Swope's Cars of Yesteryear Museum: Some Rare Beauties on Display

Car aficionados come from all across the United States and beyond to visit Swope’s Cars of Yesteryear Museum in Elizabethtown, KY. Located 50 minutes from Louisville, the Swope’s Cars of Yesteryear Museum boasts some extremely rare classic automobiles.

Visitors have come from far away as Germany and England, explained museum hostess Judith Asbury. “We have [visitors] from all over,” she said. 

The museum is the brain child of Bill Swope, who established his first auto dealership in Elizabethtown in 1952. The museum has 32 lovingly restored cars on display at any one time; another 26 are in storage, and the collection is rotated. The oldest car in the collection is a 1910 Brush Runabout, which cost a mere $600 new. With its axles and frame of white ash wood, the Phaeton Roadster, built in Detroit, could reach speeds of up to 27 miles per hour. The Brush Runabout Company failed in 1913.

An even rarer car is the museum’s 1937 Cadillac Fleetwood. Just 80 of these Formal Town Sedans were built, and just two are known to have survived! This silver luxury car cost $3,535 new — which would have bought six Chevrolets in 1937.

Many of the automobiles in the collection came with interesting histories. A 1919 Chandler Touring Car served as a gangster car in 1959’s The FBI Story, which starred Jimmy Stewart, when it was owned by Warner Brothers Studios. Built in Cleveland, the six-cylinder black beauty displays a distinctive radiator emblem. Yet another car, a 1939 Rolls Royce Sedanca deVille, served as the getaway car for a family fleeing Nazi Germany.

An English family had been driven in the limousine to Bayreuth, Germany, for the 1939 Bayreuther Festspiele of Richard Wagner’s music. On Sept. 1, Germany invaded Poland; the family was barely able to escape. Two days after they crossed the border, England and Germany went to war.

What automobile museum would be complete without a Model T? Swope’s Cars of Yesteryear Museum has a 1914 Ford Model T Runabout. Between 1909 and 1927, Ford built 15 million of these “Tin Lizzies,” effectively ending the age of the horse and carriage. These sleek black car sports headlamps were powered by acetylene gas.

The museum has some newer classic cars, as well, including a peach-colored 1956 Ford Thunderbird, a light-blue 1969 Chevrolet Camaro hardtop and a 1961 Nash Metropolitan, a two-seater beauty in candy-apple red and white. The Metropolitan, which came in convertible and hardtop, was designed in the United States and built in England. It was sold in North America and the United Kingdom.

In addition to the cars, the museum has videos — including of old car commercials — and magazines on various car models and auto meets.

Swope Auto Museum Swope Bill Swope car museum automobile museum classic cars antique cars automotive museum car museum Model T Ford Model T runabout Brush Brush runabout Rolls Royce Nash Metropolitan Chandler touring car Thuderbird Chevrolet Camaro Camaro Cadillac Cadillac Fleetwood Pierce Arrow coupe convertible sports car Packard Chrysler rumble seat Renault gangster FBI Story Jimmy Stewart Elizabethtown Hardin County Louisville