Mouse lovers have Walt Disney and the Magic Kingdom. Motorcycle lovers have George Barber and the Magic City–whether they know it or not.
Almost anyone in Birmingham, Ala., can tell you how the town got its nickname–it sprang up “as if by magic” in the turn-of-the-century steel boom–but few can tell you how to get to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum though it houses the largest collection of motorcycles in North America.
It’s not hard to find. After a 90-minute flight or 14-hour motorcycle ride from Chicago to Birmingham, head toward the city’s best-known and most visible landmark: the giant statue of Vulcan, Roman god of the forge. As American statues go, it’s second in size only to the Statue of Liberty, so spotting it is as easy as scanning the horizon.
The Barber museum is about 1 1/2 miles due north of Vulcan’s perch atop Red Mountain in an area scattered with light-industrial buildings.
Upon pulling up to 512 28th St. S., the only clue as to what treasures await inside the patched-together warehouses is an old Norton motorcycle overlooking the museum’s eight-space parking lot. The sign and logo, which reads “Barber’s greatest milk and ice cream,” would look more at home on a 1940s milk wagon than in front of this motorcycle mecca.
On the other hand, this is the house that milk built, as inquiring visitors quickly learn. Museum founder George Barber ran the nation’s largest independent dairy, Barber Dairies, until last year, when it was swallowed up by Franklin Park giant Dean Foods.
Almost everyone is familiar with one of Barber’s innovations– the half-pint paper milk cartons sold in school cafeterias. Those little cartons, not to mention tons of whipping cream, cottage cheese and Eskimo Pies, made Barber his fortune.
To fully appreciate the Barber motorcycle collection, it helps to know how it came to be.
In 1988 the Birmingham native began collecting 1950s era cars, which were restored in a modest shop on the museum’s site.
Dave Hooper, shop foreman, suggested Barber spice up his collection with a few motorcycles. By 1991, motorcycles were the only things rolling through the garage door.
And roll in they did–hundreds of them, each one slated for full restoration.
It has been nothing short of a love affair for Barber and his bikes, said Jeff Ray, the museum’s executive director.
Barber, 58, recognized there wasn’t a large-scale organization devoted to preserving the great two-wheeled machines of our century, so he created his own. In 1994, the museum was given non-profit status, making it a public trust.
“George remains on the board and remains the sole financial supporter, but he can’t walk in here and say, `I want that bike to go home with me today,’ ” Ray said. Instead, they are available for the public to admire a few hours each week.
Though the collection comprises hundreds more, the museum displays about 350 bikes at a time– all that will fit until a bigger home can be found.
The collection is so comprehensive, Barber could have supplied about 90 percent of the recent Art of the Motorcycle show at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, said Lee Woehle, Barber’s librarian and registrar. As it was, Barber had about two dozen bikes in the traveling exhibit, including a Triumph X75 Hurricane, an MV Augusta 500 GP and a Scott Squirrel Sprint Special. Any more and they would have had to call it Barber’s Annex.
The scene with which visitors are confronted is nothing less than mind-blowing. A mere $5 buys access to the shrine. Motorcycles of every make, model and ilk are stacked to the ceiling and stuffed into every nook and cranny of the 30,000-square-foot space. There appears to be little rhyme or reason to the layout, just bikes, everywhere you look.
Art of the Motorcycle, which provided the context for a chronological journey through the cultural history of motorcycling, was essentially a motorcycle show for museum-goers. The Barber collection is for motorcyclists.
Here almost any biker will be able to find an example of his or her first cycle and maybe even stroke the handlebars or seat for old time’s sake. A reporter found no less than three gorgeous examples of his first ride, the venerable Honda CB400F Super Sport.
Can’t relate? How about a Cushman Super Silver Eagle, the bike on which kids of the 1950s and ’60s learned to ride? Or perhaps one of almost a dozen World War II-era Indians and Harley-Davidsons that roared around Europe and Africa.
But that’s just the start. There are racing bikes with pedigrees, such as the Yamaha TZ350 Jarno Saarinen rode to victory in the 1973 Daytona 200. The collection’s three other Daytona winners include Dale Singleton’s TZ750F (1981) and Dave Sadowski’s FZR750RR (1990).
