Take a trip

The average car collector has one or two special interest cars at home besides his daily drivers.

John Dudley has 60 or 70 scattered around in the main building, workshops and sheds of his Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum in Madison County.

Dudley is no rich guy in search of a hobby. He comes by his cars the old fashioned way. He worked for them, one at a time.

The same goes for the 150 stationary engines, garden tractors, horsedrawn wagons, gas and lubrication pumps, gas station signs, antique phonographs,

department store dummies and the odd player piano and old juke box that make up one of the most eclectic collections this side of the Smithsonian.

"Some people only collect cars. I collect the related things too," said Dudley, who is a walking encyclopedia on almost anything built before 1950.

Dudley started his first car collection when he was discharged from the Army after World War II.

"I was still living at home, in Glen Olden, Pennsylvania, and pretty soon there was no place for my father to park his car," Dudley said.

"I had a bunch of 1936 Fords and 1937 Willys'. For $15. you could buy almost any car around," Dudley said, explaining that many retired people put their cars up during wartime rationing and decided they were too old to drive after the war ended.

"An Italian guy in his '70s had a 1928 or 1929 Marmon that was like new. He said, 'I can no longer drive it. I'd like you to have it for $50.'

Like fishermen and hunters, almost anyone who likes cars has a story about "the one that got away"

But passing up that Marmon in the late 1940s seems to have had a profound effect on John Dudley.

Although he sold off his first collection of "six or seven" cars in the early 1950s, Dudley hasn't let a lot of irresistible deals pass him by since then.

"The basic antique car buyer is your average working guy who has his bills paid and is looking for something different," Dudley said. "I don't deal with many 'big' people."

After Dudley and his wife Clarissa moved to Northern Virginia, his second collection got up to five cars, Things accelerated in the mid 1960s, however, when the Dudleys moved to a farm near Hood that had been in his wife's family for several generations.

In 1967, the Dudleys opened their museum with 18 cars and it has been growing ever since.

There are no Ferraris or Duesenbergs or Pierce Arrows in the Roaring Twenties collection. But there are rare cars that you can see nowhere else.

"I don't buy cars to impress people, I buy them because I like them. I don't give a damn if they impress people," Dudley said,

For instance, take a gander at the crimson 1948 Playboy retractable hardtop. The company made as many as 80 convertibles, but only two retractable metal hardtops, which appeared a decade before Ford tried the same idea.

Inspired by Buckminster Fuller's futuristic Dimaxion, Engineer Don Surles designed an aerodynamic car which made maximurn use of space in 1937. It looks like an ancestor of the minivan. The side doors are electronically operated and split to slide into the roof and under the body.

But Surles, a Mormon from Salt Lake City, was caught up in the WWII draft and did not build his sleek car until 1945. Stationed in Japan, Surles commissioned the Tokyo Bus Works to build it from surplus Jeep parts.

Dudley notes that the bus builders didn't speak much English and Surles didn't know Japanese, so a few features were lost in translation. But it is still a remarkably "modern" vehicle with seating for eight and electronically operated doors that split in the middle when they open and slide into the roof and under the seats

When he turned stateside, Surles took his revolutionary car to all of the major manufacturers, who turned thumbs down.

Although the big three didn't buy Surles' concept, one of its features later turned up on a Chevy station wagon, Dudley notes.

Dispirited, Surles moved to Northern Virginia and garaged his concept car. Dudley located him in 1966 after reading a newspaper article about the car.

"I told him about my museum and he gave it to me," Dudley said. "He'd had offers from politicians who wanted to campaign in it, but he said they'd make something grotesque out of it,

The Playboy, Surlesmobile and a 1947 Crosley are the newest cars in Dudley's museum, although he keeps a couple of cars from the1950s and '60s for personal use.

"Every one in here is either a rare car or a rare body style," Dudley said proudly.

He points to a 1924 Cadillac V-8 sevenpassenger phaeton that was used as a parade car by the City of Flushing, New York. Unrestored, it still sparkles in black lacquer, brass and chrome.

The big open car rode on 22 inch wheels stretched out on a 134 inch wheelbase. "It would cruise comfortably with seven passengers at 55 miles per hour and give you 12 to 14 miles per gallon," said Dudley, who contends modern cars are only about 20 percent more efficient than the automobiles in his museum.

A 1925 Star 4 still carries the livery of the Miller Taxi Company of Westminister, Md. "Star outsold Ford and Chevy in rugged parts of the country, where it was reliable and good in the mud," Dudley said.

