“DRIVE THE USA IN YOUR CHEVROLET” – Remember that jingle? Take a Classic Car Tour This Summer.

Everybody loves classic cars! Even if you can’t afford to own one, or don’t have the skill to restore that old beauty under the tarp in your barn, there are still plenty of fun ways to vicariously enjoy classic cars. Here are just a few:

Take a driving vacation and visit a classic car museum. You can find one near you by looking on the Internet. Here are a few suggestions:

The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is dedicated to the exploration and presentation of the automobile and its impact on American life and culture, using Los Angeles as the prime example. Encompassing more than 300,000 square feet, its exhibits and lifelike dioramas feature more than 150 rare and classic cars, trucks and motorcycles. For more information, visit: http://petersen.org/

The Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) Museum at Hershey, PA displays vintage automobiles in unique scenes and settings! Visitors can stroll through eight decades in time while traveling from New York to San Francisco. It’s a trip down memory lane: http://www.aacamuseum.org/

The Sarasota Classic Car Museum in Sarasota, FL is recognized as one of the oldest continuously operating antique car museums in the nation. It features more than 100 automobiles, from some of the world’s foremost manufacturers, including: Alpha Romeo, Bentley, Cadillac, DeLorean, Edsel and Ferrari. You can view Circus Magnates John and Mable Ringling’s collection of Rolls Royce autos, John Lennon’s psychedelic 1956 Bentley (registration mark 222 APL) and Paul McCartney’s beloved Mini Cooper. For more information, visit: http://www.sarasotacarmuseum.org/

The Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich, NY collects, preserves, interprets and exhibits vehicles related to the evolution of transportation, with particular emphasis on the role of the automobile and its impact on American Culture. Chartered by the New York State Department of Education, the museum currently has more than 125 vehicles on display in 5 connected buildings. For more information, visit: http://www.classiccarmuseum.org/about_us.php

The LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma, WA. Harold E. LeMay was a Tacoma garbage collector who grew wealthy from trash and amassed the largest private collection of cars and car-related memorabilia in the world. For years, the 300-car collection has been housed in an 80-acre former military academy named Marymount. Visit this website to learn about current visiting hours/tours and future plans for the museum: http://www.lemaymuseum.org/

The Browning-Kimball Classic Car Museum at Union Station in Ogden, Utah has a small but colorful collection. For more information, visit: http://www.theunionstation.org/carmuseum.html

For a list of links to many other automobile museums nationwide, visit:
http://www.antiquecar.com/resources/collections.php

Here’s another stop for you for a special event:

Visit the Sloan Museum in Flint, MI, in June for the Sloan Museum Auto Fair, and on September 19, 2010 for the Auto Golden Memories Car Show. This special event is exclusively for original or authentically restored vehicles produced in 1959 or earlier. For more information, visit: http://www.sloanmuseum.com/car_shows.html

But, if you can’t get away, you can still cruise the Internet and see plenty of classic cars.

About.com has a resource library containing information on a wide variety of classic car makers and the models they produced, so you can see online the cars that have fascinated millions for the last one hundred years. Its database is called Motorbase, and you can search for the classic car of your dreams.
Check it out here:http://classiccars.about.com/od/classiccarsaz/Classic_Car_Profiles.htm

If you feel the need to buy a classic car portrait or poster to decorate your office wall, check this out: http://www.classiccarportraits.co.uk/pages/Ford_cars.htm

And don’t forget: This June marks a golden anniversary in Corvette lore. Fifty years ago, the first Chevy sports cars took on the epic challenge of racing twice around the clock at LeMans. Read about this in Automobile Magazine online at: http://www.automobilemag.com/features/racing/1003_chevrolet_corvette_racing_history_then_and_now/index.html

If you have a favorite classic car museum, or a favorite website for classic cars, share it with us here!