The world’s best motorcycle museum was built from the ground up to appreciate the motorcycle’s mechanical beauty.

George W. Barber, Jr., founder of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Birmingham, Alabama, died on Sunday, February 15, following a brief illness. He was 85 years old.

Courteous and correct, yet clearly fired by an inner passion for doing whatever in life he chose to accomplish to the best of his ability, George Barber was the man we all dream of becoming. The Alabama businessman made a success out of everything he did in life. He began racing cars in 1960, aged 20, and soon proved he wasn’t just a rich kid who wanted to show off, but a seriously good driver who won 63 races and successive SCCA Divisional Championships against stiff opposition, including Dan Gurney and Peter Gregg. Moreover, he actually prepared the cars himself. “I did all my own work, and was pretty expert mechanically,” he stated proudly. But in 1970, George’s father passed away, which put an end to his racing career since, as the eldest of four children, he henceforth devoted himself full time to running the family milk business, Barber Dairies.

THE MUSEUM’S HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

The seed corn of the Barber Motorcycle Collection was a 1952 Victoria Bergmeister V-twin which an employee restored for him after running out of parts to renovate their vintage milk trucks. “This made me see how a motorcycle is really a piece of mechanical art which wears its technology on the outside,” said Barber. “Having always done all the work myself in preparing my own race cars, I began to fall in love with the mechanics of motorcycles, so in 1991 we started buying bikes to form the basis of a collection.”

Barber swiftly amassed an array of over 100 motorcycles. He incorporated the collection as a non-profit entity in 1994 and began looking for somewhere to house it. In 2003, he opened the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, set alongside its own daunting but scenic 16-turn, 3.8 km racetrack (see sidebar) set on an 880-acre site. Today, the 21,400 sq. metre (230,000 sq. ft.) Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum display comprises over 1,000 machines of every type, with another 800 bikes held in reserve, alongside the world’s largest collection of Lotus racing cars. 

When the collection reached 1,000 vehicles, Barber was asked if he planned to stop. “Heck, no,” he replied. “I’m having too much fun. We’ll keep going.” The Barber Museum Extension, which opened in 2017, provided over 50 per cent more display area, which allowed George Barber to finally display the extensive collection of dirt bikes he’d been…