Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum: Don’t sleep on Alabama

There are automotive museums, and then there is the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Leeds, Alabama. One of these things holds a Guinness World Record, consults with world champion racers, and has sent motorcycles to the Guggenheim. The others do not. If you are building any kind of list of must-visit car culture destinations in America, Barber goes at the top. Not near the top. The top. We'll get to everything else later.

What makes the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum one of the best automotive destinations in America?

Right from the hip, the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum officially holds the Guinness World Record for the largest motorcycle museum on Earth. That alone should be enough to earn a road trip. But Barber is not simply a large building with more bikes in it than anywhere else. This place is curated impeccably. From the architecture to the exhibits themselves, simply walking into Barber is a clinic on design and beauty.

The museum maintains a vast majority of its collection in running, operational condition — meaning these are not crusty relics that have lost their purpose. They are living machines, maintained by a world-class in-house restoration team, and most of them could be fired up and ridden within the hour. The building itself is a five-story, glass-wrapped sculpture that feels more like a modern cathedral than a conventional museum, with bikes displayed on walls, suspended from ceilings, and arranged across open floors, all overlooking a stunning racetrack. It is, without hyperbole, unlike anything else on the planet.

Brandon A. Smith

The track has been referred to as "The Augusta National of Motorsports," which tells you something about the level of care that has gone into every inch of this place. The grounds feature a serious sculpture collection, immaculate landscaping, and the kind of attention to detail that makes you wonder how a place like this ended up in Leeds, Alabama. The answer is one man with a very specific vision and piles of cash.

The story behind the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum

The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum began in 1988 as the private collection of George W. Barber, an Alabama native who raced Porsches in the 1960s. In 1994, he established the museum as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and it opened to the public in 1995 in its original Southside Birmingham location. The collection grew quickly enough that by 1998, New York's Guggenheim Museum requested 21 bikes for its landmark traveling exhibition The Art of the Motorcycle, which also appeared at the Field Museum in Chicago and the Guggenheim Bilbao. If this is the kind of company Barber's collection kept before it even had a permanent home, imagine what would happen when it found its permanent home.

In designing the current complex, Barber consulted with world champion racers John Surtees and Dan Gurney. The museum relocated to its current 880-acre home at Barber Motorsports Park in 2003, where it has continued to grow ever since. The museum features motorcycles from 1902 to current-year production, representing 220 marques from 22 countries. Barber proudly features everything from normal, production street bikes to one-off Grand Prix racing machinery. Sadly, George Barber passed away recently, but the institution he built remains one of the most remarkable privately funded motoring cultural destinations in America.

Three machines you absolutely cannot miss

The 1954 AJS E95 "Porcupine": Named for the spiked cooling fins on its cylinder head, the Porcupine is a mechanical unicorn. Only four were ever produced, and they represent a strange sort of realized alternate history in British GP history. Originally designed to be supercharged, the E95 had to be hastily redesigned when the FIM banned forced induction. It is a gritty, purposeful example of post-war racing development and a centerpiece of the museum’s dedication to Grand Prix history.

The Brough Superior: Often called "the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles," these British machines were handcrafted for the elite, capable of speeds exceeding 100 mph in the 1920s and '30s. T.E. Lawrence – AKA Lawrence of Arabia – famously owned several. Having one is noteworthy. Barber has a collection of them, each one a pre-war artifact of bespoke engineering that is still precise by today’s measure.

The Lotus Collection: The museum features perhaps the world's most extensive Lotus collection, anchored by the Lotus 21. While this is very much a motorcycle museum, it also displays other rare racecars, including the 1964 Ferrari F-158, in which John Surtees won the 1964 Formula 1 world championship. The Barber's Lotus wing a destination within a destination.

Brandon A. Smith

Key Facts About the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum

• Location: 6030 Barber Motorsports Parkway, Leeds, Alabama — approximately 20 minutes from downtown Birmingham
• Collection Size: More than 1,600 motorcycles and racing cars, dating from the early 1900s to modern-day
• Building Size: The original 144,000 square feet, expanded by an additional 84,650 square feet, on a 880-acre plot.
• Floors: Five stories, accessible by spiral walkway or elevator.
• Track: A 17-turn, 2.38-mile road course that hosts the IndyCar Series' Grand Prix of Alabama, MotoAmerica, vintage racing events, and more.
• Record: Guinness World Record holder for the world's largest motorcycle museum
• Hours: Monday–Saturday, with limited Sunday hours; check barbermuseum.org before visiting, as hours are subject to change
• Admission: General admission available; guided tours offered for an additional fee

Special Experiences You Can Only Have at Barber

Brandon A. Smith

Barber is not a place meant only for spectators. Barber Motorsports Park is the home of the Porsche Track Experience, one of only a handful of Porsche-sponsored driving programs in the United States. Courses range from beginner to advanced and put students behind the wheel of Porsche performance vehicles on a professional road course. For museum members, hot lap experiences alongside Porsche Track Experience drivers are periodically available as well.

The Annual Barber Vintage Festival has taken place at the park each October since 2005, drawing thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts for three days of vintage racing, vintage motorcycle and parts vendors, the Wall of Death, and loads of food. The park also hosts the IndyCar Grand Prix of Alabama each spring, turning the grounds into a full motorsport weekend with racing, an exotic car show, and all with a proper festival atmosphere. And if you want something quieter, garden club park tours take place year-round using an open-air tram and tour guide, winding through the sculpture-dotted grounds and the park's notable plant collections. There is genuinely something here for everyone, which, for a motorcycle museum in Alabama, is the most surprising and wonderful thing about it.