Antique & Classic Cars Blog

View enough museums and collections and certain spaces just cry out for cars, bikes, and other collectible vehicles.

This space on Central Avenue just north of downtown Minneapolis really caught my eye. They were manufacturing for the war effort here in the 1940s and it has the feel that almost nothing has changed since the men and women laboring to stop the Nazis finally moved on to post-war careers and families. You can easily picture the assembly lines at full tilt.

Once that image fades, I look at all this space and dream of rows and rows of gorgeous cars sheltered from the snow and rain–Bugatti, Duesenberg, Stutz, Auburn, Delage and more modern fare too, the E-Type’s iconic nose, Cobra’s bold wide-mouth grille, a GT-350, and what about the glorious ’50s–the near perfect first generation Corvette and T-Bird, a Chrysler 300, and how ’bout some period Nascar and drag-racing offerings….

The building’s maintenance man was kind enough to let me wander and shoot a few pictures. I could have stood there filling in dream cars for another hour. Here’s a flyer describing what was once made in this space. The well-known aircraft data tool, “the black box,” was apparently developed here. Lotta history….

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Car stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.