Brandes Elitch at the Al Engel Museum

Story and photos by Brandes Elitch

In mid-March our local Packard Club chapter hosted a tour of the Al Engel museum, just across the bay from San Francisco.

It was an extraordinary experience. I have been in many car museums in the US and Europe, but I have never seen anything like this.

Many museums are just warehouses with many cars lined up on a bare floor, but nothing else in the room. They are sterile. Of course, if you see one car that you have dreamed about and only seen in books or pictures, this is worth the trip. But to really make it come alive, something else needs to light up the room.

Mr. Engel knows how to light up a room.

Yes, it is a car museum, in four buildings, but for me it was not primarily about the cars, many of which were 32 and 34 Fords and Ford hot rods. The experience was about all of the automobilia and assorted wonderful objects, which Mr. Engel must have spent decades collecting, and he is a very sophisticated collector.

If you are a car collector, I would bet that you have also over time collected a variety of things related to what interests you about a particular marque: models, artwork, books and periodicals, badges, even clothing. But Mr. Engel has gone farther than that. There are so many different things in each room that it is overwhelming. There are murals on the wall, depicting the local area (Richmond). There are remote control model planes, and some real planes. The walls are covered with displays and display cases, full to the brim. The walls are covered with dioramas.

One of the most astounding things is a huge gondola hanging from the ceiling that Al got on a trip to Italy. I cannot imagine what it took to bring this back here.

When you walk in the first building the first thing you see is a collection of car engines, most of which are very rare, and, I might add, very heavy and difficult to move and install somewhere. This includes motors from cars that ran at Indianapolis and two 110 Offenhauser motors, one with fuel injection and one carbureted. There is a Merlin V12 motor, from a tank. There is a Ford V8 60 with Ardun Heads (only 21 of those made) and another Ford motor, 59 AB with Ardun Heads.

There is a Marmon V16 and a Pierce Arrow V12 motor. There is a Hall Scott Invader motor, which ruled the truck world before diesel, and two cutaway motors (Rover and Triumph Stag). There is a cutaway of a Merlin supercharger and a Rolls Royce jet engine training piece. There is a French aircraft motor (Poirer) mounted upside down for the machine gun to work. There is a gas turbine used in aerial tankers. There is a display of the smallest Ford motor in the forties and the largest, a tank motor putting out 700 horsepower.

Mr. Engel has an eye for the unusual. He has undoubtedly the largest collection of American Bantam cars, including a roadster, sedan delivery, boulevard delivery, coupe, etc. He also has the original Jeep model made for the US government in WW II before the contract was turned over to Ford and Willys.

There is one of each of the three years that the Studebaker Coupe Express was in production, and a Hudson version. He has a 33 Willys sedan delivery, probably the only one in existence, that his friends told him to make into a hot rod, but he said that he didn’t have the heart to do it. Good for him.

There are model T speedsters. There are early farm implements, Bantam and Gibson tractors. There is a Willys M38 with a Browning machine gun and astonishingly a Cushman airborne scooter designed to be dropped out of planes, with the parachute on top!

He has collected famous hot rods that were in hot rod magazines in the sixties, and even the many trophies that they were awarded at shows, which are on view along with each car.

There is one full classic, a beautiful 1936 Cord 812 roadster, and next to it a Cord Beverly hot rod with a 53 DeSoto hemi motor, which at first glance might have been done by the factory and might have tricked me except for the Buick taillights.

His standard of workmanship is first class. One example is a 1941 Cadillac convertible, fitted with a 1975 Cadillac running gear and all modern conveniences, which looks like it just left the restoration shop but which he has taken on tours all over the US. This was a 100 point car, which only a very focused and knowledgeable person could pull off.

There is a twenties Rolls Royce and two Citroen Traction Avants.

There is a comprehensive motorcycle collection.

There are a number of midget racecars and sprint cars, which I have not seen elsewhere, and a few dragsters. There is a replica 1931 Buick Indy style car, built in Argentina.

There are various racecars, including a dead-perfect replica of the car that AJ Foyt won Indy in 1961 (with an Alfa motor now).

What you will not see in other collections is a variety of very large model aircraft hanging from the ceiling.

He has collected such a variety of automobilia that I cannot list it all here. For example, he went to Germany and collected the large and fully functional scale models that the driver training schools used to teach students back in the fifties and sixties and everything is wired up so it will work with the flip of a switch, just as it did originally.

I have seen these at the Essen Techno Classica show but never anywhere else.

There was one car that completely blew me away: a 1961 Chrysler Newport Town and Country station wagon, a 100-point concours restoration, but fitted with a 1958 Imperial hemi with two huge four-barrel carburetors. I look at over a thousand cars a year and I am sure this would be in my top 3 for this year.

There is so much there that I cannot truthfully say that I really saw it all.

Mr. Engel hosts various car clubs in the Bay Area to visit his collection during the year, and if you get the chance, jump on it.