After publishing 3 posts about the Dezer
Collection at the Miami Auto Museum, I’ve decided to bring this tour to an end…
In all honesty, there was enough material to put together 3 more posts, but
enough already!
This posting includes a number of fairly self-descriptive
photos…
Tired of looking at automobiles? How about a large collection of beautiful
jukeboxes?!
Note: The term
"jukebox" came into use in the United States around 1940. It was apparently derived from the familiar
usage "juke joint". That term
was derived from the Gullah word "juke" or "joog" meaning
disorderly, rowdy, or wicked. To learn
about the Gullah of Georgia and South Carolina, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah.
How would you like to have to do your
laundry in one of these washing machines?
I remember this style…do you?
How about an old timey barber shop? It comes complete with a motorboat chair for
boys. The use of scary manikins
continues throughout the non-automotive exhibits too.
Can you remember when televisions and
radios were so valuable that we actually paid to have them repaired? In these days of disposable electronics, good
luck in finding a service like this one!
Many other life size vignettes like the
ones shown above are scattered around throughout the museum…
Then there are the bicycles…lots and lots
of early bikes to view! In our case,
there were some memories too. I don’t
know about you but Laurie and I both remember when bicycles had one speed and
they all weighed a ‘ton’.
I really loved this beautiful ‘patriotic’
Schwinn. My first bike was a really
heavy blue Schwinn woman’s version…not beautiful like this one. I didn’t care because I finally had a
bike! It was about 1950 or 1951 and we
were living on First Street in Jackson Michigan. I still remember riding that bike down the
sidewalk in front of our house…
The Schwinn Bicycle Company was founded
by German-born mechanical engineer Ignaz Schwinn (1860–1945) in Chicago in
1895. It was the dominant manufacturer
of American bicycles through most of the 20th century. After declaring bankruptcy in 1992, it is now
a sub-brand of Pacific Cycle. To learn
more about Schwinn, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwinn_Bicycle_Company.
Once bicycles developed their basic
standardized look, it’s only logical that someone would then try to put a motor
on them…
This is a Smith Motor Wheel… Smith built
them between 1914 and 1918. They sold
thousands of them! They came in
red…period! In May of 1919, the
manufacturing rights for Smith Motor Wheels were purchased by 2 young
men…Briggs and Stratton. Currently Briggs
and Stratton is the world's largest manufacturer of air-cooled gasoline engines,
producing over 11 million engines per year!
This great looking creation is a Roy
Rogers Model Whizzer motor bike… The one behind it is a Red Ryder! Whizzer bicycle engines were produced in the
United States from 1939 to 1965. They
were commonly sold as kits to be assembled and attached to a consumer's bicycle…creating
a motorized bicycle.
In 1948, Whizzer sold its first pre-assembled
motorized bicycle. It was called the
"Pacemaker". In 1952, a
“Pacemaker 700” could be purchased for ‘only’ $189.33. I ran the cost of living index against the
price of a Pacemaker and now I understand why I never had one of these
motorized bikes. $189.33 in 1952 is the
equivalent of $1,888.20 in 2014!
Now that I’ve calculated for inflation, I
do feel better about my starting salary as a teacher in 1965… I was paid
$5,200.00 per year and that’s $39,007.10 in today’s dollars!
If you have tandem bicycles, why not
build a tandem motor bike? This early
2-seater was built by Eysink in the Netherlands. That company was founded in 1886…
Here’s another Whizzer motorized bike,
this time with a single wheel sidecar and a Coca Cola ad…
This is just a portion of the Dezer
Collection’s Cushman motor scooter collection.
Cushman ceased production of scooters in 1965. They also built scooters for the Sears Allstate
brand and some of those are also on display at the museum.
Vespa scooters were the first thing that
Michael Dezer collected and they are heavily represented at the museum. The total scooter collection is
extensive! Brand names range from
Aquila, to Baja, Lambretta, Moto Guzzi and Zip…just to name a few.
The Dezer Collection is certainly
eclectic! How about a wall display of
old outboard boat motors…
I was disappointed that I didn’t find an
old Montgomery Ward outboard among those on the wall. It’s one of many items that my former
employer marketed and then dropped from their mix of products. I have noted that you can still buy a
Montgomery Ward outboard motor on eBay.
Check it out…parts too…at http://www.ebay.com/bhp/sea-king-outboard-motor.
Note: Did you know that Briggs
and Stratton purchased Evinrude and Johnson outboard motors many years
ago? They also founded the Outboard
Marine Company.
And then…there is the Dezer Collection’s
expansive motorcycle collection! It just
goes on and on…with just about every brand name you can imagine…and many you’ve
never heard of!
There is a large collection of Indian
Motorcycles… Dawn Marie would love to own one of these!
We really think that the museum bought up
every old manikin in South Florida! Some
of them resemble movie stars or other personalities and you will encounter the
same ‘face’ in different outfits and with different hair throughout the
exhibits.
Of course, there is a very large display
of Harley-Davidson motorcycles… This is a Harley-Davidson Sportster, a line
that the company has produced continuously since 1957.
