St Louis Car Museum (rental, vehicle, motorcycle, truck)

[KoobleKar]

I recently had to help someone move to St Louis using a Penske rental truck.

The most local drop-off point for the one-way rental was at a place called the St Louis Car Museum.

So I head inside to turn-in the truck keys, etc. and behind me is a museum of cars and motorcycles! They had some real gems there, so much so that I regretted that I had to catch a plane home or else I'd have spent hours drooling over some of them.

Of course I've been to better Car Museums in my day, but rarely did I ever see one that was selling many of the cars.

Check-out their website and the inventory they have for sale. I'm sure there's a vehicle there that most any of us would love to own!:

http://www.stlouiscarmuseum.com


How rare and unique is this 1952 Ariel Square Four wooden car????

http://imagehost.vendio.com/preview/st/stlouiscarmuseum/Ariel52WoodCar1.jpg (broken link)

[seamusnh]

A wood car? I guess you'd have to sand, stain, and poluyeurathane befoire waxing...

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by KoobleKar

(snip)


How rare and unique is this 1952 Ariel Square Four wooden car????

They've been advertising many of the cars for sale on the 'net for quite some time, at price points that have said the cars aren't seriously for sale.

If they really wanted to sell them, they'd have long ago taken them to one of the major auctions, or had their own site auction.

That wooden car has been offered for quite some time, it's a one-off that was built by a car enthusiast using various car components and then powered with the Square Four motorcycle motor ... in the same vein as many Brit motorcycle motor powered cars. IIRC, the wood car is a pretty cobbled together affair ... more a project hobby car than a serious engineered and built car. No doubt, somebody, somewhere, will be taken by the project at the right price .....

Knowing the reliability (very little!) and durability (short lived!) of the Ariel motor, it's a car that you'd just park in your garage and show off now and then at a car club meet. In 1952, there were a host of small displacement water cooled brit car motors that were better performers and didn't weigh much more than an Ariel 1000 cc motor; they didn't have two crankshafts that were geared together and all the complexity of the Ariel and the back cylinder cooling issues.

But most of the people I know who would want to collect or drive such a machine would just as soon build up one themselves. That's the fun of these types of projects.