Japan episode 6: The British Invasion
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
Release Date: 12/17/2024
The Henry Ford with Matt Anderson
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
Contnuing the visit to Los Angeles for the 2025 NAAM Annual Conference by talking with colleague Matt Anderson, Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford Museum. The museum, founded by Henry Ford, holds a special place among museum fanatics. It is not only a car museum, but it sets out to preserve historical items, such as Abraham Lincoln’s chair from Ford’s Theater. The campous is also is home to Greenfield Village, where famous buildings, like the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop and most recently, the house Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed while he was in Selma, AL are preserved. Visit...
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America’s Packard Museum with Rob Signom
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
Eric & Todd continue their visit to Los Angeles for the 2025 Annual Conference of National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM) and they spend some time with Rob Signom from America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio. America’s Packard Museum was founded by Rob’s father, Bob in Dayton’s original Packard dealership, which was started in 1917 and was restored in 1992. As his primary career, Rob produces stage shows in New York, but now manages both his career and his father’s passion for automobiles, particularly Packards (and Jaguars, but we won’t go there) and the operations...
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LeMayZing goes to Los Angeles!
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
Eric & Todd take the show on the road again, this time to the annual conference of the National Association of Automobile Museums, hosted by the Petersen Automotive Museum. During the conference, the group took several field trips to tour other car collections, including Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage, made famous on his long-running TV series. While we didn’t get to interview Jay, he extensively toured the conferencees through his collection and was a kind and welcoming host.
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Japan episode 12: The 38-hour day
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
In their final episode from Japan, Eric & Todd ruminate and bloviate about their epic journey across the land of the rising sun. No subject is off limits in this episode. As they sit in the ANA Lounge awaiting their flight home to Seattle from Haneda Airport, Eric & Todd discuss Japanese “gizmos” for every conceivable task, including high tech toilets, hotel room power, gumballs and the staggering Japanese infrastructure of highways and tunnels. They also reflect on how the trip opened their eyes to the graciousness of the Japanese people and their customs and traditions. This day,...
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Japan episode 11: Race Day at the Fuji Speedway!
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
In the penultimate episode from Japan, Eric & Todd visit with the chair of the World Forum for Motor Museums, Wim Van Roy, from Todd’s hotel room in the Fuji Speedway Museum & Hotel as the cars speed around the track on a rainy Saturday morning, the final day of the trip. Wim discusses his path to the chairmanship and the importance of keeping the museums networking with each other, sharing their ideas and successes and working together to preserve automotive history.
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Japan episode 10: A visit with Sebastien de Baere from Autoworld Museum Brussels
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
WFFMM Belgian delegate Sebastien de Baere joins Eric & Todd in this short episode for a subdued discussion from a cigar bar in Nagoya. Autoworld traces its roots to the earliest days of motoring. Their venue hosted one of the first auto shows in 1902 and features a wide variety of cars, particularly Belgian brands like Minerva, a favorite brand of Belgian royalty. Sebastien also shares his experiences of the ups and downs of the car museum business.
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Japan episode 9: Revving things up with Scott George from Revs Institute; Naples, FL
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
As we near the end of the 2024 World Forum for Motoring Museums in Toyota City, Japan, Eric and Todd talk to Scott George from the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, who hosted the 2022 “joint conference” of the World Forum and the National Association of Automobile Museums (NAAM). Scott tells us of the incredible Miles Collier Collection and Rev’s important work around preserving automotive history by building an archive of over 700,000 photos, publications and historical items. Plus, they will soon be opening an automotive archive center in nearby Fort Myers. (Eric's Note: I love...
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Japan episode 8: Lord, what a Beaulieu!
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
We continue our march through Japan as we chat with World Forum delegate Jon Murden, the Chief Executive at the National Motor Museum Trust in Hampshire, UK, more commonly known as “Beaulieu” (pronounced ‘beu-lee."). Jon tells us of his childhood infatuation with the collection at Beaulieu, which he now leads in the footsteps of Edward Lord Montagu (Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu) and Michael Ware, two legends of the British motor museum, which started with five cars in the foyer of Lord Montagu’s home. Also, hear Jon’s biggest surprises...
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Japan episode 7: Japan Food Reviews
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
In this episode from Top Gun Bar & Grill in Puyallup, WA, Eric & Todd discuss their temporary venue nestled next to Thun Field Airport where you can see all kinds of interesting vintage aircraft and they reflect on how spoiled they felt eating Japanese cuisine and how returning to US cuisine was a bit of a let-down.
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Voyage 'Round my Father
LeMayZing! Cars, Collecting, History, and Culture with Eric LeMay
We are pausing our Japan episodes to celebrate Christmas and family. In this episode, borrowing a title from the John Mortimer play, we spend some time with Todd’s Dad, Gene. Gene tells so many fun stories about family car trips and the cars they owned during memorable times in their lives. Having just celebrated his 90th birthday, he recalls having to referee fights between his twin brothers in the back seat of his father’s 1941 Buick; his first car, a 1947 Pontiac; and his life during his surgical residency in Philadelphia in the early 1960’s, a trip he took from Oregon on US 30 in his...
info_outlineA true “car fan” episode…Eric and Todd set up shop at a very plush pub-style establishment in the Nagoya Marriott and run a “gemba” assembly line of guests. In this wide-ranging interview, two of the British delegates to the World Forum for Motor Museums, Jim Mcclean from Motor Hub Warwick and Keith Benjamin from the Jaguar Heritage Trust discuss the pride the people of Japan have in their car culture, their philosophy of car manufacturing and a debate of car songs versus the “experience” of cars in music.