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24 Jun 2016

A great big disappointment

Gosford Classic Car Museum has recently opened in Gosford,NSW. It is housed in a very big box warehouse-formerly a Bunnings Hardware store. The opening has been much anticipated. The entrepreneur -and he must be a very rich man-behind the project has amassed a huge collection of cars.
I went there yesterday and what a disappointment. There are quite a few very hohum old cars but many of the cars are superb-and they appear to be in excellent cosmetic condition and there certainly are a lot of them. But there it ends. It is just a massive car collection put on display. Each car has a small information board but you cannot see into the cars and no bonnets/hoods are open so no engines are visible. There are no interpretation boards or history on the cars-probably because many of the cars were just bought with no regard to their history or lack of history.
I have been very fortunate to have been to three excellent car museums in the past 12 months in the USA. They were all so much better than the Gosford Museum and yet they have nowhere near as many cars on display. Often less is more.
The Gosford Classic Car Museum is a golden opportunity missed. The Museum should have stored most of the cars and put a limited number on display in properly themed exhibitions which are changed regularly. That way visitors could engage with the exhibits and learn something and there would be a reason to keep revisiting the museum as the exhibitions changed.
Contrast the photos of the Gosford Classic Car Museum below with the photos of the Petersen Museum in the previous story. Chalk and cheese.
Even the name of the Gosford Museum is pedestrian. My suggestion "World of Cars"
Above all else the Gosford Museum needs some really experienced curators. It is not a modern car museum -it is one man's huge ad hoc car collection neatly but not imaginatively displayed. See it once and leave yawning.











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