OK, I cheated. I visited the museum at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama on the Friday of the AMA race weekend. I "spotted" a few cool bikes in there, thought I'd post just a few. Pics in the post are 600 pixels wide, click them to get a 1024-pixel version.
If you don't know the Barber complex, the name comes not from the driving school but from the dairy company. George Barber has a little bit of milk money stashed away. OK, a
ton of milk money! So he built a race track, a museum, bought at least one of every bike he can get his hands on, and at least one of every Lotus he can get his hands on. (Apparently not much of a car dude, but Lotus is a serious exception to that. Speed and Alain De Cadenet came here for the Lotus episode of
Vistory by Design, and almost half the cars in that episode were Barber-owned cars!)
The lower level of the museum is their working space, shops, fabrication, restoration, and the warehouse. It's not usually open to the public, but this weekend it was. Even so, the wareghouse is not usually visible, has a big rolling door that stays closed. Just as we were getting in the elevator to leave we noticed the warehouse door was up. We couldn't go in, but they couldn't keep photons from escaping, so we had a bit of a peek. here's a 7-frame stitch of what's in there:
After they moved the truck thing in the middle of that pic, I noticed these two. I wish I'd noticed them better and gotten more shots because I've learned a thing or two about them, which I'll share in a day or two. Meanwhile, look and see if you can figure them out:
Other bikes seen in the museum:
2008 Bimota Tesi 3D (want!!!!1111!!11!):
Britten V1000, one of ten ever made:
That's the
rear shock behind the front wheel:
Each exhaust valve gets its own header pipe!
Upper and lower wishbone front end, similar to BMW's Duolever:
The radiator is ducted, and lays horizontally under the seat:
Honda NR750, oval-piston almost-a-V8-but-it's-a-V4:
Ariel Square Four, with 2-seat eclosed sidecar:
1988 Norton Classic, twin-rotor Wankel motor:
