The museum for every car guy and car girl: the Gilmore Car Museum. Located outside of Battle Creek, Michigan, this rich and vibrant museum has something for everyone. And managing the over 400 cars at the museum is no easy feat. But with a passionate team, and avid car collectors, the museum manages the delicate ballet of vehicles throughout the seasons. With over 3,500 five-star reviews, it’s easy to see why this place is a “must see”.
Links:
Gilmore Car Museum Website: https://gilmorecarmuseum.org/
Gilmore Car Museum Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/GilmoreCarMuseum
Transcript
That's, that's one of the challenges that we've had getting the word out. You said you started out this interview with the best kept secret Gilmore Car Museum. Every day we have people that come in here that have never been here before and they are just blown away.
Cliff Duvernois:Hello everyone and welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things. I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois. Today I am at Michigan's Best kept secret. The Gilmore Car Museum located just outside of Battle Creek. And today I'm interviewing Ken Fischang, the director of Commercial Operations for the Gilmore Car Museum. Ken, how are you?
Ken Fischang:I'm great Cliff. Thanks so much for being here today.
Cliff Duvernois:So just our audience can get a little bit of an idea. Tell me what car we are sitting in right now.
Ken Fischang:We are sitting in a 1966 Corvette race car with an L 88 engine generating 450 horsepower. And this car is a capable of a top speed of 151 miles an hour.
Cliff Duvernois:50, which we're not going at right now.
Ken Fischang:That's right.
Cliff Duvernois:So, the moral of the story is, is that if you are a car guy or you know a car guy, or a car girl for that matter, you need to get over to the Gilmore Car Museum. So Ken, why don't you share with us a little bit about the history of the car museum. When, when was it started? Or how did it get started?
Ken Fischang:Oh, that's a great story. Cliff it, the Gilmore Car Museum was, uh, actually started by accident. Don Gilmore was had his family made their money and department in the Gilmore Department store here in Kalamazoo. And uh, then he married into the Upjohn family and his wife Genevieve and her family was really impressed with Don and they wanted to, uh, get Don involved with Upjohn Pharmaceuticals. He wasn't really interested. So they said, let's put him on the board of directors so he can see what a great operation this is. And he was sold. He went on to become president, ceo. And then when he retired in the early sixties his wife, after him being at home for about a month and a half, said, Don, we gotta find you something to do. And uh, so she went out and bought him a 1920 Pierce Arrow, seven passenger touring car. And he, and they lived just down the road here on Gull Lake. And they set up in his yard a tent, had his buddies come over to start restoring this car. Well, that car led to another car. And that car led to a third car. By the time the third car arrived, Genevieve Gilmore says, Don, get these cars and these tents outta my yard. And so he came down the road about four minutes down the road and bought this farm. He quickly filled the barns that were here existing. He built a, a whole additional building. Our carriage house, filled that. And then he went and found on a spearman found farm, this beautiful campon barn from the eight, late 18 hundreds. He paid to have it disassembled, brought here, reassembled. By July of 66, he'd filled that as well. Well, once again, Genevieve spoke up and she said, Don, you got almost 60 cars. Why don't you open this up and share it with the public, with people? So we opened our doors July 31st, 1966. And, uh, we have just been growing, growing, growing ever since. We are now the largest car museum in North America. We have 90 acres, 29 buildings, seven partner museums, plus the Gilmore Collection was, it's like coming to eight museums in one, two restaurants, a ballroom, a theater, and a ton of outdoor space. Over three miles of paved roads where people can go ride in some of these beautiful classic cars.
Cliff Duvernois:of the, so for your museum being out in the sticks, you guys have a little bit of everything.
Ken Fischang:Yeah. It's such a beautiful part of, of the country. The Rolling Hills here and the crystal clear lakes and, and, uh, yeah. And it's convenient to both Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids too. So we got a lot of visitors that come from within the Midwest area. But we also have people that are here from all over the world and all over the US.
Cliff Duvernois:So when Genevieve said, you've got 60 cars, why don't you just open a museum? That's a lot of work. I can imagine. You have to get permits for that. You gotta get insurance for that. You gotta
Ken Fischang:well, this was for that, this was 1966 I and you're in the middle. You're, you are out in the country. So I don't think that was a big issue. And Don Gilmore was the type of guy that he liked to make things happen. In the beginning, they only opened like one or two days a week on the weekends. They weren't open like we are now seven days a week, year round.
Cliff Duvernois:And with the initial 60 cars that they started with. Now how many at the, are at the museum today?
