Source: WISH-TV / other
SPEEDWAY, Ind. — As the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum prepared for a massive renovation, museum workers and curators began the process of moving all of the 300+ cars out of the building on Monday.
What you see displayed in the museum’s main halls is only a fraction of what the museum has stored beneath and all the cars have to be removed from the building so that the renovations can take place beginning in phases next month.
The museum will be completely closed down starting in November.
“The cars down here are fantastic and are some of the most iconic IndyCar and passenger car brands,” said Jason Vansickle, VP of curation and education at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
There are hundreds of cars, some that have never even been displayed, being stored in the basement of the museum.
“For the longest time they were off limits to the public,” he added. “Recently we have offered a limited, exclusive tour of this location, but with the newly renovated and re-imagined museum, this will be a public area when we reopen in April 2025.”
The plan is to take the cars to an off-sight storage facility. The cars are as old as 1896 to as recent as 2011.
Vansickle said once the museum is finished they will be able to display more cars than they do now, but they still won’t be able to display everything. He said the plan, as part of the project, is to also have an off-sight storage and restoration facility that will be open to the public as well.
