Automobile museum covers miles of history
PETIT JEAN MOUNTAIN — It’s now a museum piece, evoking a failed industrial dream. One day at the start of the Roaring ’20s, an automobile much like it was driven up the steps of the state Capitol building in Little Rock.
The car was called the Climber, one of the rarest vehicles on display at the Museum of Automobiles atop Petit Jean Mountain. The Climber, according to the museum’s website, “would climb like a tractor, yet run well on the highway.” It was driven up the Capitol steps “to prove its stamina and climbing ability.”
Alas, Little Rock was not destined to become another Motor City. Climber Motor Corp. built fewer than 300 cars from 1919 to 1923 before going out of business. It is believed to be the only company ever to manufacture automobiles in Arkansas.
The sleek 1923 Phaeton Model 6-50, on loan to the museum from a Little Rock couple, is one of just two Climbers known to exist. It gets star billing among the dozens of vintage vehicles at the museum, founded in 1964 by Winthrop Rockefeller, Arkansas’ first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Two of his Cadillacs are in the collection.
Other internal-combustion luminaries here include autos driven by John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley. Posed with the two are life-size cardboard silhouettes of the 35th U.S. president and the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Kennedy drove the 1963 Lincoln Continental convertible as his private car when vacationing at the Summer White House in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1962 and 1963. An informational plaque reports: “Such was JFK’s love of the car, and for living recklessly, that he would jump in it whenever he got the chance and drive off in a cloud of exhaust fumes.”
The Presley car is a 1967 Ford Ranchero, which he bought to drive on a property he’d bought near his birthplace of Tupelo, Miss. The legendary singer “had to have a ‘Cowboy’s
Cadillac’ to roam his new ranch. He bought this Ford Ranchero on Valentine’s Day 1967. He and Priscilla Beaulieu were married shortly after.”
One of the oldest vehicles on display is a two-passenger 1904 Oldsmobile Touring Runabout. Its engine was located under one of the bucket seats. An advertisement proclaimed: “For business or pleasure, in rain or shine, the Pioneer Runabout has no equal. It is always ready. It represents the latest and best in automobile construction in the world.”
One of the most iconic is a 1952 Volkswagen Beetle. That year, “there was only one distributor for Volkswagens in the United States [in New York City]. Of the 114,348 Volkswagens built in 1952, only 601 were sold in the United States.”
Then Beetle Mania hit America: “No single car model, with the exception of Ford’s Model T, played such a major role in changing automotive history. … More than any other make, the German-built Volkswagen paved the way for the import invasion of the 1950s and ’60s, which in turn affected the types of cars turned out by Detroit for years.”
Along with all the vintage horsepower, the museum offers a touch of whimsy. Posted overhead are a couple of the rhyming Burma-Shave signs that brought roadside chuckles to American drivers from the 1920s to the 1960s.
One is a lighthearted pitch for the company’s shaving cream:
Within this vale Of toil And sin Your head grows bald But not your chin
The other is cautionary:
Hardly a driver Is still alive Who passed On a curve At 65
The Museum of Automobiles, along Arkansas 154 atop Petit Jean Mountain, is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Dec. 25. Admission is $10. Call (501) 727-5427 or visit museumofautos.com.