Ken Fischang:We have over 400 vehicles out on display and then we keep about another a hundred to 150 cars in our climate controlled storage vaults too that we use to rotate out through all the exhibits.
Cliff Duvernois:And I know that there's a good number of cars that are here that are actually owned by individuals. Okay, let's talk a little bit about how it went from just a museum. These are the cars that one gentleman owns to now all of a sudden there's like 400 cars in here. How did that come about?
Ken Fischang:Well, it, it, we both of we have a really ambitious board of trustees and two of our board of trustees members are Donald Gilmore's grandsons. And they're both avid car collectors. And so that legacy has been carried on from that. But what we do, we have a combination of cars. Some of the MU museum cars are owned because we bought them, some of them are owned by the museum because they were donated to the museum. And then the rest are on loan from car collectors. And car collectors love loaning their cars to museums. They get the prestige of saying, my car's at the Gilmore, at the Peterson in LA. Or they also get climate controlled free storage. But most importantly, they have more room in their own storage facility for more cars. If their cars are out in a museum. We're really very, very lucky to have some really excellent cars from a multitude of different car collectors here on display.
Cliff Duvernois:So the US in general is really just a car culture. It seems like we spend more time in our cars than, than anything. And it's more than just driving down the road from point A to B. it's all the collective experiences that we had, like drive-in movies or, being able to just, you know, drive through light shows and stuff. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about some of the other car activities that you have here, just besides looking at the cars.
Ken Fischang:Last year and this year we have 24 car shows coming up. And so we have car shows for every genre and make of car here as well as trucks, as well as we have a, a vintage boat and travel trailer rally. We have a motorcycle, vintage motorcycle weekend. So we are celebrating all types of vehicles here. Many of the vehicles that Don first acquired were pre 1916 cars because he was there when the car first came into being invented. And so he was really enthralled with those cars. And then as you look at some of the cars from the thirties and twenties and forties, 50 sixties. They are literally art forms
Cliff Duvernois:yes.
Ken Fischang:Functional art forms on wheels. And so, yeah, there there's a whole slew of activities that we do here along with our car shows. For example, our Model A days we have startup where they take it a Model A that hasn't been run or started and it's probably been in a barn or something for 50 years, and they get a team of people around it and they get it started. And that's kind of a fun thing we have at our celebration of brass pre 16 car show. We, most cars, today if you buy an electric car and you wanna go on a long trip, it's a tough thing to do because you don't have the electric. That's true. We don't have the infrastructure yet. Well, back then you didn't have the infrastructure of gas stations. So, the what you did have everywhere in the country was you had water. So steam cars were very popular. Electric cars were popular in the city. So, this is, you know, this this was pre 1916. So when you come to a show like this, people love to see a car running on steam, running on water. And you know, with the big clouds of steam coming out very environmentally correct. You know, uh, and, um, you know, plus we give rides. We have a 1903 Columbia Electric car. Many people are just dumbfounded to realize electric cars were, were here at the turn of the se, the 20th century. So yeah, there's all we do our ultimate truck show. We've focused also on, um, first responders and the tow community. And so we have a whole series of demonstrations and things that people can go and witness. That's a crash school bus with a crash car, and the, the fire department comes in and does a rescue and flips the bus over. And so there's all kinds of activities that go along with the cars other than just driving them from point A to point B. Our Corvette and Camaro show is new this year. We combined the Corvette's and the Camaros. We have a Corvette and Camaro run where people can take rides around our track in them. They're not going very fast, but they'll get up to 45 pretty quickly. That's nice. So they can actually get at it and, and try the cars. And then we have our Ride the Classics program, which runs from May through September. In that program we have, we'll have classic cars out on our historic campus. We have three miles of paved roads and you can get, get in, hop in a Cadillac convertible like the 63 Cadillac you rode in the last time you were here. Yes. And go for rides around the campus and learn more about the cars and get to enjoy them and experience them.
Cliff Duvernois:One of the things that I would like to explore a little bit more about just making this museum happen, cuz it, I just think it's really fascinating that somebody just had restored cars. And then just decided to open up a museum. If you would share with us, like maybe what was, what was some of the, some of the either struggles or hurdles or maybe even some of the challenges of just getting this, this whole operation going.
