Sometime back around 2007 or 2008, the show Car Crazy featured a man who had amassed a voluminous collection of automobiles, all of them 1957 models. If memory serves, he’d been born that year and thus thought it appropriate to gather as many examples as he could.
On the show came the announcement that he was opening a museum, featuring these cars, in Branson, Missouri.
For those unfamiliar with the place, let’s take a moment to introduce you to Branson. It is a town of 10,520 people in rural southwest Missouri and a tourist attraction of supreme magnitude. Specializing in live music performances, Branson has 50 theaters; over 60,000 theatre seats; 18,000 motel rooms; and nearly 8,000,000 visitors annually. I offer this for perspective; obviously, Branson isn’t the typical small town.
As luck and good fortune had it, I was invited to speak at a convention in Branson in early 2009. I departed home early to allow time to visit the museum, which occupied the downstairs portion of the Dick Clark Theatre.
The Dodge convertible at the top of this page is the Custom Royal and has the 310 horsepower D-500 engine. It should be noted that despite having been adjusted for shadows and exposure, the interior pictures are not of grand quality due to space constraints and lighting.
Here’s another Dodge convertible, this one a Coronet. You will likely see parts of other makes in these pictures, as all brands were represented at the facility.
Moving upscale, we have this Imperial convertible. There were only 1,167 Imperial convertibles, all of them Crown-series, built that year.
There is something about a black Imperial that embodies class, elegance and strength.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is this Plymouth Belvedere convertible, which was advertised as having zero factory options–not even a radio! I regret not getting better pictures of the display signs, but these shots were taken over four years ago when I had no clue they might go online someday.
Wagons, including this DeSoto Firesweep, were well represented. This is the six-passenger “Shopper” version, one of 2,270 produced. A full CC on a ’57 Firesweep sedan can be found here.
Here is another rare wagon, this one a New Yorker. At 1,391 units, their production was even less than DeSoto’s. This one was advertised as being unrestored.
There was even a Dodge pickup on display.
However, my trip to the ’57 Heaven Museum that day was fruitful beyond seeing what was parked inside. Branson has a penchant for both advertising and offering everything for sale. For example…
…all these cars, parked by the front door of the museum, were for sale. The VW sticks out, especially next to four convertibles. The Imperial speaks loudest to me.
There are mobile advertisements aplenty, such as this familiar looking ’74 Dodge used in a show…
…and this one, for a Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia shop.
Sadly, the ’57 Heaven Museum closed sometime after my visit, and the collection was liquidated. I still don’t know exactly why, but I did sense a few problems at the time of my visit. First, the admission price was nearly $30, not much less than the price of seeing a live show. Second, there were painfully few people visiting at the time. Granted, this was on a weekday in early March, but I saw maybe two other people there during my two-hour visit.
The upside is that I took enough pictures to make this Mopar Week post possible. There are more pictures of other makes for a later time. I hope you enjoyed the trip.
Fun to see. Thanks.
Here are more shots of the museum which seems to have closed in 2009 and been auctioned off. Sad to see that it closed because it appears that the displays were good and a lot of time/money was invested.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustinholmes/sets/72157621255208342/
I am not sure I would pay $30 to go to a car museum where all the cars are from a single year. But I’m glad you did. 🙂
That New Yorker wagon (guess I don’t have to ID it as a 57) has both Eric VanBuren and me salivating: the International pickup to its left and the Studebaker Hawk to its right. Sigh. I guess I’ll have to content myself with the Mopars.
A bit of trivia, the 57 Imperial ragtop that you photographed is the only year Imperial ever cracked 1,000 convertibles. The other one you got (the 64) was the closes they ever came again, with 922.
Curiosity won out over practical sense in this case. I’m glad I went, but the lack of variety in model years is likely another factor…although I sure didn’t have to worry about incorrectly identifying anything when I wrote this!
Actually, I followed the link from Former Saturn Owner above. There was a lot of really nice stuff there, with multiple flavors of a lot of cars, as well as some non-automotive things as well. I might have paid $30 to go see that after all.
I love the green DeSoto wagon being a 57 model myself
The Ranchero had me. A 1957 Ford is what took me outta the hospital. Sadly, the car rusted apart – even in temperate New Jersey! – before I was old enough to have memories of it. That was 1962; the old man got a Rambler to replace it…a whole slew of even more exciting bad auto memories.
Or, maybe, the Mercury two-door hardtop…WAGON?! What the holy fark!…too bad there wasn’t a Ford version. I’d be all over it. My unnatural, unholy obsession with shooting brakes. Shoulda never got that Pinto Squire…
Try the photo again.
