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The Towe Auto Museum 

Yes, there is life after death and taxes. The Towe Auto Museum has survived both, and has come away from the experiences all the better for it with a broader focus that offers visitors more to see and do.  

 Originally, the Towe Ford Museum - actually, there were two of them, one in Montana, the other in California was devoted almost exclusively to Fords, the personal collection of 180 models owned by Edward Towe, a Montana banker. The Museum, run by the nonprofit California Vehicle Foundation, took in the homeless collection 13 years ago after the Montana Historical Society, unwilling to continue paying the cost of displaying the cars, set it free. But while the collection, which included one of almost every car Ford ever made, from the pre-Model T to the Pinto, was free to find a new home, it wasn't free from the shadow of the ever-present Internal Revenue Service.

 The IRS slapped a lien on the cars to settle a dispute over taxes owed by Towe's chain of banks. It is rare that somebody beats the IRS at its own game. Towe was no exception, and the longer it took to lose, the more expensive it got. After several years of wrangling in the courts, the IRS ruling against Towe ballooned like an old tire, soaring form $1million to $6 million. When efforts to find a buyer for the cars failed, the IRS came to town to get its money, putting the most extensive and complete collection of Fords outside of Dearborn on the auction block.
 

The Kruse sale in 1997 broke up Towe's collection and that could have been a death sentence for the Museum. In fact, many people who heard about the auction believed that it was. Not so. The sale was a chance to start a new life and the renamed Towe Auto Museum, on the banks of the Sacramento River in the shadow of Old Town, is making the most of that chance. (The former Towe Museum in Deer Lodge, MT has become the Powell County Museum and Art Foundation and also houses a collection of cars.)

 

What was once primarily Ford territory (AW. Jan. 10, 1994) now includes other makes. "We tell a broader story now," says Kristy Hartley, Edward Towe's daughter, who is also the Museums executive director. Many of the cars are set off in eye-catching displays, breaking up what was once described as 'a bunch of black cars with radiator shells on parade'. The displays reflect the new purpose of the Towe Auto Museum as a place to educate people about cars instead of being just a big garage to show off one man's collection. 

"We're trying to put cars in a better perspective." says Hartley. "We're continually adding more explanations and descriptions of the cars so we can interpret the vehicles and their times."



As a link to its early days, about a quarter of the 160 cars on display in the 71,000-square-foot building are from Towe's original collection, loaned to the Museum by their new owners. That includes a 1934 Model C Ford Phaeton that Towe bought on one of his many trips to South America and drove 10,000 miles to his Montana home. Unrestored, with its rust-colored dirt and dirt-colored rust, it triggers the imagination to re-create its 34 year of everyday use in Uruguay before Towe bought it and began the three-month trip over roads no better than goat trails to its new home.

All the other cars are in far better condition than the Phaeton, but most are not over-restored. The Museum is divided into eight sections, each emphasizing more the feel of cars in different eras than facts about the cars. The collection of letter-series Fords [pre-Model T] highlights the 'Dream of Mobility'. As people found their first taste of traveling freedom that let them escape the city for the fresh air and green grass of the countryside. The leather and walnut opulence of Rolls-Royce, Pierce-Arrow and Hispano Suiza highlights the Dream of Luxury' that long-wheel-base cars brought to the '20s and '30s. You can almost hear the lakes pipes roar from the cut-down Mercurys and Deuce coupes assembled outside the malt shop in the 'Dream of Cool'. Performance cars from Cobra and Lotus to motorcycles and dirt-track champ cars bring to life the 'Dream of Speed'. From the hand-cranked gas pump to the slap of the screen door on the roadside café, you can feel what it was like to drive one of the Museum's Duryeas, or a Detroiter [one of only 14 left] down the Lincoln highway.

Many of the original collections standard-bearers are still here including a 1919 Model T Center Door Sedan, a 1923 Model T Roadster, a 1928 Model A Pickup, a 1929 Model A Rumble seat Roadster, a 1932 Model B Roadster, a 1933 V8 Fourdor Sedan, and a 1966 Shelby GT350.

The collection includes some unusual makes from Tucker and REO to a 1926
Cunningham Ambulance thought to be the last remaining. Our collection is eclectic because we have a great variety of cars, not because they are here on loan. As a BRM Formula One machine left to go vintage racing, for example, its spot was filled by a 1970s-era dirt sprint car.

"Some of these cars are on loan for a week or a month and some for five years," says Hartley. "so what we have to show is constantly changing."