Story & photos by Tim Kessel
As a child, I was a Hot Wheels fanatic. I had an old suitcase filled with orange plastic track pieces. Straights, curves, and loops were organized, ready to be snapped together to form an epic race course. My Hot Wheels collection was carefully stored in plastic display boxes by car type and color, each shining vehicle in its own cubicle.
As my wonder years progressed, my vehicular focus shifted. I became obsessed with motorcycles. I scoured the pages of every early‑-1970s motorcycle magazine I could get my hands on. Harleys, Indians, Hodakas, Hondas, Husqvarnas, and anything else with two wheels filled my thoughts by day and my dreams by night.
Fast forward half a century. My wife and I drive onto the vibrant green, perfectly manicured property of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Upon walking into the foyer of the impressive building, the sheer size of the museum is the first of many wonders to come. The voluminous space is bright and airy, and greeters welcome us from the check‑-in desk, but my eyes are drawn to the motorcycles adorning the entry and beyond.
The very first display is a wall of immaculate vintage motorcycles, each one poised in full glory in its own individual cubicle. The two closest to the entrance are a pristine 1912 Indian Twin and a 1913 Harley‑-Davidson Model 9A. The rest of the boxes are filled with a treasure trove of vintage motorcycles from around the world and across a wide timeline. The display is a life‑-sized marriage of my two childhood obsessions. I am in heaven, and it is not a baseball field in Iowa.
The Barber museum holds the Guinness record as the world’s largest motorcycle collection, representing over 1,800 gleaming examples from 22 countries and 220 manufacturers. That collection spans well over a century of motorcycle production. It also houses an impressive collection of racing cars. The facility sits on an 880‑-acre campus that features one of the most thrilling and picturesque racetracks in the world. Portions of that undulating and curvaceous 2.38‑-mile road course are visible from the floor‑-to‑-ceiling windows of the five‑-story museum. None of that track is Hot Wheels orange, but you can imagine my mental connections.
The Barber campus is the brainchild and passion project of George Barber, a successful businessman and former racecar driver. Barber began his motorcycle collection in the 1980s and established the museum in 1994. The entire property reflects the personality of its creator. It should be said that this amazing place is not some self‑-aggrandizing vanity project. In fact, the Barber foundation is recognized as the largest philanthropic undertaking by an individual in the state of Alabama. The museum features a comfortable theater that gives a great glimpse into the philosophy and personality of its founder.
After securing our two tickets to paradise, the true wonder begins. That display in the entryway is just an appetizer. A few paces farther into the museum reveals an atrium with towers that span all five floors. Those towers contain every imaginable variety of vintage and classic motorcycle. Again, each bike resides in its own Hot Wheels‑-style display box.
The main floors are accessed either by a massive, central glass‑-walled elevator or a wide spiral walkway that lands on each floor. Each of those modes of transport gives a different and unique look at the museum. The basement floor, which contains the museum’s technical and restoration workspaces, is visible from above, but it is not part of the standard visitor access.
As we make our way from floor to floor, the museum comes to life. While there is still no shortage of motorcycles displayed in that organized Hot Wheels motif, the creative and often whimsical side of Mr. Barber’s vision emerges. On one floor, there is a mannequin motorcyclist in full leathers playing a grand piano, and through the windows we see random three‑-dimensional, wonderfully incongruous sculptures like a wandering cow near the racetrack.
Motorcycles are grouped in lifelike, three‑-dimensional displays. Fittingly, rare and beautiful examples of vintage American bikes take center stage. We study a cluster of Harley and Indian wartime bikes in full dress and perfectly displayed with proper respect. There are beautiful vintage board‑-track racers set in a three‑-dimensional backdrop of a banked wood‑-plank track. In one of the more viscerally interactive displays, vintage drag bikes are staged at a Christmas‑-tree starting line with an incredible visual and stereo sound display that has us looking for burning rubber and sniffing for burned nitro.
On another floor, classic dirtbikes are staged on a flowing, stylized dirt track that spans thousands of feet of floor space. The bikes are posed roosting, jumping, and doing all the raucous things that vintage 2- and 4‑-stroke dirtbikes are meant to do. It is the largest continuous display of motorcycles in the museum, and each bike tells its own dirty story.
Many of the iconic Harley and Indian flat‑-track bikes are afforded places of honor in the museum, as is the full spectrum of fully faired American roadrace bikes. Clearly, racing is the overriding focus of much of Barber’s vision.
One display that is especially poignant for me is a cluster of minibikes from the late ’60s through the early ’80s. Those were the bikes I ogled in the early motorcycle magazines. A Honda SL70, the first real motorcycle I ever rode, is there. The cutest minibike ever made – the Indian Mini – is on display alongside many small‑-displacement treasures. I can see my wife subtly drifting off as I narrate a trip down my personal memory lane.
Other highlights of the museum include an impressive number of Buell variants. Harleys of every vintage and style abound. Representation from the early years, through the AMF period, to more modern iterations are seemingly around every corner. Many of the beautiful American examples are given places of honor in front of the massive windows with the Barber racetrack as a backdrop. Truly stunning.
While my personal history in the world of motorsports, and specifically motorcycles, may be different than yours, I can’t imagine a single moto‑-centric individual not being stirred to the core in the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. You will be taken back to a time and place of wonder, as well as being afforded a dynamic view into the full spectrum of motorcycling history. If it is not already there, put Barber on your bucket‑-list.
For information about the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, go to BarberMuseum.org.