In 1901, William S. Harley, age 20, drew
up plans for a small engine that was designed for use in a regular
pedal-bicycle frame. Over the next two
years, Harley and his childhood friend Arthur Davidson worked on their
motor-bicycle. It wasn’t successful but
it was a learning experience. They
redesigned their creation using a larger engine and an advanced loop-frame
pattern. The bigger engine and
loop-frame design took it out of the motorized bicycle category and marked the
path to future motorcycle designs. Small
world that it is, the boys got help with their bigger engine from outboard motor
pioneer Ole Evinrude…
OK…back to some cars and just one
truck. The collection doesn’t include
many trucks. This one is a 1949 Peugeot
202 Camionette. This model was built
from 1938 until 1949, with a pause during WWII.
Over 104,000 of these trucks were built.
The Peugeot family business that preceded
the current Peugeot Company was founded in 1810. Early on, they manufactured coffee mills and
bicycles. In February of this year the
family gave up control of the company, reducing their share to only 14%. In order to recapitalize the company, Dongfeng
Motors, one of China’s Big 3 automakers, and the French government each bought
14% stakes in the company.
Yikes!!
It’s a 1947 Crosley clown car!! (I don't like clowns and Laurie is afraid of them)
Crosley
built autos from 1939 through 1952 with 4 years ‘off-line’ during WWII. These cars were inexpensive, small, light and
they got as much as 50 miles to the gallon… To learn more about these autos, go
to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosley.
The Dezer Collection is asking $40,000 for this clown car!
Believe it or not, famous Crosley owners include: General Omar Bradley; Humphrey Bogart; David Carradine; Tommy Dorsey;
President Dwight D. Eisenhower; Geraldine Ferraro; Art Linkletter; Nelson
Rockefeller; Gloria Swanson; Boy George, and; Frank Lloyd Wright.
This is a 1935 Morris 8 Open Tourer.
(Having had a Morris Minor in the family, I never knew that Morris had built a
little sports car) This car was such a success for Morris when it was
introduced that the company passed Ford in England as the #1 auto maker. The Morris 8 could reach speeds of 58 mph and
it could achieve gas mileage of roughly 37 mpg.
FYI…That attractive chrome plated
radiator and the honeycomb grill were dummies…with the actual radiator right
behind them!
This basic looking automobile is a 1967
Russian Gaz M21 Volga. GAZ, (Gorkovsky
Avtomobilny Zavod), is translated as Gorky Automobile Plant. This operation started in 1932 as a
cooperative enterprise between Ford and the Soviet Union. GAZ currently manufactures autos under
licensing agreements with various major auto companies…including
Chevrolet. The company is the leading
manufacturer of commercial vehicles in Russia.
This is a ‘Deluxe’ model of the 1951
Henry J. The standard model of this car
has often been described as ‘Spartan’.
The Henry J was built using funding from the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation…a government entity. The
company was required to sell its basic or standard model for $1,299 or
less. Consequently, such basics as
bumper guards, the passenger side sun visor, a glove compartment and even a
trunk lid…were optional! (Note: Owners had to access the trunk by folding down
the rear seat)
The Henry J was the idea of Henry J.
Kaiser, who wanted to increase sales of his Kaiser automotive line by adding a
car that could be built inexpensively, making it affordable for "less
affluent buyers who could only afford a used car”. To meet the loan requirement, this low cost
auto had to seat at least five adults, be capable of going at least 50 miles
per hour for sustained periods of time, and it had to be available for retail
sale no later than September 30, 1950.
The car was marketed through 1954…
This is a 1960 Sabra Sussita. It was the first car designed and built in
Israel. It wasn’t pretty but it is
reputed to have been very reliable. Who
knew that Israel even built cars?!
While we took many more photos of
automobiles in this part of the Miami Auto Museum…enough is enough! If you visit the following website, you will
find photos of many, many more autos, scooters, motorcycles and the like that
are listed as part of the Dezer Collection…with accompanying photos. Just go to http://inventory.dezercollection.com/!
So…there are 3 more photos in this
posting where I took that extra step to show just how strange and wonderful the
Dezer Collection actually is…
How about a manikin family Christmas
display! Sweet but weird…
Then there is the big room full of military
vehicles and model airplanes. The
vehicles include motorcycles, scooters, half-tracks, jeeps, trucks, general
staff cars, a Gamma Goat from Viet Nam, etc.
Some of these vehicles are fully equipped with weapons, although I’m
sure that they’re disabled.
Diversity is the ‘true’ name and nature
of this massive collection. It seems
fitting to end my posts on the Dezer Collection by showing this photo of a room
full of model planes, a mini-jet and a racing boat…with the usual manikins in
place.
Oh yes…that little jet in the middle of
the photo is real! It’s a BD-5
Microjet…which holds the record for the lightest jet aircraft in the world,
weighing in at a mere 359 lbs. Several
of these little jets…which were sold in kit form…are still flying. This particular Microjet was used in a
movie…The James Bond movie, “Octopussy”.
To learn more about the BD-5, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede_BD-5.
That’s it for the Miami Automobile Museum
and the Dezer Collection. It was a very
entertaining and mostly empty place to wander through… The lack of visitors was
indeed surprising to us. We would highly
recommend the museum to anyone who really likes automobiles, motorcycles, their
history…and/or celebrity movie cars. The
museum is located at 2000 Northeast 146th Avenue in North Miami
Florida. Phone: 305-354-7680. Website: http://www.dezercollection.com/.
Thanks for stopping by and taking the
time to explore part of this museum with us!
Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…
Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
