A map and Piston Vista ratings can be found at the Piston Vista Saratoga Automobile Museum page.
I encourage you to visit the Sarasota Automobile Museum because you too can have a Superman experience. As I turned off South Broadway I entered the Saratoga Spa State Park which is a public space with an ample amount of runners, bikers, dogs and their owners, and families just enjoying the wonderful New York weather on the day I visited in June 2017 day. The grass was green, the trees tall, and the space was inviting. Nestled in the bucolic setting is the former bottling plant. The building has inspiringly large windows that look out to the park from the former plant floor. You can almost imagine the sound of bottles bumping into each other as they make their way around the building.
You don’t see any vehicles when you first enter the building so you are unsure whether the sign outside is wrong but you are soon rewarded, after paying admission, with a lovely display of old Harley Davidson. Just beyond that gem of a motorcycle is the museum’s first floor. A few of the cars on display during my visit included:
- 1928 Franklin Airman owned by Charles Lindbergh
- 1952 Fiat Topolino 500C Belvedere 2 door station wagon
- 1957 Continental Mark II
- 1956 Chevrolet Corvette
- 1987 Ferrari Testarossa
All the cars were restored and it was readily apparent that some received proper attention while others needed a bit more. The 1956 Chevrolet Corvette was an example of the former. The door gaps were perfect, the paint was nearly flawless, and the copious amounts of brightwork made for a rewarding experience when I stood there for close to ten minutes admiring the vehicle’s beauty. Restorations don’t get much better than this.
The Porsche 356 coupe fell into the latter category. The car received a restoration at some point during its long life but, as I stood there, I felt the car was calling out to me…asking to be restored properly. The body panels had more ripples than a potato chip and the door gaps were as wide as the Grand Canyon in some areas and barely visible in others. I wanted to reprimand the restorer…what an awful thing to do to such a beautiful car.
The museum’s second floor was much smaller than the first but in some ways was more remarkable experience. Among a few dirt track racing cars were four very special vehicles. A 1931 Pierce Arrow stopped me in my tracks. The privately-owned car oozes style and class from the 1920s. This is the kind of car that was likely not owned by someone who went to work like most of us but rather by someone who owned something like a very large business, unlike most of us. The 1928 Franklin Airman was an air-cooled vehicle manufactured in New York and was owned previously by Charles Lindbergh.
Then there are two race cars. I have a strong appreciation of these types of thoroughbred machines having vintage races for nearly 15 years. Every part has two purposes…be functional in some way and be light to reduce weight. Sometimes, and only sometimes, does the arrangement of these parts achieve the first two purposes and a third and higher purpose…creating something of beauty. The 1956 Ferrari Bardahl Special and the 1935 Maserati V8RI are perfect examples. The Maserati was raced on the Grand Prix circuits, the Vanderbuilt cups races in 1936 and 1937, attempted to qualify in the Indy 500 in 1938 and 1939, competed in Watkins Glen, New York, and many other races. The supercharged V8 was a magnificent engine that contributed to the long-running success of the car.
Superman you ask? One of the taglines for the original Saturday morning TV show was “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!!!”. I felt this way as I wandered through the museum. Most museums have a primary theme that they promote like turn of the century cars, American iron, cars of New York, etc. But this was different. The Pierce, Maserati, and dirt track cars didn’t fit a singular theme and neither did the wide array of cars on the first floor. It was a collection but not really a collection. Was it a bird or a plane?
As I found out from the docent that morning, the first floor of the museum was dedicated to the cars that will be sold at the Sarasota Car Auction while the second floor was dedicated to their “mostly” permanent collection. At the end of my visit I felt like this experience might approach Superman status. This was a strong collection of cars most of which (first floor) will be ever-changing with each auction, the staff were amazingly friendly, the layout and organization were excellent, and the old building and the park in which it resides made for a wonderful trip.