The museum offers volunteer tours of the reserve collection twice per day.   Despite many people at the museum during my visit, I was the only one to avail myself of the tour.   I ended up with a two hour private tour of the reserve collection instead of the 45 minute highlights a big group would get.   This was the highlight of the whole museum for me.     The tour also included the Jaguar Heritage collection.

Probably the most fascinating part of the tour was some of the descriptions of an early Lanchster.   I had heard of Lanchester, but more about the cars they built during their ownership by Daimler.    However, the most interesting cars were built by Frederick Lanchester.   Like W.O. Bentley, Lanchester was a brilliant engineer but not a great businessman.  And unlike Henry Royce, who had Charles Rolls and then later professional managers, Lanchester never had a partner to handle the business side of things.

The car we looked at had an epicyclic gearbox, years before Henry Ford adopted it for the Model T, twin crankshaft engine for smoothness, was much faster than the competition and many other clever touches.   Sadly, the Lanchester brand ended up building a series of forgettable cars under Daimler ownership.

Another interesting part of the museum was a collection of test cars showing off different safety ideas of the 70s.   One in particular looks like a mousetrap – it was designed to come up during a collision to improve pedestrian safety.   There is also another one to try and show American regulators how silly a proposed law was that focused on rear visibility.    It is fitted with a large periscope as the only way of complying with the regulations.

The collection also contains three interesting Rover P5 models.   The main collection houses one of the Queen’s P5Bs and the overflow collection has the other.   There is also the Prime ministerial P5B, and interesting for me, a 1965 P5 Coupe with a manual transmission.   A similar car (transmission aside) from my old rover and identical spec to a couple of cars being restored by a friend of mine.    Continuing the Rover theme, there is a Rover Speed 14 Streamline Saloon, a rather performance oriented model by the company.

Also of interest was a very impressive Daimler Green Goddess.   This is a very imposing car and you can certainly understand the stir it created when first unveiled.   However, if I could have taken one car home from the museum, it would have been the Bentley R Type Continental.

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The museum is located in Warwick, near Birmingham, about an hour or so north of London on the M40.

One of the first cars you see is an 1897 Daimler, the oldest UK built example.   It was used extensively in its heyday and is still in working condition.   You can see its flame ignition system, which is essentially a pair of Bunsen burners heating metal tubes that ignite the fuel.   The car was later fitted with an elephant hide hood.

Proceeding into the museum you see a number of concept cars such as a Rover SD1 estate, and a BL electric car.    From there, the museum is divided into a number of exhibits.   These include:

• The concept cars described above
• Famous Jaguar Competition cars
• Royal vehicles, including the Queen’s personal Rover P5
• ‘Memory Lane’ type exhibits that show popular vehicles from a particular time period
• Competition and record breaking cars
• Estate cars
• Land Rover/Range Rover
• British Sports cars including an excellent cutaway MGB GT

Including spending time at the Overflow collection and the Jaguar Heritage Collection, I spent the entire day there.

The British Motor Museum is also the home of the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust archives.   The archives are the suppliers of heritage certificates.    There is also a reading room which is available for research by appointment.

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