Brum brum!

As I recently spent a full weekend playing with toy soldiers I thought it worthwhile to book a day off and have some quality family time to make up for my absence. So on a wet and wintery Friday we went for a quick scoot up the highway to the Southward Car Museum near Paraparaumu. New Zealand being the small country that it is you don’t expect to find one of the world’s largest privately owned car collections on your doorstep and yet here it is nestled comfortably up against State Highway 1 (a single lane road that heads north from Wellington) and only 25 minutes drive from our new front door.

Anyway here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it (I’m lazy so didn’t see the point of rewording what was already a pretty good summary!).

The Southward Car Museum is an automobile museum housing a collection of over 250 vehicles, as well as three aircraft, located on Otaihanga Road, Otaihanga, just north of Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand's North Island. The museum is run by a charitable trust, incorporated in 1972. The museum's collection includes Marlene Dietrich's Cadillac cabriolet, a 1915 StutzIndianapolis race car, gull-winged Mercedes-Benz, a 1950 Cadillac "gangster special" that belonged to gangster Mickey Cohen, and an 1895 Benz Velo, imported to New Zealand in 1900.

The car collection was the work of Sir Len Southward and his wife, Vera, Lady Southward. They began collecting cars in 1956. After achieving success in business, Sir Len dedicated time and money to buying and restoring old cars, adding to the collection. The Southward Car Museum was opened in December 1979, and after his retirement Sir Len devoted his time to the museum.

The museum is a purpose-built building, featuring a 6000 square metre exhibition hall, engineering workshop, gift shop, and small cafe, and is set in six hectares of park-like grounds.

It’s actually a bit mental, as you can see from the main picture below, cars jammed together in a cavern like main hall with a mezzanine floor along one side dedicated to motorcycles and bicycles. Oh and they have 3 planes too!

Anyway onto the really good stuff, they have a very lovely Willys Jeep alongside a Schwimmwagen and Kettenkrad.

I didn’t realise how small the Schwimmwagen actually was, the Jeep seemed to dwarf it.

This is the civilian version of the Welbike made by Corgi, its really small. Even though this is the civvy version I really wouldn’t like to try riding it any distance. Imagine how the Para’s felt on seeing the Welbike!

Ever wondered what Messerschmitt did after the war, well here it is, they made cars. Really weird, cool looking cars.

I’ve been to lots, and lots, and lots of museum’s over the years and all of them attempted to do the same thing, take the visitor on a journey and tell some sort of story. What’s weird about the Southward Car Museum is it doesn’t appear to try and achieve this, it just seems to be a big warehouse full of cars. There are interpretation panels on most of the exhibits however there is no coherent timeline or purpose to the collection. Maybe that’s how Sir Len wanted it, however it is not a place that inspires you to revisit (unless you are truly an automobile nut!).

And finally anyone remember this crazy idea for personal transport.

From rubber keyed computers to commuter death machines...Sinclair was weird!