If I remember correctly, this Mercury wagon was purchased new by George McGovern and he kept it quite a while.
hi, do you know anything about the 57 mercury turnpike cruiser 3 door hardtop that got sold at the mecum auction in Branson in 2009.
Wrap that bluesmobile, I’ll take it and you can throw in the Firesweep to keep in company in the container
So what is a 57 crown imperial in non convertible form woth as I think I have found my new favorite classic car.
Eyebrows over quad headlights became a Caddy signature for years, but the ’57 Imp was first! I much prefer that handsome face to the “floating” headlights of the early ’60s.
I’ll take Don Draper’s ’64, though.
Cool museum, but $30 admission?! Glad you got some pics before it closed.
Many of these very same cars are in the book “Cars of 1957” published by Consumer Guide–also the publisher of Collectible Automobile magazine. I got a copy from my folks for Christmas in 1998 or so–a great coffee table book.
I love all the cars featured, but my favorites are the Town & Country and Imperial convertible.
Long time reader, first time commenter. 🙂 Great post Jason – a lot of very cool cars in that collection. Shame it got liquidated, but auto museums don’t seem to work in Branson. My family started taking summer vacations down there in the mid-80s when I was around 9 or 10. It was a tourist trap even then but I think it was really just beginning to experience the growth that exploded in the late 80s/early 90s and led to what it has become. In 1986 you had Silver Dollar City and White Water, probably a quarter of the music theaters that exist today, a couple of local restaurants (no national chains of any sort), and all the retail on Hwy 76 was local touristy-type souvenir and candy shops playing up the hillbilly angle. But with each passing year until we quit going around 1992, the place got busier – more crowded, harder to drive through, new attractions every year and additional theaters and hotels always under construction. The first outlet mall went up in ’88 or ’89 and today I believe they have three.
The second or third year we went we saw a brochure for a new classic car museum on 76, and me always being interested in cars we checked it out one afternoon. I remember it being a brand new building and having a lot of cool old cars, although today I couldn’t tell you what any of them were. I seem to remember my Dad thinking the price of admission was a bit high, but then if you’ve been to southwest Missouri in June you know that any air conditioned building has its merits in the afternoon. 🙂 Pretty sure it was gone the very next year (definitely within two), and the last time I was down there 5 or 6 years ago I believe that building had been converted into the Yackov Smirnoff Theater (not an improvement IMHO). Given that Branson radiates a down home, middle America, family-oriented vibe you would think a decent classic car museum would fit right in, but this makes two of them that haven’t lasted very long.
You are quite correct on Branson. I was first there in October ’92 and it is unreal how much the place has swollen. My wife has been going there since the ’80’s and doesn’t recognize the place. I no longer recognize the downtown area.
My first time there I stumbled upon a hole in the wall car museum that was way off the strip. For some reason I’m wanting to say there was an assortment of Falcons. I’m sure the place was a flash in the pan.
I was in Branson about 2 weeks ago. We needed a place to play on a rainy day during our visit to Table Rock lake.
We ate lunch at the Dick Clark American Bandstand diner that I think is the west end of the theatre complex. We noticed signs for a museum of celebrity cars on the east end. Probably where the ’57 heaven had been. My wife walked into the museum while I moved our car, and came out saying our family of 5 would have to pay $45.00. Three kids. My hunch was the number of cars would be limited by space, and my family would probably want to move too fast to make the $45 worth it, so we passed.
The diner was dead, the museum was as well. My guess is that their shows must carry the place, and maybe fill the diner before or after shows.
The show was Blues Bros related, I didn’t look close. Out front there was a Dodge Blues Bros. Monaco sedan that was pretty correct. It’s companion was a ’74 or ’75 Fury 4 dr hardtop painted as a white generic Chicago police car. Ironic, but not the first time I’ve seen the rare 4 door hardtop playing the part of a cop sedan. Acknowledging the incorrect body style, they had glued a white panel to the lead edge of the rear door window glass that gave it a sort of pillared hardtop look.
The 57 Dodge at the top of the article is similar to my dad’s first car. Though his was not a convertible. My grandfather and father (at least until the 70’s) were Mopar guys. Dad’s car was a 57 Custom Royal in two tone cream and gold, also with the top engine option for the year. I am still looking for pictures, but I recall seeing pictures of it parked in front of a “Flying A” gas station in Philadelphia circa 1960. If I ever find the pics of that and his 65 Sport Fury, I’ll do a writeup on them.