The Springfield, Missouri, Convention and Visitors Bureau recently published an in-depth look at Guy Mace and his Route 66 Car Museum.
Mace owns about 75 vintage and celebrity vehicles in the museum at 1634 W. College St. (aka Route 66) in Springfield. It opened in 2016.
The article goes into Mace’s origin story:
The foundation for the museum – although Mace didn’t know it then – began in the early ‘90s when he began his collection with his first Jaguar. A native of Springfield, 82-year-old Mace didn’t grow up with a particular interest in cars, but it began to emerge when he was a young man.
“When I got in the service in 1965, I bought my first sports car convertible, which was a Datsun 1600,” he says. “Beautiful little sports car. When I got out of the service, I traded that off for my first Austin-Healey sports car. And I’m on my fifth Austin-Healey now.” […]
“You’re going to find this kind of strange, but when I go to an auction, I don’t really know what I’m going to buy, what trips my trigger,” he says. “I just look at the collection that they’re going to auction off, and if something strikes my fancy, that’s what I end up getting. That went on until I brought my collection to about 70 or 80 cars.”
Mace built Turblex Inc., which made centrifugal air compressors until the company was sold to Siemens in 2007. By that time, he began acquiring two to four vintage vehicles per year.
His most expensive car on display is a 1936 Horch. It’s estimated to be worth $1.5 million. He also has 1907 REO Runabout, a 1948 Hudson Commodore and a 1957 Jaguar XK140 coupe. He also owns the “Ghostbusters” ambulance, a Batmobile and a DeLorean.
Mace said 30% to 40% of his visitors are from other countries.
“Route 66 is a mystique outside of the United States,” he says. “I didn’t believe that until I started this museum. But it carries just a great hidden interest in people from overseas. If you want to see the ‘real’ Americana, you drive Route 66. You don’t go to Niagara Falls or New York City or Memphis or Las Vegas. That’s not America. America is made up of rural communities right along Route 66.”
(Hat tip to Mark Mahy; image of the Route 66 Car Museum in Springfield, Missouri, via the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau)