Southward Car Museum

The Southward Car Museum is a car museum housing a group of over 400 automobiles, as well as 3 planes, located on Otaihanga Road, Otaihanga, simply north of Paraparaumu on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand's North Island. The museum is run by way of a charitable accept as true with, integrated in 1972. The center-car series became the non-public paintings of Sir Len Southward and his spouse Vera. A pioneering marine engineering and speed enthusiast, on 22 February 1953 he powered his boat Redhead across Wellington harbor to come to be the primary guy in Australasia to travel at over 100mph on water.

He established Southward Engineering, which developed from marine engineers into a huge steel fabrication enterprise, presenting car exhausts, racking, mild-walled carbon steel and chrome steel tubing it is owned today via Melbourne based totally Atlas Group. The couple began collecting cars in 1956 with a Ford Model T. Knighted in 1986 for services to the community, having established the largest non-public car collection in Australasia, in 1976 he purchased a 6 hectare web page on which to establish a museum open to the general public.