I’m a bit late posting this… on Saturday LoCo was invited by the Peak to Peak Miata Club to visit novelist Clive Cussler’s car museum.

We met in Golden for a short drive before visiting the museum. Up Golden Gate canyon, north on the Peak to Peak highway, then down Coal Creek canyon and to the museum in Arvada. The museum parking lot is quite small, so most of the dozens of cars parked on the street. This is where I met Ron, the owner of the Ariel Atom I saw a few weeks ago at Cars and Coffee. I just missed getting a picture of his “trunk”, which you can see him fastening in this photo. He’s only had the car about a month so he hasn’t had a chance to get it to the track yet.

I haven’t read any of Cussler’s books, but I may have to pick one up just to see how he puts these fantastic cars in the stories. Many of the cars in the museum have books in front of them, with the picture of the car on the back cover.

I’d say this collection of cars compares quite favorably to the Tebo collection. Tebo has many more cars than Cussler, but Cussler’s are much more impressive.

I’ve been taking pictures of cars in this sort of setting for quite a while – the Barrett-Jackson auction, the Tebo collection, Cars & Coffee meets, here. It’s next to impossible to get a good picture of any of the cars. They’re packed tightly together in a small space and there are always other car lovers looking at them. So, for the most part, I concentrate on the details: hood ornaments, emblems, hub caps.

Hood ornament from 1928 Isotta Fraschetti Tipo 8A S Boattail Speedster. This car sold for $26,000 in the 1930’s. Ponder that for a minute.

1931 Stutz Boattail DV-32 Speedster. Sixteen were built, six are believed to still exist.

1933 Lincoln KB-Series V-12 Limousine. 448 cubic inch displacement engine puts out 150 horsepower.

V-16 Cadillac

1913 Stutz Bearcat Series 4B. 389 cubic inch 4 cylinder, 50 horsepower.

1955 Chrysler 300 hubcap. The world’s first true muscle car, it had the first commercial stock engine to deliver 300 horsepower.