Automotive Hall of Fame
When a Hall of Fame is mentioned you think of athletes who have achieved great things or had long careers in their particular sport and were selected to be honored and immortalized, much like the NHL HOF in Toronto, right? That’s what I always imagined, but for some reason when the word “Automotive” is added to the front I imagined a number of significant automobiles being on display. For instance, I expected a Mercedes from the 1800s, a Model T, a Ferrari, a Bugatti… Apparently I’m not the only one because the first thing the guy behind the desk told me before taking my $10 admission fee was that the AHOF is dedicated to the people who brought the automobile to the world.
The volunteer guide helped us through the displays and made sure we started in the Hall of Honor which lists all the inductees.
There is a mural depicting automotive history in the hall.
The list of names on the first few plaques should be familiar to anyone who grew up in Michigan.
Those really are the pioneers who shaped the world.
There displays document the history of the car and the personalities involved.
That history starts with some of the early attempts to add motors to bicycles.
There really is a replica of the first Mercedes and story about how Bertha Benz, Carl’s wife, took his contraption on a road trip with her kids. Carl had been struggling to get his car to market since it was such a new idea. In 1888 Bertha snuck it out of the garage and drove it 60 miles away to visit her mother. Along the way she had to overcome a number of failures and even invented replaceable brake pads. Her drive proved the potential for personal transportation and sparked interest around the world. She was inducted in the HOF in 2016.
Thomas Edison predicted the current direction of the industry long before Elon Musk was born. He really was way ahead of his time because there wasn’t any infrastructure to support his vision.
Integrated circuits hadn’t even been invented yet.
People love to compete and racing early cars drove a lot of innovation. It’s funny to see quotes like this from one of Chevrolet’s drivers.
I was excited to see the early advertising. My dad always takes about seeing the Burma Shave ads when he drove to California as a child.
There is a display of Corvairs because Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed exposed safety flaws and forced the industry to begin adding safety features that we take for granted today. I guess his induction was delayed for a while because the Big Three originally reviled him and saw him as a threat.
The Dodge brothers, John and Horace, did innovate testing in the early 1900s. They had a hill for testing every car and John even drove them into walls at 20 MPH, reasoning “I might as well because someone else is going to do it when these cars get on the road”.
Warren Avis is in the Hall because he started the industry of rental cars. He was a World War II pilot and wanted ground transportation. He and his crew carried motorcycles in his bombers during the war and realized he wasn’t the only one who would have that desire. He opened the first car rental agency in the Willow Run Airport in 1947.
Auto styling is heavily featured in the Hall of Fame.
The 280SL is significant because of the safety innovations that were implemented and drove the rest of the industry to adopt that were driven by using crash test dummies in controlled testing.
Soichiro Honda was quite an innovator and a lot of his art tools are on display.
I know somebody with one of these but his is LH drive.
I’ve never seen one of these. It is built on a Corvair chassis. There really wasn’t any explanation for why this and the MG are in the lobby.
I enjoyed the Hall of Fame but I’m an admitted car and auto manufacturing geek. The hours are a bit odd during the winter so keep that in mind when you plan your visit.
~ Freddy
