While on a recent trip to Phoenix to capture some Cactus League spring training games, I made a visit to the Martin Auto Museum. The Martin Museum is located in an older strip mall, in a building that felt like it was a supermarket or discount store in a previous life. The museum features over 170 vehicles, including classic cars, hot rods, customs, and imports. It also contains a fair amount of auto memorabilia, signage, and a few antique gas pumps. The museum was founded by Mel Martin as a means to share his expanding collection and to ‘pass down his sizeable amount of knowledge to the generations that follow.’
The Martin Auto Museum is very focused on education; its website provides automotive history lesson plans for grades one through twelve. Younger grades are encouraged to create personal and family automotive histories through scrapbooking. Automotive history is incorporated into higher grade levels, with topics that include automobile types, automotive safety, the Arsenal of Democracy, the assembly line, as well as the representation of cars in song, film, art, and literature. The focus on education is clearly evident in the automobiles on display, as each is accompanied by a lengthy and often technical description of the car. While this practice allows for the dissemination of automotive knowledge, it lacks the personal stories that often accompany old cars. Consequently, the displays are somewhat sterile, as there is little opportunity for the visitor to connect to the car in a personal way. This focus on the technical rather than the personal eliminates any possibility of recognizing women’s relationship to cars. Without this social connection, the featured women in the Martin Museum exhibits are limited to famous women, women with relationships to famous men, women in motorsports, and unidentified women in photographs and film.
The woman who receives the most attention is Bertha Benz. Benz and her car, an 1886 Benz Motorwagen [replica], are featured in nearly every automotive museum I have visited. The attention is well deserved, as Benz, whose dowry financed the automotive enterprise of her husband Karl, drove the Patent-Motorwagen No. 3 on the first long-distance internal combustion engine [ICE] road trip to demonstrate the automobile’s feasibility and well as to garner publicity for Karl’s growing company. Greta Garbo is featured in two displays, as an owner [along with Mae West] of a 1930 Duesenberg Model J Torpedo Convertible as well as a 1925 Lincoln Model L. As the Lincoln placard reads, the photo ‘captures the elegance and timeless beauty of both the car and the actress.’ The conflation of characteristics of women and cars is a common promotional technique. The 1933 Buick Series 90 Limousine, formerly owned by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, is also on display. The description which accompanies the vehicle includes links to further information not only of the car, but also the lovely queen.
Popular culture connections include the custom car created for the film The Late Show which co-starred Lily Tomlin. The Cars & Stars Trivia video display features stills from famous car movies; unidentified female stars appear in scenes from American Graffiti, The Italian Job, Thelma and Louise, Fast and Furious, and Rebel Without a Cause.
The other category of women on display in the museum are partners of important or famous men. Photos of the founder’s supportive wife Sallie are found on walls and in glass cases. The female partners of rockabilly star Garlin Hackney and American ‘rodder’ Dain Gingerelli are also pictured but not always identified.
While the descriptions that accompany the cars often suffer from TMI [too much information], there were two vehicles that included no information whatsoever. Two midget cars on display had the names of what could be presumed to be the female drivers and/or crew team painted on the sides; however, there was no information about the cars or the women who raced them. Perhaps this was an exhibit in progress; however in its current state it appears as a missed opportunity to include women in the museum’s automotive history offerings.
Unlike the majority of museums, Martin visitors are invited to sit in the most of the cars which provides the opportunity to pose for photos. I found myself behind the wheel of a 1964 Ford Thunderbird convertible doing my best Thelma and Louise impression. This car is sponsored by a woman, but again, there is no information about the particular history of this vehicle so we are left to wonder about the sponsor’s connection to the car.
The vehicles in the Martin Auto Museum are varied and beautifully restored. The museum’s policy of allowing visitors to sit behind the wheel is unique among the museums I have visited. However, the lack of personal stories attached to each car misses the opportunity to connect to museum visitors in nostalgic, engaging, and meaningful ways. And perhaps more significantly, it leaves women out of the driver’s seat.
