Britain invented a good deal of the motor car’s history, and it kept the evidence. The country that gave the world Jaguar, Mini, Land Rover and the banked race track at Brooklands also built a remarkable set of museums to hold the cars, and most of them are open to the public for a day out. This is a guide to the best of them: where they are, what each is known for, which British classics you will actually see, and how to plan a visit.
The collections fall into a few rough types. A couple are national institutions with hundreds of cars. One is the definitive home of the British marques specifically. Several are regional collections with a distinct character, and a few are small, specialist places worth the detour. We have ordered them by how central they are to British classic cars, not by size alone.
British Motor Museum, Gaydon, Warwickshire
If you only visit one, make it this one. The British Motor Museum at Gaydon holds the world’s largest collection of historic British cars, with over 300 on display and around 250 more housed in its Collections Centre. It is built around two great archives, the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust and the Jaguar Heritage collection, which together cover almost every marque this site does: Jaguar, MG, Triumph, Land Rover, Austin, Morris, Rover and the rest of what became British Leyland.
Beyond the cars there is a vast archive of more than two million photographs, brochures, engineering drawings and production records, which is why so much of the reliable history of these cars traces back to Gaydon. It is a paid attraction in open countryside just off the M40, and the single best place in the country to understand the British motor industry as a whole.
National Motor Museum, Beaulieu, Hampshire
The most famous motoring day out in Britain. The National Motor Museum sits in the grounds of the Beaulieu estate in the New Forest, founded in 1952 by the 3rd Baron Montagu as a tribute to his father, a pioneer of early British motoring. The collection runs to around 250 vehicles spanning the whole history of the car, from veteran machines to record-breakers.
Beaulieu is as much a family attraction as a car museum: the ticket also takes in Palace House, the abbey ruins and the grounds, and for many years it was home to the World of Top Gear exhibition. The autumn International Autojumble is one of the biggest classic-car parts fairs in Europe. It is a paid attraction, and the closest of the major national collections to the south coast.
Haynes Motor Museum, Sparkford, Somerset
Founded by John Haynes, the man behind the workshop manuals that taught half the country to fix its own cars, Haynes holds the UK’s largest collection of cars and motorcycles, with more than 400 vehicles. Unlike Gaydon it is international in scope, so alongside the British machines you will find American and European classics under one roof.
Its signature space is the Red Room, a hall of more than forty red cars arranged together for pure visual effect, from a humble Austin-Healey Sprite to a Lamborghini Countach. It is a paid attraction near Yeovil in Somerset, and the obvious choice for anyone in the south west.
Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, Surrey
Brooklands is not just a museum but a place where history happened. The site at Weybridge in Surrey was the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit, a vast banked concrete oval opened in 1907, and it became the birthplace of British motorsport and aviation alike. Surviving sections of the famous banking are still there to walk on.
The collection reflects that double heritage: giant pre-war racing machines such as the 24-litre Napier-Railton, racing Bentleys, and a remarkable group of aircraft including a Concorde, built by the Brooklands-based aircraft firms that once shared the site. It is a paid attraction run by an independent charity, and the most atmospheric motoring day out within easy reach of London.
Coventry Transport Museum, West Midlands
Coventry was the heart of the British motor industry for a century, home to Jaguar, Triumph, Humber, Hillman and Standard, so it is fitting that the city holds the largest collection of British-made road transport in public ownership. Better still, it is free to enter.
The collection runs to well over 200 cars and commercial vehicles, plus motorcycles and bicycles, with a strong emphasis on the everyday cars most museums overlook: Austin Allegros, Hillman Imps, an Austin Metro once owned by Diana, Princess of Wales. Its showpiece is the land-speed-record gallery, home to both Thrust2 and Thrust SSC, the British jet car that became the first to break the sound barrier on land in 1997. For a free day out, nothing else in the country comes close.
Great British Car Journey, Ambergate, Derbyshire
The newest entry on this list, and the one that does something different: it lets you drive the cars. The Great British Car Journey in Derbyshire tells the story of the British motor industry through the everyday cars people actually owned, and its “Drive Dad’s Car” experience puts visitors behind the wheel of a range of classics on a private route by the river.
For anyone who wants more than a roped-off display, this is the one to book. It is a paid attraction, with the driving experiences sold separately, in the Derwent Valley north of Derby.
Lakeland Motor Museum, Cumbria
Tucked into the southern Lake District at Backbarrow, the Lakeland Motor Museum packs in more than 140 vehicles and tens of thousands of smaller exhibits, the kind of period motoring ephemera that brings a collection to life. Its best-known feature is a dedicated exhibition celebrating the Campbell family and their Bluebird land and water speed-record machines, a distinctly British story of speed. A paid attraction, and an easy addition to a Lake District trip.
Smaller and specialist museums worth knowing
Beyond the big collections, Britain has a long tail of smaller and more specialist museums, several of which are worth a detour for the right visitor.
- Cotswold Motoring Museum, Bourton-on-the-Water. A charming period collection in one of the prettiest villages in England, and the home of Brum, the little open-topped car from the children’s television series.
- The Bubble Car Museum, Lincolnshire. A specialist collection devoted to the microcars and bubble cars of the 1950s and 60s, the natural follow-up to our guide to British microcars and three-wheelers, where the Peel P50 and Bond Bug live.
- The Transport Museum, Wythall, Worcestershire. One of several excellent transport museums, this one strong on buses, coaches and battery-electric vehicles rather than cars.
- Atwell-Wilson Motor Museum, Calne, Wiltshire. A friendly independent collection of classics from the veteran era to the 1980s.
Two notes for visitors. First, the Jaguar Daimler Heritage collection, long a destination in its own right, is now shown within the British Motor Museum’s Collections Centre at Gaydon, so a Gaydon ticket covers it. Second, if it is buses, trams and the Underground you are after rather than cars, the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden is the obvious central London choice, a different kind of transport museum from the car collections above.
Planning a visit
A few practical points. Most of these are paid attractions, with Coventry Transport Museum the notable free exception. Opening days vary by season, several close or reduce hours in winter, so check before travelling. Many also host classic-car shows, autojumbles and owners’-club days through the year, which are often the best time to visit if you want to see cars being driven rather than parked, and to meet the people who keep them running.
If you are visiting to help decide what to buy or restore, a museum is a genuinely useful research trip: it is the cheapest way to sit in front of a dozen candidate cars in an afternoon and work out which ones actually speak to you.
Where to go from here
For the question of which cars you will be looking at, see which cars count as British classics and when does a car become a classic. For an era-by-era tour of the cars themselves, the decade-by-decade guide runs from the 1940s to the 1990s. And for the practical side of owning one once a museum visit has tipped you over the edge, see owning and running a classic car.