NE Classic Car Museum: the cars will drive you wild

Come away with me, Lucille

In my merry Oldsmobile

Down the road of life we’ll fly

Automobubbling, you and I

— First written in 1905

NORWICH — It’s up to your imagination to determine what “automobubbling” is, but it takes no imagination to recognize America’s enduring love affair with classic cars. If you “Google” classic cars, up pops the Northeast Classic Car Museum (www.classiccarmuseum.org) located at 24 Rexford St. in downtown Norwich.

“The outside [of the museum] doesn’t reflect the jewels inside,” notes D.R., a visitor from Ontario, on the museum’s website.

The exhibit is housed in five connected, refurbished buildings that encompass 88,000 square feet — all at ground level. “The current display includes 160 vintage cars,” says Phil Giltner, the president of the board of trustees of the museum. “We have a pre-war collection (World War II), cars from the nifty 50s, street rods, a post-war collection, the legends [Auburns, Cords, Duesenbergs, Packards], and the world’s largest collection of Franklins (32), manufactured in Syracuse. We also have a special exhibit of motorcycles and an exhibit of airplane engines from World Wars I and II.”

         The spark for the museum came from George Edward Staley, a resident of the nearby hamlet of Lincklaen. A retired industrialist who collected classic cars, Staley proposed to the city of Norwich in 1995 that he would donate a portion of his sizable collection of vintage automobiles if the city would build a museum to house the exhibit and maintain it for at least five years. Eager to enhance tourism to the region, Norwich solicited a government grant, which required a 50/50 match from other sources.

“By 1997, we had raised the money and opened our exhibit in 28,000 square feet of space,” recalls Giltner. “The original exhibit included about 50 cars … In 1999 and 2000, we added two buildings previously owned by the Norwich Shoe Co. Thanks to a generous gift from Harold Ray of Little Falls in 2009, we acquired buildings four and five, which were the old Bennett-Ireland Foundry … Today, the museum owns 100 of the cars on exhibit and the [remainder] is loaned to us.”

The Northeast Classic Car Museum operates on a $300,000 annual budget. “Approximately a quarter of our revenues come from grants, a quarter from ticket and membership sales, a quarter from donations and fund raising, and the last quarter from our endowment fund … The museum is in the process of setting up a foundation for the endowment, and we hope to have it completed by year’s-end … Our staff [currently] includes four full-time employees and about 80 volunteers … The majority of the budget funds salaries, taxes, and benefits, and the museum spends more than 10 percent on marketing and advertising.” Giltner appraises the museum’s collection at a value between $3 million and $6 million.

Giltner says he is focused on one goal: “increase[d] attendance … I want admissions to reach 15,000 [annually] … Paid attendance is currently in the low teens [thousands] … We’re not on an interstate highway, [so our] location hurts attendance. [Still], attendance has increased every year since the museum opened … Many of our visitors are car buffs, but a large number is [simply] drawn by a love of cars … They are all ages and many come from foreign countries … Our biggest [contingent] of attendees from abroad comes from Israel … An author of an Israel travel guide said there are three places you must see in New York: the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, and the Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich … Our most popular display is the post World War II cars.”

To keep the exhibit fresh, the museum rotates about 35 cars every year, and creates an annual theme for the exhibit. “We focus on a radius of three hours’ drive-time from Norwich (New York and Northeastern Pennsylvania) for distributing our brochures and for displaying billboard advertising … The marketing committee also uses Time Warner Cable for promoting the museum by rotating our regional buys … We reach out to car clubs and neighboring tourist venues [such as] … the [National] Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,” says Giltner. “Perhaps our best marketing is what sets us apart from other car museums: Here, the cars are the stars.”

The museum’s principal benefactor “… had a dream. As a little boy, he loved cars … He has not stopped dreaming his dream,” wrote Kathy O’Hara in an article published in a special edition of The Evening Sun (Norwich) on May 22, 1997, for the opening of the Northeast Classic Car Museum. (The museum opened on Memorial Day, 1997.)

Staley originally trained to be an airplane mechanic and worked at the Martin Aircraft Co. and for TWA. During World War II, he was shipped to Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean to work on the B-29 “Enola Gay,” which dropped the first atomic bomb. After the war, Staley worked for a company that overhauled Franklin engines, before he and two partners started their own company in 1950 repairing aircraft accessories. The company established locations on Long Island and in Florida and Texas. He began collecting cars in 1962 and concentrated on his favorite, the Franklin.

Staley called car-collecting “an incurable disease.”  He died in 2011, but his dream lives on in the classic cars he and others donated to the Northeast Classic Car Museum. Open seven days a week, the museum captures the essence of the American love affair with the horseless carriage. You may not be able to explain “autobubbling” to others, but a trip to the museum in Norwich puts everything in perspective. The cars will drive you wild.

Contact Poltenson at npoltenton@cnybj.com