North Texas car museum road trip

I have been in the Dallas, Texas area over the last few days for work.   A free Saturday with the use of a rental car meant looking for an interesting way to fill it.    I came across the a web page for The Ultimate North Texas Car Museum Road trip Guide.     This piqued my interest – being the middle of Summer in the North Texas area, an indoor activity would be preferable.    It also allowed me to see more of Texas outside of the big cities where I spend most of my time.

The guide lists four museums, and challenges the reader to visit all four in a day!  I wasn’t sure all four would be possible, but even two or three would be a great day out.   The museums are listed below and the links point to photos and descriptions of each museum:

  1. Horton Classic Car Museum – Nocona
  2. Vintage Car Museum, Event Center and Grill – Weatherford
  3. Terrill Antique Car Museum – De Leon
  4. Clifton Classic Chassis Museum – Clifton

The Horton is the largest and opens at 9AM, so it is the starting point.     I left a little later than planned, around 8am, which got me to the museum at 9:30.    Once i got to the Horton Museum, all plans of a quick browse and on to the next one went out the window.   Even seeing a low quality Donald Trump mannequin, replete with red baseball cap wasn’t going to make this a short visit.     The first half the collection is all Chevrolet and in particular the Corvette.     If you want to see an example of practically all model years of pre-emissions Corvette, this museum is the place to come.    There are also some other very nice cars in the collection.

C1 Corvette

 

From there, the next stop was Weatherford.   I didn’t leave the Horton until after 11am.  At that point I was already assuming that all four North Texas museums were probably out of the question.

I did loose some time being pulled over by a Texas State Trooper.   The rather empty road I was driving on had dropped down to 65 from 75 for no apparent reason I continued at around 80.    Luckily I escaped with a warning and chastened, I continued on.

The Vintage Car Museum is three facilities in one.    There is a small museum of about 15 cars, a space for events and a diner with about 10 more cars in the back.  Like the Horton, they also have their very own Donald.   There didn’t seem to be a particular theme to the main museum, with everything from pre-war fords, pierce arrow, Cadillac and even an Alvis!  The diner cars seemed to have more of a celebrity theme, with a few movie cars and one that once belonged to LBJ.    There was also a Trabant.    I partook in a good American burger at the diner,  and by about 2:30PM was ready to go again.

LBJ's car

The next stop was supposed to be De Leon for the Terrill Antique car museum.   This museum is the smallest of the four and closed at 4PM.   I decided to skip it and head straight to Clifton.     The webpage I found these museums is not that clear on the opening hours of this museum. I found it to be 5PM on a facebook page.

I arrived at Clifton about 4PM, giving me almost an hour to browse this museum.    The Clifton Classic Chassis Museum is a private collection owned by a retired gentleman who had grown up in the area.   He purchased a disused grocery story to house it and brought it down from Dallas after he retired.     The theme of this museum is American Luxury and the friendly owner was on hand to talk a little about his collection.     He also has a rather impressive art collection housed under the same roof.

Clifton

The drive back from Clifton was uneventful and I was back at my hotel just before 7PM.     It was a very full, but enjoyable day.     I had assumed that driving in this area of Texas would be a little like Australia but it is much greener.   My only other road trip in the Texas area was through the panhandle and that is a much more arid area.

Overall I was driving for more than six and a half hours and coved at least 370 miles.     I would recommend this drive for any car enthusiast staying in the Dallas area.    The trip (pictured below) takes you on a big circuit through some nice looking little towns, often with lovely looking buildings on the main street.  Especially some really ornate town halls.    There were quite a few unused buildings I saw that looked like great candidates for a conversion to a car enthusiast’s workshop.

North Texas car musum tour 2109

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