Photo courtesy British Motor Museum.
The world’s largest collection of historic British cars will close at the end of the month, though not for good. Instead, it’ll do so to complete a two-and-a-half-month revamp that will accommodate the entirety of the Jaguar Heritage Museum’s collection and a rebranding as the British Motor Museum.
The decision to do so, according to a press release from the British Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon, came after last year’s recognition as a Designated museum from Arts Council England and after a £1.1 million investment from the trust that runs the museum.
“The change of name to the British Motor Museum will more accurately reflect this Accredited Museum’s recently achieved Arts Council England ‘Designated’ status which confirms the national and international significance of its collections,” museum officials wrote in the press release. “The changes will result in a much more visually exciting and immersive display, designed to appeal to both current fans as well as new audiences yet to experience all that it has to offer.”
The museum, established in 1993, brought under one roof separate collections that had been housed all over the country and that had grown out of the collections set aside by the individual companies that came together as part of British Leyland in 1968. Since then, the collection has expanded to include about 300 vehicles along with the archives, company records, and assorted memorabilia from each of the British Leyland companies.
Photo by harry_nl.
Last year’s Designation status, which the Arts Council uses to identify and recognize “exceptional cultural collections housed in non-national institutions,” didn’t come with any direct reward or restrictions on the Designated collections, but was meant to provide a level of protection against the neglect or disposal of such collections and to indirectly help the collections raise funds, according to the Arts Council’s website.
Along with revised exhibits within the existing Heritage Motor Centre, the revamp will include an all-new £4 million Collections Centre, which will put on display about 250 vehicles from the Heritage Motor Centre’s reserve collections and from the Jaguar Heritage Museum. The latter, which hasn’t had a permanent home since Jaguar Land Rover sold the land that the museum occupied in 2007 and closed the museum in 2012, includes about 120 vehicles, among them a 1954 D-Type prototype and the one-off XJ13.
The British Heritage Motor Centre will close November 30. The British Motor Museum will open February 13. For more information, visit BritishMotorMuseum.co.uk.
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