Inside Haynes Motor Museum
Old Cars Weekly toured Britain’s Haynes Motor Museum and highlighted striking classics like a Model J Derham Tourster alongside a 1935 Cord and an Auburn, underlining how boutiques of preservation still tell automotive history visually. The story is a nice reminder that car culture includes preservation and craftsmanship as much as new tech (oldcarsweekly.com).
A museum in rural Somerset now puts a 1931 Duesenberg Model J Tourster by Derham in front of visitors who might have only seen that name in auction catalogs, and Old Cars Weekly’s new tour makes the place feel less like a warehouse and more like a time machine with polished fenders. The article was published on April 8, 2026, and it centers on Haynes Motor Museum in Sparkford, England. (oldcarsweekly.com) Haynes Motor Museum says it holds more than 300 cars and motorcycles, making it one of the biggest vehicle collections in the United Kingdom, and the mix matters because it lets one building show luxury cars, racing machines, family transport, and motorcycles in the same walk. The museum’s official collection page frames it as a broad survey rather than a single-marque shrine. (haynesmuseum.org) The museum sits in Sparkford in Somerset, in southwest England, and it opened in 1985 after John Haynes, the publisher behind Haynes repair manuals, turned his personal collecting habit into a public institution. That origin story explains why the place feels practical as well as glamorous: it came from a man who made his name helping ordinary people take cars apart and put them back together. (haynesmuseum.org) (southwestmuseums.org.uk) The star of the Old Cars Weekly visit is that Duesenberg, and Haynes Motor Museum says its Tourster body was built by Derham and is one of only eight made in that style. The museum lists a 6,882 cubic centimeter engine, 265 horsepower, and a top speed of 120 miles per hour, which is the kind of number that explains why Duesenberg became a status symbol before the Second World War. (haynesmuseum.org) Old Cars Weekly pairs the Duesenberg with a 1935 Cord and an Auburn, and that trio works because all three names belonged to the same American luxury orbit in the 1930s. Auburn made stylish performance cars, Cord pushed radical design and front-wheel drive, and Duesenberg sat at the very top as the no-expense-spared flagship. (oldcarsweekly.com) That is why a museum display can teach faster than a spec sheet can. Put a Cord’s low, sleek body next to an Auburn’s long hood and a Duesenberg’s formal coachwork, and you can see three different answers to the same 1930s question: how do you sell wealth, speed, and modernity in steel? (oldcarsweekly.com) Haynes does not stop at prewar American glamour, which keeps the visit from turning into nostalgia for rich people’s toys. Its official exhibitions range across British cars, motorsport, motorcycles, and modern performance machines, so a visitor can move from brass-era elegance to Formula One engineering without leaving the site. (haynesmuseum.org) That breadth is what gives the Old Cars Weekly piece its punch. In a car world crowded with electric vehicle launches and software updates, a museum in Somerset is still drawing attention by showing how bodybuilders, stylists, and engineers once solved problems with chrome, wood, leather, and very large engines. (oldcarsweekly.com)
