New museum tells story of New England racing

LOUDON, N.H. » There are no video games or interactive exhibits at the new North East Motor Sports Museum in Loudon, New Hampshire. Not even a touchscreen.

Instead, the museum is devoted to showing off cool cars and the history of car racing in New England, from a 1915 Duesenberg — which looks like a missile on wheels — to the No. 47 car that in 1981 won NASCAR’s legendary Talladega race, driven by Massachusetts’ Ron Bouchard.

“If you are a gear head, no matter what age you are, you don’t need computers. You don’t need phones. You don’t need all the data,” said Raymond Boissoneau, a vintage race car driver who owns 32 race cars himself and helped choose the cars on display at the new museum. “They are here for the experience. They have heard about these cars. They have heard their parents or their friends talk about these cars and that is what brings them in.”

The museum, which opens Monday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway, is the first in New England telling the story of the sport’s regional history through its cars and drivers, dating back to the early 1900s.

“This is as much a part of the lives of the people in New England as any other sport that has a major presence,” said Dick Berggren, a former NASCAR pit TV reporter who has been working on making the museum a reality for two decades. “There are people who love the Boston Red Sox and go to all the games. There are people who love the races and have come to this race track and have seen every one of the cup races.”

But the museum’s arrival comes at a challenging time for motor sports in the Northeast and beyond.

For two decades, the New Hampshire track hosted the two top-tier NASCAR races each year. But NASCAR announced in March that one of the races will relocate to Las Vegas in 2018.

At the same, the national TV audience for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series has fallen dramatically — from 8 million in 2004 to only 4.6 million last year. Revenues have fallen, too, along with a 30 percent drop since 2010 in the number of fans in the stands.

“I think the whole of NASCAR/motorsports is in decline,” said Winthrop University’s Cara Peters, a professor of marketing who studied NASCAR and brand museums. “The NASCAR organization realizes that its fan base is aging and that the world of sport is changing. They are planning on trying to make some changes to be more relevant to younger generations.”