Courtesy Lemay – America’s Car Museum
TACOMA, Wash. — LeMay – America’s Car Museum is scheduled to open its large and sparkling new home adjacent to the Tacoma Dome on June 2.
Amassed by Harold LeMay over more than 30 years, the museum has the largest privately held car collection in the world, as listed in the “Guinness Book of Records,” with about 3,000 vehicles at its peak in the mid-1990s.
The collection includes 400 Chevrolets, 200 Cadillacs, 120 Packards and 35 Hudsons, along with Deusenbergs, Cords, Rolls-Royces, Benzs, Lincolns, vintage fire engines and such rarities as a 1916 Pierce Arrow, an air-cooled 1918 Franklin touring car and a 1948 Tucker Torpedo — one of only 51 built.
The museum, housed in a modernistic 165,000-square-foot, four-story building, will be the third-largest automotive museum in the world and largest in the country. It will contain a collection car center, 3.5-acre showroom, galleries, banquet hall, meeting space, car storage, a cafe/restaurant and a gift shop.
There will be three main exhibit halls: the Main Gallery, which will feature LeMay’s collection; the AAA Heritage Road Collection, which will rotate every three to four months; and End Galleries with permanent exhibits. About 500 cars, trucks and motorcycles will be displayed at any one time.
Three of the property’s nine acres will be a show field for outdoor car shows.
Currently, 400 of the cars are on display at the LeMay Family Collection Foundation at the Marymount Academy.