Ken Fischang:Well, I, I do want you to know that we have many unrestored cars here. And, there's a car, lot of times a collector will get a car. They will actually spend a whole lot of money restoring that car to try to make it better than new. Other than the other hand, we have car collectors that really want that car in all original condition with the DNA of all the owners that have been in it. And, and so, um, yeah, we have a combination of both of those. I think one of the, the challenges for us is always space. And that's why we have 29 buildings on the campus, cuz we have grown so incredibly. And then we have our seven partner museums. Also, we just we're been trying to find more storage space. For all the partner museums and us too. That's, that's one of the challenges that we've had. And then also getting the word out. You said you started out this interview with the best kept secret Gilmore Car Museum. And it is because there's, we, every day we have people that come in here that have never been here before and they are just blown away. They thought they're coming to like one room or two rooms, or three galleries maybe. And, then they get, see the scope of the whole facility. Another challenge for us too was we realized early on that people wanted to come here and they wanted to eat. And so we had to create restaurants and we have a 1941 Blue Moon Diner that we moved from Connecticut here. It's an authentic diner from the 1940s. Beautiful. And we have our Heritage cafe indoors too in all right off the main heritage gallery here. So because food service, it's, that's been a challenge. And then we added the ballroom because people wanted to have a place to have meetings and weddings and corporate events. And so with that, we've had a tremendous amount of growth just in servicing all of those different events here. And, but we're, it's, it's like it's like living in a, it's like almost like a hotel with no rooms in terms of a re a resort community here.
Cliff Duvernois:Nice. For our audience, we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors. And we'll be right back to talk with Ken some more about these awesome cars. See you then If you are enjoying this episode, Well then let me tell you, there's plenty more interesting stories to come. Michigan is full of people doing extraordinary things, and you can get these great stories sent directly to your inbox. Just go to total michigan.com/join, enter your email address and join our community. When you do, we will also send you our top five interviews, the powerful lessons we've learned from these people. An invitation to our Facebook group behind the scenes stories and pitchers, as well as advanced notice of upcoming guests and events. Just go to total michigan.com/join. It's fast, it's free, and it's easy. Sign up today. Okay. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things. Today I'm sitting with Ken Fischang, Director of Commercial Operations for the Gilmore Car Museum, um, promised I won't call it the best kept secret in Michigan anymore. Uh, so Ken, before the break we were talking about some of the challenges that you and your team and just getting the museum up and running, helping to get the word out. Talk to us a little bit more about maybe about what some of those other challenges would be.
Ken Fischang:Another challenge that people had is they come here thinking they're going to see everything in two hours. And there's a reason why we sell a two day pass. So what does that mean? Well, they have to spend the night somewhere. And we are in beautiful hickory corners. But they're the, we have to go to hotels that are in Kalamazoo, Battle Creek or Grand Rapids. So we came up with some alternatives for lodging here. The first thing that we did is we've created our own booking engine. Cliff, you can go to our website and click on area attractions and it will pull up a booking engine. They are all car collector friendly hotels. You can sort by the distance from the Gilmore Car Museum to that hotel. And you can book right online and you, you get excellent rates just like you went on, on a booking engine that wouldn't give you all of that search capability. The second thing we did is, we're allowed to have up to a hundred primitive campers here, campsite. Nice. And so we've, we just upgraded you. I don't know if you noticed, we have a brand new electronic Marques sign, Right out in front on Route 43. And we've added all new electrical for our campers that come in and want to have, 30 amp, 50 amp, 20 amp power. We keep our shell gas station open. We're adding another a set of bathrooms off the Classic Car Club of America Museum. So we're really looking at ways that we can have people come and stay the night here on site if they bring their RV or their camper, their tent. Or they can stay in a, in a limited or full service hotel and be able to book everything right online at Gilmar Car Museum. Do.
Cliff Duvernois:So before when I made that little quip about how you guys have a little bit of everything, I meant it as a joke, but now I'm starting to take that back.
Ken Fischang:Well, we that's some of the challenges that we've risen to, to, uh, continue to have this beautiful place e expand and grow.
Cliff Duvernois:be able to pull more people in
Ken Fischang:Yeah. And make it easier for them to get here. And, and to stay over night.
Cliff Duvernois:Because that is, you pointed this out earlier and the last time I was here and you took me on a tour, of your facility, which is beautiful, by the way. I was blown away at just the size and the scope of it. So going back to when the place first opened, did you already have all of this land already? Or have you got, or was it to a point where you just, you were like, man, we need more elbow room, so we'll go out and acquire, you know, another 20 acres
Ken Fischang:or, No, it was a 90 acre farm. Um, but we've, so we've had lots of room to be able to grow. This past year the Classic Car Club of America did a multi-million dollar expansion and complete renovation of their facility. And they're going to be adding some things this year as well. We're working too towards building a, a new Muscle car museum. That'll be a mid-century modern design that will really help showcase the muscle car. As well as, um, a new building for the museum of the pre 1916 Cars, the Museum of the Horseless Carriage which is currently renting out our steam barn. But they're gonna move onto our dealership row where we have buildings that are built architecturally just like they would've been when they were open selling cars. Our Ford 28 Ford dealership. Our, uh, early 19 hundreds Franklin dealership, our 1948 Cadillac dealership and our 1920s Lincoln dealership will have a new addition. Which will be the Museum of the Horseless carriage. Which is built just like a storefront where you would go to buy a car pre 1916.