There are extremely rare bikes, including a 995-cc carbon-fiber V1000 superbike designed by New Zealander John Britten, who died of cancer in 1995. The Brittens, which sound just as distinctive as they look when roaring around a track, are revered by racers. Their mystique comes not only from their mind-blowing 185-m.p.h. top speed, but also from the fact that only 11 have been built by the eight-person motorcycle company that bears its founder’s name. At least a couple of the $100,000+ bikes have been totaled, Woehle said.
Naturally, there are bikes you probably never heard of in the collection:
– A 1967 Paton. This 500-cc racebike built by Italians Giuseppe Patoni and Lino Tonti had a top speed of 155 miles per hour and was a dominant force until the early 1970s. There are only 10 known Patons remaining in the world; two live here.
– A Hesketh superbike. In 1981 Lord Hesketh, the British Earl of March, started a motorcycle company that produced a few luxury V-twins. The company was underfunded and short-lived.
– A Tohatsu Runpet CR50. Made in Japan in 1961, this baby bike was the first attempt at a 50-cc road racer. It was used until 1966.
All these are mixed in with hoards of Hondas, a nest of Nortons and dozens of Ducatis. There are Suzukis and Sunbeams, MZs, Munches and Maseratis. It’s safe to say they have their ABCs covered with the likes of Ariel, BMW and Cagiva.
Get the picture?
The bikes arrive in crates or pickup trucks from all over the world. “Some we get at auction, some we go out looking for. Every day, bikes seem to find their way to us,” Woehle said. “We also have about six people out in the world who are constantly looking for bikes anyway, and they keep an eye out for us.”
Finding rare motorcycles requires a trained eye–and a little luck.
They tend to show up in odd places. It’s not unheard of for demolition crews to find a cache of bikes in the walls of European homes, left behind when the owners fled during World War II, Ray said. He once found an all-original 1913 Harley-Davidson in a widow’s living room in Pensacola, Fla. The tires had been replaced, but everything else was as manufactured and in top condition.
The bike had belonged to her husband, who received it from a cousin.
It was still in running condition when he parked it in the living room, where it sat for about 15 years.
“She had been changing the oil under it ever since,” Ray said, referring to the old Harley V-twin’s tendency to generate oil, even while parked.
“She told me that a neighbor had been to our museum, and he said this was the only place that bike needed to be,” Ray said. After he drove down to examine the bike and realized what a rare find it was, Ray asked her what she wanted to do with the bike.
“I just want to get it out of my living room,” was her reply.
Just as impressive as the size and range of the collection is the ability of the museum’s 12 staffers to go on at length about any of the bikes.
They know so much because they restore them, sometimes down to the nuts and bolts.
Generally speaking, you don’t just find motorcycles of bygone eras sitting around in perfect condition like the widow’s Harley. More likely, parts are rusted, broken or missing. Original paint is long gone or faded beyond recognition. Cracked or rotted leather and rubber is standard equipment.
The first trick is to find out what the bike looked like when it rolled off the assembly line. To that end, Woehle maintains a comprehensive library of thousands of motorcycle books and a century’s worth of magazines. When a new piece rolls in, she catalogs the bike and digs through the stacks looking for anything that might help the restorers as they reconstruct the bike.
The restoration team salvages what it can from the original bike and seeks replacement parts when possible.
Ultimately a lot of the parts have to be reconstructed by hand. Everything from gas tanks to pistons to nuts and bolts can be re-created in a pinch. “If we can find it, we use it; if we can’t we build it,” Ray said.
When the restoration is complete, sometimes more than a year after the project began, the museum has a bike that needs nothing more to run than a battery and fluids.
A few of the bikes are used by the museum’s vintage-racing team, which has won seven national titles in the various classes of the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association.
As for the hundreds of other sportbikes, cruisers and standards in the collection, well, some get an occasional ride under a clear Birmingham sky.
The museum staff has been known to spirit one away now and again for a quick romp–just to make sure it works.
Wink, wink.
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The Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is at 512 28th St. S., Birmingham, AL 35233. Hours are 9 to 11 a.m. and 1 to 3 p.m. Wednedsay through Friday. Admission costs $5 for adults and $2 for
children 6 through 12.
Call 205-252-8377.
