LeMay—America’s Car Museum (ACM) has announced that at least three new exhibits will be introduced in 2015: “Ford F-Series: The Truck That Grew Up with America,” “American Muscle: Rivals to the End” and a revamped “Route 66” display.
“Ford F-Series: The Truck That Grew Up with America,” opens January 10, 2015, chronicling 13 generations of the Ford F-Series pickup truck from 1948 to 2015.
“The F-Series is a bellwether of cultural change in the U.S.,” said Scot Keller, chief curator at ACM. “’The Truck That Grew Up with America’ tells the story of how the F-Series was originally designed to be a work tool and how it evolved into a family vehicle and luxury car for the working class.”
ACM will reintroduce “Route 66: Dream of the Mother Road” on March 27, 2015, shifting its focus to vintage station wagons, that will be displayed through June 30. “We all have a station wagon story, whether growing up playing games with siblings in one or taking your parents’ old car on your first date,” said Keller. “The station wagon is the ultimate road-trip car, which makes it appropriate to highlight in our exhibit dedicated to the most famous highway in the U.S.”
Capping off the three new exhibits will be “American Muscle,” which opens July 9, 2015 and takes visitors back to the era when American Motors, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors were fierce rivals in showrooms and on the racetrack. Each automaker was bent on one-upping each other with more power and performance throughout the 1960s and ’70s until stricter emissions, fuel economy standards and an oil embargo brought the muscle car competition to a halt.
“It was a time of freedom that drivers will never have again when gas was cheap and big engines growled,” said Keller. “Muscle cars existed in a feel-good era before the world became truly connected, when the U.S. was still dominated by domestic automakers. ‘American Muscle’ illustrates what cars were like before politics caught up with the automobile.” For more information visit www.lemaymuseum.org