Cliff Duvernois:And speaking of which, when we went on the tour around here, I seem to recall that with the different buildings that you got around here, each one of em is set up like its own dealership. Like you have a chrysler dealership, you have a General Motors dealership, you've got a,
Ken Fischang:well, we don't, we have, we have the ones I just mentioned. Right. But we have lots of Chrysler cars throughout the museum. But we don't have a chrysler dealership yet. We're hoping we'll have a Buick one at some point in time too. They're, they're in interested in, in creating a new bill, a new museum here.
Cliff Duvernois:Beautiful, beautiful cars. What I would like to do is I wanna get an opportunity for the members of our audience that like maybe are like a car guy or a car girl. What I would like to do is have you share with us that one of a kind car, like maybe one car that was just. Maybe it's a concept car or whatever it is, but that, like that one car that was built, there's no others like it in the world that you actually have sitting here in the museum.
Ken Fischang:Yes. And we're sitting in the Corvette exhibit, which is celebrating the evolution of America's sports car. And in this exhibit we have the very first Corvette, number 26, which is sitting right in front over the hood of this 66 race car. And right next to it is the new cA. So the contrast of the first one and the newest one. They're right, right in front of us here. But as part of this exhibit, thank you to the GM Heritage Center, we have the 1962 Corvair Manza GT. That was the precursor for all the design of the Corvette in the 1960s, 1970s. Oh, one of one. Also in this exhibit bill Mitchell, who is a very famous designer, we have his great white 1976 Corvette that he custom designed as a one of one concept car. And it's pretty cool. It's, it's, uh, in here as well. So just in this exhibit alone, we, we've got two, one of one cars that were really just stunning examples of, the Corvette, which is the longest, continuously made model car in the world.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, I did not know that.
Ken Fischang:Yes. Yeah. 1953 to today. Do you know what the second longest, continuously made model car in the world is? I Cliff. I am
Cliff Duvernois:car guy, but
Ken Fischang:it's a German car and the name of the car is a number. Porsche nine 11. You know what know what the third longest contingency made car in the world is cliff.
Cliff Duvernois:I am so outta my depth
Ken Fischang:Uh, it was, came out in 1964 and a half and it's a Ford mustang. The mustang. I, should Now here's the big, you can impress all your friends with this the, what is the longest, continuously made model vehicle in the world? It's not a car. It came out 1935 and it's been made every year since. And it's a chevrolet. Any idea? Chevy suburban.
Cliff Duvernois:Really? Every
Ken Fischang:since 1935.
Cliff Duvernois:You know what? I love that show. Counting Cars. And you, you think I would know that cuz every blue moon, this like really old suburban rolls up on their show and they all geek out about it. I should have known Yeah. Because
Ken Fischang:Suburban Well you do now you know now. Yeah. Yes So now Yeah, you are, you are. So, uh, so we are sitting in the Corvette exhibit. The Corvette's will be here until March. And then coming into the main Heritage Gallery here is gonna be a really exciting exhibit. And it's called, it's gonna be supercars then and now. So we're talking about cars like the Dusenberg that came out in the 1920s, that was 265 horsepower when other cars were 20, 30 horsepower. We're talking about the old Bugatti, that came out in those eras too. And then of course the supercars that you know and love today, Ferrari, Lambos, um, Ford GT's. So we're gonna have a whole new exhibit that opens in April here dedicated to, uh, supercars then and now. It should be a really exciting exhibit.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah, that's gonna be a fun one to see. So we've talked a little bit about letting the car guy, car girl kind of geek out. So if the family were to come here, what are some of the other things that you might have that not only appeals to the car guy, car girl, but might appeal to their family or to uh, let's say their kids for instance. Cause I could just see after, a couple hours, you know, the kids like kind of winding out. So what other activities you got here?
