Saturday Fun Day - To The Henry Ford Museum

So my dad came in for a visit this week, arriving on Thursday evening.

This weekend has been marked by rain that would not cease, and it was full on overcast, windy and wet the whole weekend.

To entertain him, I took him to the Henry Ford Museum Saturday afternoon as he had not been there before. 

We entered, paid the admission fee, and started looking around.

First, to see the finer things:

The 1931 Model J Dusenberg:

Behind the Dusenberg, the  Bugatti Type 41 Royale:

At $43,000 in 1931 it would, per the helpful information sign,  take a worker at the time with an average wage of $1,388/year a total of 31 years to buy the car - assuming they put all their money towards it.

We then went to check out the performance car section,

Having been a racing physician (he would drive the medical chase car during Formula One races in Ontario), he has quite an interest in race cars.  Truth to be told, he still drives like he's in a chase car all the time.

They've got quite a display of race cars, including the winning Ford GT from Le Mans, 1967:

 

The winning car from the Hoosier Hundred in 1960:

 And of course, Formula One cars drew interest:

We then went by quite a well-done display of the history of the consumer automobile and we found this particular car, which made him exceptionally happy:

Yes, his first car was a 1966 Chevy Corvair (the floor model here is a 1960).  His had air conditioning and he noted that the car would eat fan belts like they were going out of style due to the lousy routing design of the belt.

Definitely a nice trip for him down memory lane.  His Corvair, for the record, was red rather than blue.

We then checked out the aviation section, because, airplanes!

Henry Ford's 1926 Flivver, his attempt to make airplanes like he made Model Ts.  Unfortunately, the Flivver was a Flop, and dangerous to fly, killing its test pilot.

A more successful Ford flying product was the Ford Trimotor:

 

 

A quality passenger and cargo aircraft. Some are still flying and giving rides today - complete with the original wood-and-wicker-type passenger seats for passengers.

We then headed out as the museum was closing and met up with the rest of the family for dinner.  It was a great outing.