia, along with vehicles and artifacts it may acquire. The focus is on exploration, education and entertainment related to broad themes of American mobility and lifestyle and the automotive industry.
Harold’s wife Nancy has agreed to donate several million dollars and a huge number of the most impressive collector cars to the new LeMay museum soon to be built near the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington.
If you have a passion for automobiles the LeMay collection is a "must see." The collection is open to the public for viewing in late August of each year. I had the opportunity to view the collection last Sunday, February 13th with a group of car club members. Museum volunteers were on hand to provide information about the collection
and to assist with security. The following photos are just a small sample of the cars on exhibit.
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A tour of the present museum collection begins at the office and souvenir shop near the parking area of the Marymont property. A number of the buildings are connected. The first is the LeMay Hall with a stunning array of classic cars, and very unusual automobiles. The dilemma that the visitor faces is that if you spend one minute examining each car… you are going to be there all day. Even the most passionate collector car buff is at risk of input overload. |
| A hallway leads you from this room and on to the Buick Room. Whatever year or model that you would like to see is lurking somewhere in this massive collection. Due to limited space and the huge size of the collection the cars are tightly packed together which is something of a problem if you would like to get up close and view the whole car. When the new museum is built this problem will be solved. |  |
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Here is a sample of cars in the Chevrolet section. Chevys from the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties… they’re all there. Numerous cars are displayed up on racks, so that there can be two layers of cars on display. In this area cars are displayed up where the bleachers used to be in the gym. |
| Here is a recent acquisition by the museum. It is one of the very few Tucker automobiles in existence. As I was taking this photo I had another visitor to the museum ask me, "What’s a Tucker?" This museum is just the place to assist in educating the public about such historic automobiles as the Tucker. |  |
