Great British car journey returns
The stalled Derbyshire museum will open next year
A car museum tipped to tell the story of Britain’s motoring heritage – which abruptly cancelled its plans to open in February – is now scheduled to open in April next year.
Severe illnesses were cited as the reasons for abandoning the project, located in Ambergate, Derbyshire, which was only a day away from holding staff interviews. At the same time, the partially-built site suffered from severe flooding when the River Derwent burst its banks earlier this year.
Founder Richard Usher, having recovered, told Classic Car Weekly that the museum came close to being canned altogether. ‘Instead, having got through the problems, we simply mothballed it. We’ve had such a lot of support for this thing, helped by some very understanding investors. We’re just about to sign up to a ten-year lease on the building.’
Richard said that in the interim, the museum had continued to buy cars, swelling its collection of historic British cars to 155. ‘We’ve 32 separate marques represented, and we bought 75 cars from the [ Jaguar Land Rover] James Hull collection, all of which now run,’ he said.
The 8000-mile, one owner Chevette, formerly of the Vauxhall Heritage reserve collection, was also purchased by the Great British Car Journey; other new acquisitions include a Papworth Industries-bodied Austin 16 Shooting Brake – the only one still extant from a production run of 500 cars.
Although the museum has now installed flood defences, and will be fully Covid-19 compliant if necessary, the cars were thankfully not affected by the water that damaged the rest of the site in February. ‘ They were stored on the other side of the river,’ Richard said. ‘Although we should have opened in April last year, we probably dodged a bullet by not opening in lockdown.’
As before, the museum will be recruiting for around 30 roles, ‘from serious management to volunteer helpers,’ said Richard. ‘We plan to open all-year round, and in the summer months, we’ll be open seven days a week.’
] greatbritishcarjourney.com