It’s not located on a busy thoroughfare, but people who enjoy exotic cars, or who have a penchant for innovation, will find much to enjoy at the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum.
This is a place where history comes to life through vehicles.
The museum houses the private collection of Alain Cerf, owner of Polypack, a business located next door.
Polypack, which began outside of Paris, is a manufacturer of automatic packaging machinery.
(B.C. Manion/Staff Photos)
Cerf opened the museum on March 19, 2005, to share his unique collection with the general public.
“The founder of the business was born and raised in France and actually began the business in France, had a factory just outside of Paris,” said John Perodeau, a museum employee.
“They started doing work in the United States and in the mid-1970s, he moved his business and his family from Paris, France, to Pinellas Park, Florida.
“When they moved, they brought not only the business and the family, but they brought what were then the family cars.
“The first three cars in here, and then a couple of more that are in the back, are the cars that came with them across the Atlantic.
“The rest of the cars in the collection have been selected because they display some sort of innovative engineering or technology, something that was new, different and pioneering for its time,” Perodeau said.
“We’re not a typical classic car museum. We don’t have Duesenbergs and Packards and Pierce-Arrows. They’re very nice cars, but their engineering was conventional, and we focus on the unconventional.
“We focus on engineering innovations in automobiles,” Perodeau added.
Something else that’s unusual?
The cars in this museum sometimes can be seen tooling down the road.
“They all have Florida license plates. They’re registered and insured. They may get taken home at the end of the day after work. They go out on weekends. They go to parades and car shows. They don’t just sit here in the museum,” Perodeau said.
The collection has a total of 63 cars.
Visitors are free to get close to them and take as many photos as they want.
They are asked not to touch the cars, but if they’d like to look under the hood or inside the car, they can ask the museum staff to give them that closer look.
Staff members are knowledgeable about the history of automobiles and new developments.
Perodeau and Gary Lasasso, another museum staffer, welcome queries.
“If you have a question on any of the cars, one of us will get you an answer,” Perodeau said.
During a recent visit, Lasasso pointed out innovations of various vehicles, talked about the people who designed and manufactured them, and offered historical context, too.
The 12,000-square-foot gallery space includes examples of some of the finest early approaches to aerodynamic shapes and packaging, front wheel drive, unibody construction, and pioneering uses of materials such as cast aluminum and pressed steel.
The innovation of engineers such as Paul Jaray (the designer of the Zeppelin airships), Gabriel Voisin (aircraft from World War I and beyond), Edmund Rumpler (aircraft from World War I and beyond) and Jean Albert Gregoire (Tracta front wheel drive) are present in automobiles throughout the collection.
There are also examples that celebrate the work of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, Hans Ledwinka and others.
Lasasso is a huge fan of Gregoire.
In fact, he admires Gregoire’s innovations so much that he created a sculpture – displayed on a museum wall — to honor him.
The display includes automobiles from France, Germany, England, Ireland, the United States and the former Czechoslovakia.
There are so many interesting vehicles on display, and there is so much to learn about them, that visitors can easily spend a few hours there and have plenty of reasons to come back again.
If you go
What: The Tampa Bay Auto Museum is a collection of rare and exotic cars
Where: 3301 Gateway Centre Blvd., in Pinellas Park
How much: Admission: $8 per person, $6 for seniors, and $5 for students and for those in groups of 12 or more. Children under 6 are free. (Guided tours are available, if arranged in advance.)
When: The museum is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., on Mondays and Wednesdays through Saturdays. It is open noon until 4 p.m., on Sundays. It is closed on Tuesdays and holidays.
More information: Call (727) 579-8226, or visit TBAuto.org.
Published September 30, 2015
