Haynes Motor Museum

Haynes Motor Museum re-launched

John Haynes (1938 – 2019)

Sad to report that John Haynes, founder of Haynes Publishing and the Motor Museum reported on here, died on 8th February after a short illness. He was a significant contributor to the British and World motoring scene in many different ways. He will probably be best remembered for producing the eponymous manuals which enabled enthusiastic amateurs to both maintain, repair and rebuild their treasured cars. I still have the Haynes Manual that I bought in order to work on my wife’s Hillman Imp in the late 1970’s. A life well lived to the benefit of others.

This post is long overdue, we visited the museum a matter of weeks after it reopened in
April 2014. My wife read about the reopening in a woman’s magazine and mentioned it to me.
We had planned a short break in Bournemouth so it was relatively convenient to make a detour to take in the museum, near Yeovil, on our way back to the Midlands.I have visited many car museums in my time but I would have to rate this one of the best.
I was particularly impressed by the large collection of ‘ordinary’ British cars from the 50’s and 60’s. I say ‘ordinary’ because they represented 80 – 90% of car registrations in my youth. These are the cars that you will see in films, news clips and documentaries from that period.
But that is over fifty years ago, very few of them are on the roads now so what was then ‘ordinary’ has become ‘rare’. That is why museums like the Haynes and those at Beaulieu and Gaydon, are so important.The British collection is only one, relatively small, part of the total and dare I say probably not the most interesting. Personally I found the very rare American marques of most interest, closely followed by the sports and racing car collections.One thing is for sure, there is something here to take the interest of all car and motorcycle enthusiasts. People who are interested in history in general will also find much to delight them via the well crafted wall charts.This is a section taken from the museum’s website –

“We are delighted to announce that our major new £5 million museum extension, renovation and refurbishment project which started in September 2011 is now fully OPEN. The entire museum frontage has been extended and replaced with new exhibits and layout of over 400 cars and motorcycles. The works include: three new exhibition halls, three modernised halls, interactive displays and virtual reality interpretation, Haynes Motorland Children’s adventure play zone, suite of function rooms, Café 750 and Museum shop. The museum opened its doors on the 16th April whilst being open throughout the build.

There is one area that is still affected by the building works – the Morris Garage display. This will be back open by Easter 2015 while the old temporary café and shop are taken out and the refurbished exhibition is put into place.”

Here are some photos of just a few of the cars on display –