My trip to the Sharjah Classic Car Museum!
The automobile, one of the most essential and most used inventions of the modern era. Although it is not all that old, the car (as we call it today) has gone through quite a few changes in the relatively short time that it has been around. I usually find it interesting to observe the different transformations that the modern day car has gone through to get to where it is now, and so in this post I decided to visit the Sharjah Classic Car Museum and get a blast to the past!
The Sharjah Classic Car Museum is located on the Airport Rd between the 4th and 5th intersections next to the Sharjah International Airport. The museum was opened in 2008 but then was closed for refurbishing and then re-inaugurated in 2013. it holds one of the largest collections of classic cars in the world with over 100 cars on display from different parts of the world, the oldest of which is a Dodge dating back to 1915.
As you enter the museum right in front of you is the reception desk where you walk up to buy your ticket (which are quite cheap); then on your left there is a sort of "memorial" to bicycles just before you enter the museum and see all the actual cars, with a nice quote, in a way initializing your entrance into the "era" of the automobile.
The museum building is square shaped but the cars on display are organized in a sort of pentagonal shape. Like I mentioned when you first walk in there is the reception desk and the "memorial" that is the first point, then the other four points are the car displays. If you walk to the right you are moving in the order of oldest to newest and that's what we did, so that's how I'll order them. The displays are as follows: section one is 1915-1939, section two is 1940-1959, section three is 1960-1989, and lastly the fourth section is Off Road Vehicles and UAE Motoring, which is basically just trucks and vehicles that were used in the UAE. To top it off the middle of the building is filled with a large display of interesting cars, like cars from other countries, limousines, and cars used in military service.
So as I already mentioned we started at the oldest section first which is cars from 1915-1939. I really liked this section it has a lot of really old looking cars that you would not see driving around anymore, with their open windows, box-like shape and crank up lever to start them, they really are fun to look at but not necessarily my favorite of the cars on display.
After having a good look at those pieces of history we moved on to section two which is cars from 1940-1959 and it definitely fits higher up on the scale of my favorite cars to look at, with some cars borrowing a bit from the older style and some with a newer flare. My favorite from among them was the Bentley MKV (shown at the bottom right corner) as well as the white car whose front looks like a jet engine. To change it up they also had a couple of motorcycles on display right next to the main showcase area.
So after we had finished admiring the Bentley and its brethren we moved on to the third section which is 1960-1989 cars, and boy are they slick. This section focuses on displaying cars mainly from the "big 3" which is the nickname given to the three biggest car companies of that time: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. With their slick designs and cool looks this section of cars would probably make the top of my list with a few favorites from the other sections of course.
And at last comes the fourth and final section (excluding the middle display) which is trucks and cars used in the UAE. Now although I thought it was cool to see the truck used to transport UAE soldiers between the emirates and the really cool looking classic ambulance (right), fire truck (left), and delivery van (middle), this section wasn't the best of all the displays. However many cool things it contained, it just couldn't (in my mind) make up for the lack of many vehicles to display, and I dunno it just didn't wow me like the others did, although it's probably just me and it really is actually the most highly recommended section and I'm just being a jerk, but to each their own. In any case it still had some cool stuff on display and I'm just nitpicking because everything in that museum was so exceptional.
And so after we had finished all the four sections we moved inward to look at the random displays they had in the middle of the building which I thought were very interesting. Now I need a minute to talk about this section because not only does it contain cars from a whole load of countries, and it has a small area with one or two interactive pieces, but it also contains my two favorite cars in the whole museum. So first I'll talk about the cars from other countries. I thought that these were really cool because although the cars here were not the best looking, I thought it was really interesting to see how different let's say a Skoda from Czechoslovakia (left) looked from a Renault made in France (middle left) or a Midget made in Britain (middle right) or even an Opel in Germany (right).
Next I'll give a small mention to the interactive section because although it only had a puzzle, a changeable gearbox, and a broken car that had been made into a sitting area, I think it was still nice that they tried to make it interactive, and we had a lot of fun trying and consecutively failing to complete the puzzle. And there were also some impressive looking limousines.
And now we come to the crowning pieces of this middle area and they are my two favorite cars out of all the cars in the museum. The first is this Mustang looking car that didn't have an informational panel next to it so I don't know exactly what car it was, but what really sold it for me was the American flag with a horse faded into the background that decorated the bottom of the hood.
And the second one which is at the top of my favorites list just above the American flag Mustang is this crazy colored low-riding car that just really caught my eye when we passed by it, just because of how bombastic its design is and how radiantly it stands out from among the crowd of mundane silver, black, and white cars that are all around it.
And that does it! All in all I really enjoyed the museum. I went there with my mom early in the morning while we were both still kinda waking up and we had a lot of fun seeing all the cars and joking about the things that we thought were funny about them. It's a good 1-2 hour experience, if you really get engrossed and take your time, and I would highly suggest that anyone visiting Sharjah go stop by because especially if you like old cars it is really worth the time and it's pretty much dirt cheap. Aaand it's near the Sharjah airport so even if you just have a short layover in a string of flights it's a nice laid-back thing that you could go do for an hour or so instead of just sitting in the airport the whole time (unless you want to do that). But in any case hope you guys enjoyed reading this post and I look forward to having you all back for my next post!