The Barber Motorsports Museum is undoubtedly the greatest collection of motorcycles in the world, and that’s by design. From the beginning George Barber wanted to use his Barber Dairy billions to build an incredible collection of cars to share with his fellow Alabamians, but a friend convinced him to focus his collecting on motorcycles instead. It would be significantly harder to build the greatest car museum, because cars are orders of magnitude larger and more expensive than bikes, while typically being more pedestrian and built in larger quantities. To truly stand out from the crowd you have to do something nobody else is doing, and Mr. Barber really took that to heart. While a Lotus fan first and foremost, his namesake museum is dedicated to the art and craft of gripping and ripping.
If you’ve never been to Barber Motorsports Park for, say, an IndyCar race weekend, you owe it to yourself to make the trek. And once you’re there, make sure you pop in to the on-site museum for a visit. It’s truly incredible, and deserves at least three hours to truly appreciate. More, if you can afford it. Even if you aren’t a motorcycle fanatic, as I am, you’ll find something to appreciate here.
Museum find hunter
Legendary car collector and barn-find hunter Tom Cotter visited the Barber collection and spoke with the museum’s former restoration specialist Lee Clark about some of the coolest pieces in the collection. While Cotter is best known for running around in dirty old barns and climbing over junk in garages to get a peek at some rare weird car, this is a fun look at the pristine and well-cared-for museum world from a guy who usually has dust and grease on his hands. It seems like Cotter enjoyed the museum, and you probably will too, when you visit.
Unlike Tom, however, don’t touch anything in the museum, please.
