THE COLLECTOR
When George Barber sold up his dairy business, he set about restoring a few motorcycles. Thirty years later he has curated the world’s greatest bike museum
How George Barber built the world’s largest motorcycle collection
George Barber has made a success out of everything he’s done, from selling his dairy business for millions, to developing the massive Barber Marina. But best of all, he’s created the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, unarguably the world’s finest collection of motorcycles, set alongside its own race track. “I’ve always been enthusiastic about automobiles,” he tells me, “but I guess my earliest memories of driving are of delivering milk with a truck, which I had to do every summer when I got out of school. That was until I got old enough to begin racing cars in 1960.” Aged 20, Barber wasn’t just a rich kid who wanted to show off, but a seriously good driver who won 63 races in the following decade. Moreover, he actually prepared the cars himself. “I was tempted to race in Europe, but I had to help run the dairy business, and what little racing I did was in the south-east United States, because I had to be back at work at 8am every Monday morning.” In 1970 George’s father passed away, which put an end to his racing career. “I had to start racing the milk business, which was a hell of a lot more dangerous – and very, very competitive! Wal-mart and the big block stores came into being just when I was beginning to think about selling, and I’m so glad I did.” Selling led to his starting the Barber Museum. “It started with cars – or, strictly speaking, milk trucks,” says George. “When I was in the dairy business, I had a truck rebuild facility for restoring old milk trucks to new. But we were beginning to wind that down, because we had such old 1950s trucks we couldn’t find the parts for them. The man who was working there for me, Dave Hooper, said let’s do a car. And I said OK – so we did, but the heavy tools we had for working on trucks don’t make for perfect restorations on cars – so, having done a couple, we stopped. “But then Dave Hooper suggested we should do a motorcycle, so in 1991 he restored a couple for me, one of which was a 1952 Victoria Bergmeister. I began to see how a motorcycle is a piece of mechanical art which wears its technology on the outside. I began to fall in love with the mechanics of motorcycles, so in 1991 we started buying bikes to form the basis of a collection.
‘YOU CAN LOOK INTO THREE DIFFERENT FLOOR LEVELS, AND WONDER WHAT AWAITS YOU’
“I got up to about 100 bikes quite quickly, and I was really having a lot of fun doing it, including meeting other collectors. So I thought that, with a little bit of luck, I could put together the best motorcycle collection in the world – and have it right here in Birmingham, Alabama in a way that’d help my city, and I’d have a hell of a lot of fun doing it. So here it is – and I’m still having fun! “As we started assembling the collection, we needed a place to store them, and initially I used a facility we had downtown, but we outgrew it pretty quickly and needed to expand. I incorporated the museum in 1994 as a nonprofit entity, and we discovered the site where we are now, which was then owned by the city, available for us to lease for a dollar a year. It had enough acreage to build a little test track for our restored bikes. We ended up buying the property, so now I control it and I can do what I like. “We originally planned just a small test track – a little paved course running through the woods. But then I said: ‘Well, let’s do it a little bit better’. And we did, and I thought: ‘Well, let’s do it a little bit more’. And we did it a little bit more, and then I thought: ‘Let’s stop there, and we can build it better as the need arises’. But then I thought about that, and I said: ‘Well, that’s going to cost about ten times as much, so let’s do it right the first time’. So we did. The late John Surtees became a close friend of Barber’s and helped with the track design, but was helping out way before then. “We were looking at acquiring some MV Agustas, and of course, you’d look no further than John Surtees for that because he won seven world championships
for them. So I called him up one day and we had a nice chat, even though I was terrified to talk to the man – me speaking to John Surtees, my gosh! Anyway, we had a wonderful discussion and I finally bought a bike from him, and then several more over the years. He’d come and visit us here or meet us in Daytona, and I have some wonderful memories of John. When I first saw him push off his bike and lean his butt onto it to bump-start it, then roll this leg over the seat as he accelerated away, and then just fold into the bike so he was suddenly all of a part of it – it was magnificent. He didn’t have to go more than 50 feet before you knew he was a world champion. Unbelievable.” The Barber Museum with its spiral layout and a central elevator is unique, although often compared to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Was that George’s inspiration for this design? “No, my inspiration was a parking lot in downtown Birmingham. You drive around a circle to go up or down, and you can peel off and go to various floors on the way. So I thought: ‘Why don’t I do it a little bit smaller, made for people not cars, and they can peel off and go to the various floors they want to visit’. I also love the idea of it being staggered, so that when you sit here, you can look into about three different floor levels, and wonder how to get there, and what awaits you. “Another thing that’s wrong with many museums is that they have the bikes just lined up in rows side by side, and you just can’t see them properly – they’re just a bunch of dead motorcycles in an old building set all in a line. We’ve also tried to group bikes from different manufacturers, but with a common thread, like your Bimota Tesi next to 888 Ducati Superbikes with the same motor. I didn’t want to have all our Harleys or Guzzis or whatever all together. I want him to see the Harley next to the Ducati, next to the Guzzi, and so on, to be able to compare different kinds of bikes with each other.” The Barber Museum extension which opened in 2017 has provided over 50% more display area, which allowed George to finally display the extensive collection of dirt bikes he had been building up in his cellars. But there are still more bikes in storage. “We probably have around 1000 bikes on show at any one time, with another 500 in storage. But we keep on adding to the collection as and when something we think we ought to have becomes available – we’ve still got a few bikes in mind that we would like to buy, but I won’t say what those are, because as soon as you do that the price triples!” Visitors to the Barber Museum are often astonished to find themselves talking to George Barber himself about their mutual passion. George visits the museum often, even though this is only a small part of his overall total business. “I’m here after work most days, in the late afternoon around three to four o’clock,” he says with a smile. “I spend as much time as I can here, and I love to meet visitors from all over the world and talk to them. Gosh, you can’t miss the opportunity to talk to such people – it’s fabulous! “But the most fun thing about having this collection is when everybody leaves the museum, and it’s early in the evening, and nobody’s here, you walk by some of these motorcycles – and I swear they talk to you, they absolutely do. They draw you to them. Particularly some of the bikes that have been ridden by world champions, or people I’ve
‘I BEGAN TO SEE HOW A MOTORCYCLE IS A PIECE OF MECHANICAL ART. I BEGAN TO FALL IN LOVE’
met and got to know. Each bike has such a fantastic history, so as you walk on by, it says: ‘Come here, I want to tell you something’. It’s just unbelievable, the feelings that you get around these machines.
“Take this Vostok four, one of two 1960s 500cc Russian Grand Prix bikes we have here. I acquired this really early on, when we were still in the middle of the Cold War. I was talking on a cell phone to the guy in Moscow I was negotiating to buy it from, and I told him: ‘Yes, I’d like to have the bike’. So then he said: ‘Listen, we have some MIG25 Foxbats for sale, too – this was the supersonic Russian interceptor aircraft that back then was the fastest military aircraft yet to enter service!’ It was quite an experience – but every time I see the Vostok I think of that!”
So which of his 1500 bikes is his favourite? “No question, it would have to be one of the MV Agustas that John Surtees rode, because of my relationship with him, and remembering him as a dear, dear man. And these motorcycles talk to you about his accomplishments on them, big time!”
Finally, after spending over a quarter of a century collecting bikes, is there anything that he’d have liked to have done differently in creating the museum? “I’d like to have done it faster, that’s all,” he replies. “But other than that, no – it’s a dream come true, it really is. The Guinness Book of World Records says it’s the world’s best museum for motorcycles. I’m delighted to be a part of that.”
‘YOU WALK BY SOME OF THESE MOTORCYCLES AND I SWEAR THEY TALK TO YOU’