Auto museum a hidden gem
Miami gallery features 1,200 cars, bicycles, Vespas, and even James Bond memorabilia
NORTH MIAMI, FLA. — The classic cars lined up against an empty, vintage gas station along a busy street in North Miami attract visitors to a much larger space right behind it.
More than 1,000 cars are on display at the 23,000-square-metre Miami Auto Museum at The Dezer Collection that includes American classics, military and electric cars, bicycles and more. The museum is so large that if every passenger on three 747 airplanes were given just one item from the museum, they could all bike, drive or pedal out, said curator Myles Kornblatt.
There are eight galleries spread throughout two large buildings in a part of Miami not known to showcase collectibles, much less $25 million to $30 million U.S. worth of one-of-a-kind vehicles.
“We are a bit of a hidden gem,” Kornblatt said.
Jorge Ivan Vergara Salazar, who came from Colombia to Miami on a family vacation, recently visited the museum and said he was surprised to find so many rare cars under one roof.
“Everything that you see in television, like James Bond and Indiana Jones, those are all marvellous things,” Salazar, 49, said in Spanish while touring the museum.
Real estate developer Michael Dezer, 72, started his massive collection as a teenager and has one of the largest Vespa scooter collections in the world.
“I knew it was original before I showed up,” said AJ Palmgren, a self-proclaimed Knight Rider historian who travelled from Des Moines, Iowa, to Florida for a family vacation. He made sure to stop at the museum on this trip.
“It’s very familiar. I’ve studied all of the remaining surviving original cars,” he said while standing next to KITT, the black Pontiac Trans Am that was featured in the popular 1980s television series.
Among the most popular galleries at the museum is the Hollywood Cars of the Stars exhibit, which showcases cars, submarines, airplanes and more that were featured in movies, including the BMW motorcycle from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Mitsubishi Eclipse from the Fast and the Furious film in 2001, which was the first car the late Paul Walker drove in the film series.
The Batboat used in the Batman television series that aired during the 1960s was signed by the builder, George Barris, and the Batmobile (also a Barris creation) is also on display.
The museum also houses the largest collection of everything James Bond, including the Aston Martin sports car he drove in 1964’s Goldfinger and a massive glass enclosure filled with rows of books, toy cars and figurines.
Some of the items in the museum are replicas, including the Cadillac from Ghostbusters. But a majority of the cars at the museum are originals.
“The replicas are sort of like a great side dish because we have so many originals,” Kornblatt said.