"There were two in Culpeper, two in Madison and one in Greene County. The farmer in Greene County drove his Star into a garage one cold morning and complained that he barely made it in it was running so terrible."

"They opened the hood and a chicken popped out. It had roosted on the warm engine the night before and when the farmer started the car the next morning the chicken jumped back and forth on the spark plug wires, causing the engine to stumble," Dudley said.

The 1929 Model 96-A Whippet "4" is a rumble seat sports coupe with an elegant dog mascot on the radiator cap.

"They used to say, for a short trip, take a whippet. For a long trip, take the Greyhound," Dudley quipped, explaining that the greyhound in question was riot the bus, but the greyhound mascot used by the long-legged Lincoln automobile,

Although called a roadster, the top is actually a predecessor of the '50s "hardtops." The car has two clutches, one for starting and a ton-and-a-half truck clutch for shifting gears. You can also change the oil without getting under the car, Dudley noted.

Powerful and rugged, the Speed 6 was favored by bootleggers and Texas Rangers. Dudley's bright blue model with double hung spares and window shades was once owned by the Sheriff of Marion County, W.Va.

One of the sportiest-looking cars in the collection is the red 1922 Buick 6-cylinder, "Chummy Roadster."

A twoseater, this car was designed to appeal to the younger driver with some cash to spend on transportation.

"There's an old ad in the New Yorker showing a dashing young couple going down the road in a cloud of dust. The girl is driving and the guy has a bottle in one hand and is waving a flag with another. It gave you a pedigree when you had a car like this," Dudley said

Dudley admits a fondness for Buicks (and Packards... and Cadillacs... and Studebakers ... ).

"In West Virginia, gas stations and garages were few and far between. My uncle said if your car broke down and a Buick came by, it had the power to pull you in," said Dudley, who found many of his treasures in West Virginia, where he has family. They were gas thirsty, but never drank oil. Buick always was a good car,"

The mannequins in the Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum are older than the automobiles they adorn.

"They came from the Golden Rule Store in Billington, W.Va.," Dudley noted. "That 'young girl' there is over 100 years old."

Mannequins, Victrolas, gas-powered washing machines, ancient "weedeaters," and other

paraphernalia are scattered around the museum and its annexes in what may seem like some a haphazard fashion. Yet they somehow blend together in a delightful collage of nostalgia.

Many of the autos and assorted machines are unrestored or spiffied up by Dudley's own hand. None are in the sort of "better than new" condition that some collectors favor.

"Basically, I like unrestored cars," Dudley said. "Some car museums are like a mausoleum."

Most of Dudley's collectibles are in excellent, but original condition, They show a little wear around the edges.

Some of his favorite cars are in a separate building. If Dudley senses that a visitor is sufficiently interested, he will give him a bonus tour.

That includes a sleek black 1940 Buick Business Coupe with a swoopy rear deck and factory fender skirts that Dudley has owned since 1966 and a deep green 1941 Packard that he bought from an estate in Keyser, W.Va.

"This is the same model Packard that MacArthur used in the Pacific," Dudley said.

It was purchased in 1941 by Nannie Campbell, the widow of the owner of the Campbell Coal Company and chauffeur driven for 35,000 miles. The car was put in storage in 1962, when Mrs. Campbell went into a nursing home. She died in 1982, at the age of 92, Dudley said.

Each of his cars has "a story" to it and all of those stories are filed away in their owner's remarkable memory.

At 70 years of age, Dudley still works on his cars and museum grounds until 9 o'clock at night.

He has just completed the restoration on several antique gasoline and lube pumps and on the day of my visit had spent the morning installing a restored CocaCola vending machine at Roaring Twenties Antiques, the store his daughter Martha runs on Route 29, south of Madison.

The quote he got from a body shop to paint a recently acquired Dodge struck Dudley as outrageous, so he went out and bought a new air compressor instead.

"I'll practice by painting my tow truck and then paint the Dodge and a Model T I've got. I used to paint a lot of my cars," he added.

The Roaring Twenties Antique Car Museum is located on Route 230, just South of Hood, between Madison and Stanardsville. It is open, by appointment, seven days a week - Admission is $5. (540) 948-6290. Roaring Twenties Antiques, which has plenty of automotive memorabilia, is located on US. 29 at Oak Hill, south of the Town of Madison. It is open most mornings or by appointment.