Where cars are stars

CLEVELAND - Detroit wasn't always Motown. In the early days of the automotive industry, nascent car companies were located all over the country.

At the turn of the 20th century, northeastern Ohio was establishing itself as a hotbed of automotive innovation, eventually becoming home to more than 150 automotive manufacturers back when industrial America was young and optimistic and when self-starters and electric windshield wipers were at the cutting edge of technology.

Canton Classic Car Museum

Travelers in the area can get a taste of the glory days of the automobile at the Canton Classic Car Museum, the Crawford Auto Aviation Museum in Cleveland, and the National Packard Museum in Warren.

The Canton museum, which opened in 1978, is housed in what was once one of the largest automobile dealerships in the country.

The museum has a fabulous car collection, "But don't shy away if you're not a car guy," said Char Lautzenheiser, director of the museum.

 

I agree. The museum is quirky joy sure to delight a wide range of visitors with an amalgamation of almost 50 classic vehicles plus Canton-area mementos, antique fashions and rugs, old toys, posters and signs, and anything else that the Belden family, which opened and still owns the institution, chose to collect.

As a private organization, the Canton museum can remain true to its slightly wacky roots: Visitors might spot an Elvis bust, dancing toy marionettes or cutouts of old-time movie stars among the array of rare autos.

 

"There's stuff here to giggle at," Lautzenheiser said. "And unlike most museums, you can sit on our chairs and sofas - for as long as you want. We really want you to embrace this museum."

The effect is delightfully nonsterile but doesn't seem to detract from the vehicles at all, at least to me.

Even the cars can be a bit quirky.

One, a 1937 Studebaker, was specially fitted by Canton police to fight organized crime. (Canton was once known to some as "Little Chicago.") The squad car has gunports bored through its 11/8-inch thick window glass, plus an extra 3,000 pounds of armor plating.

Another is a 1937 Packard, specially modified as a hearse, complete with hand-carved mahogany panels.

To visit the museum is to catch a bit of the spirit of the early automobile entrepreneurs - eccentric, perhaps, but filled with a vision of the future.

"We hope you'll see not only metal and rubber and chrome, but the men who gave their hearts, souls, intellects and poured their passions into the automobile," Lautzenheiser said.

Crawford Auto Aviation Museum

The Crawford Auto Aviation Museum, located at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland's University Circle district, is a bit more traditional than the Canton museum. But the collection is eye-popping.

The historical society has suffered budgetary problems in recent years and has sold some of its collection. But most visitors would never suspect that the dozens and dozens of historic vehicles displayed, some dating back more than a century, constitute a pared-back collection. The collection includes almost 150 vehicles, more than 60 of them built before 1920.

I found myself marveling at the 19th-century engineering of a French 1895 Panhard Levassor Coupe, which appears to be just a horse carriage retrofitted with a front-mounted engine but proves much more complex upon inspection.

The collection's real strength, however, lies in the automobiles manufactured in the Cleveland area: an 1899 Winton, a 1904 Royal Tourist and dozens more, each a work of art and, in their day, some of the most technologically advanced machines ever produced.

 

Many of these cars were practically handmade, produced well before Henry Ford popularized the assembly-line techniques that would churn out thousands of vehicles relatively cheaply.

The museum's 1903 Hoffman, for example, is one of only 200 that the Cleveland company produced that year. Many cars here can be seen nowhere else.

Interpretive signage helps put each vehicle into historic context. Proving that no idea is ever really new, the museum allows visitors to view a 1906 Baker Electric car (built in Cleveland) and a 1916 Owen Magnetic gasoline-assisted electric car (built in Cleveland).

 

There are some other newer cars on display as well, including several 21st-century Chrysler concept cars. But the charm and beauty here resides in the heady days when automobiling was new.

 

National Packard Museum

Although long gone as a make of automobile, Packard is a name many Americans still recognize. Fewer know that the company was founded and its first autos manufactured in Warren.

Today the city celebrates its Packard connection with the National Packard Museum.

The museum is undergoing a million-dollar expansion and renovation that will more than double its display space. The museum is open during renovations.

 

The museum focuses, of course, on the Packard, and each summer it hosts an annual auto show attended by fans from throughout the country. The museum hopes to finish its expansion in time for a grand opening at this year's show, July 22-25.

 

Brothers William Doud Packard and James Ward Packard established Packard Electric Co., which made light bulbs and helped make Warren the first American city with incandescent streetlights.

The museum looks at the legacy of Packard Electric and the part the city of Warren played in the brothers' success.

But the Packards really made their name with their motor car company, established in 1899. The museum's collection comprises about 20 classic Packards built from 1903 to 1958, including the 1903 "Old Pacific."

"Old Pacific" made the San Francisco-to-New York trip in 61 days, covering about 59 miles of mostly dirt roads, foot trails and cow paths each day. At that rate, it would take a motorist more than three days to make the trip from Columbus to Warren.

Fortunately, modern drivers can get to the car museums of northeastern Ohio in two or three hours, assuming they're driving something as reliable as a 1903 Packard.