Ken Fischang:Well, in the museum we have the Automotive Activity Center, which features a DeLorean car that ki people can kids and big kids can sit in. Model T Racer. Plus there is a racetrack where kids can build a Lego racetrack. Race, car and race it down. It's all computerized. They can, uh, do hands on, learn about the assembly line, learn about coach building. And that's an activity that's available every day. We also have, for kids and families, we have scavenger hunt. And car coloring books and things that the kids can take out and go run around and find all the different clues for that. And then we have special events like May 20th, Saturday, May 20th. It's the Congress of Motor CARSs. It's a pre 1942 show where we offer all kinds of rides for families. It's also family days, so we do discounts in the restaurants. We have special activities for kids. And you know, we've even done some of our shows, like our Ultimate Truck Show. Last year we had an entire, alligator petting zoo. The alligator sanctuary brought snakes and alligators and, and, uh, all kinds of reptiles in .And, and, uh, we do for the, the, um, all the, I was mentioning earlier, we get an old school bus with the glass removed for, to stage this accident. Well, we bring in spray paint and we let the kids paint the bus and with graffiti and tag and has to be clean though, you know, and, uh, Um, so there's all kinds of things. We have, uh, helicopter landings with for first responders for that show as well. So, we're really looking at doing and broadening the scope of what we're offering for the, some of these shows to make sure that there is activities for kids. And then we have our Red Barns Raceway. The Red Barns Raceway the, here's some more trivia for you. The first slot car track in the US was in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1955. We have one of the best slot car tracks in the world. It takes up an entire barn, one of the original barns to the farm. And you can go in, big kids and little kids alike can go in and race in with the slot car track. It's, it's a really fun thing and it's open on our Wednesday nights when we have our cruise ins. It's open many weekends. And then we also have pedal bill. We have an entire barn with pedal cars, children's antique pedal cars. And then we have an area set up with a white picket fence where the kids can hop in, pedal cars and ride them around too. You know, there's always something happening here with something for families to do and involve and enjoy too.
Cliff Duvernois:So to satisfy my curiosity, talk to us a little bit about what a, what a slot car is You're talking about a slot car track?
Ken Fischang:Yeah. Slot cars. You didn't play with slot cars when you were looking, when you were younger. Pinewood derby cars is what? Pinewood Derby? Yeah. We also have a Pinewood We have a pinewood Derby track too. Ooh, yes. While we're doing an event where people can make their own pinewood Derby cars and race them down there. Um, that would be so much fun. Yes, we have that. But slot cars, the, the cars run around a track. And they go really very, very fast. But you control it and there's a little slot that keeps them in the track, but the whole track is landscaped, um, too, so it looks like a, a beautiful countryside and city and, and yes, kids, it's great fun. It's all computerized as well. I said it's one of the best slot car tracks you've, you've ever seen or tried to race on too.
Cliff Duvernois:Wonderful. Wonderful. Ken for our audience, if somebody is listening to this and they're like, sounds like my dad needs to go here. Sounds like my father-in-law needs to go here, you know, sounds like a wife needs to go here. What is the best way for them to be able to find you?
Ken Fischang:Gilmar car museum.org is our website and it's real easy to navigate it when you pull it up. And one great activity for grandpa's, sons, daughter, mothers, we have Model T driving school. You can go online and sign up and learn how to drive a Model T. That is a very popular program and we taught about 800 folks, 800 plus folks last year how to drive a Model T. which is not like driving a Buick. No, no, not at all. Not at all. We also in addition to the Model T driving school, another event that we have coming up in March, the first two weeks of March is Hoods Up at the Gilmore. So all of the hoods on these cars will be up. So that you can look in, see the engine. Gearheads love it. We do four horsepower tours which we bring in experts on mainly the muscle car engines. And we feature different marks for each of these tours. And that's all available online as well too. And those, uh, are free with just your paid admission into the museum. Model T's is not free. But the Model T you need to pay for it and preserve ahead of time. But for the Hoods Up and, and also the, uh, horsepower tours, those are all free. And then we also offer daily right now through the end of March. 10:30 AM Monday through Friday. We offer daily complimentary docent tours. And then on Tuesdays at two 30 we offer a complimentary behind the scenes tour that'll take you behind the scenes of some of our galleries and barns too. That's been really popular too.
Cliff Duvernois:Ken, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to chat with us today. Really appreciate it.
Ken Fischang:My pleasure, Cliff. Thanks for being here. You're always welcome.
Cliff Duvernois:Thank you. And for our audience, you can always go to total michigan.com, click on Ken's interview, and you'll be able to find all the links that he mentioned in the show today. Thank you once again, you can catch us here at 7:30 AM on 1320 WILS am out of Lansing, Michigan. See you next week.
