A Visit to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum

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Words and Photos by Andrew Kohn

What do you get when you combine over 800 motorcycles, beautiful architecture, and the green, rolling hills of Alabama? Why, you get the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. Nestled in the Birmingham suburb of Leeds, the Barber Museum is part of the 740 acre Barber Motorsports complex which also contains a 17-turn road course, an automotive proving ground, and is home to the Porsche Driving School. It's truly a motor-head's paradise.

As your drive down the curving entrance road, the concrete and glass structure of the museum is the first thing you see. The building is five stories tall and has over 800 motorcycles on display. The total motorcycle collection is over 1,400; the largest motorcycle collection in the world! To allow for the display of the 600 motorcycles that are currently not on display, the museum is adding an 87,000 square foot expansion that should open later this year.

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Touring the museum is physically simple, but mentally exhausting. There's just so much to look at! The center pillar of the museum is a large elevator (with an open wheel race car on its roof) surrounded by four spires containing stacks of motorcycles. Around this centerpiece, a spiral ramp takes you from level to level to see the jewels of the motorcycling world.

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Every level brings new sights to digest. With bike from the late 1800s until now, there's a lot to take in. Especially impressive are the board track display that shows motorcycles of the early 1900s and the replica of the banked track at Daytona International Raceway with a large group of exotic sportbikes in racing formation. The displays throughout the museum are imaginative and informative.

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George Barber, the dairy magnate and owner of the motorsports complex, continues to do amazing things in the suburbs of Birmingham. The world class museum and racetrack bring in tourists from around the world. Trust me when I say it's definitely worth the trip to see this truly world class facility!

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