insight on that? the lemay family was in a tough spot. they wanted so badly as you can see to fulfill harold s wish. but it ran away from them in a second. the museum is still called lemay, america s car museum, so there s still a connection to it. once it became so corporate i think its mission started to change. it was no longer what they wanted to call it. were they happy then with the outcome the fact that they had the two museums. are they happy now? they absolutely are. i think they have been able to feel that they did right by harold. you work on this series so often all of these different cases. how often is it the family is so committed to honoring the parents of the grandparent s legacy over the money? it is not about the money. the lemay s had however much
them they have to court corporate sponsors for more big bucks. that will mean the lemays are told they ll have to sacrifice their control and vision of the museum. the family agrees but soon find themselves just 2 on a board of around 30. on the one hand you want to see the legacy and the story of those cars preserved. on the other hand, you really can t control once it s in a museum s hands. exactly. the museum adds cars from other collections to attract national attention, then fundraising runs tight. the board tells the family they don t have the budget to preserve arld the harold s cars. many of the ones he donated are redundant. they decide on a fate that harold lemay would have never considered. to sell some of the cars. if you could have controlled the situation would you have asked them to sell other cars? i don t sell many cars.
classic cars only harold knew he had. we would open the door that hadn t been opened in decades. it would be full of cars that had been there for years. covered with cottonwood flower like snow on the inside of the building. and there were bumblebee fords, convertibles, pierce arrows, and cars that were so unique. in all, larry and his team locate, number and value 2973 cars, not including the countless rusted half wrecked hulk. i believe his goal was to have one of every car ever made. larry s not allowed to say what the whole collection is worth, but independent estimates peg it at $100 million at the time of harold s death. with the inventory complete, the family tries to realize harold s dream of a car museum but starts hitting some roadblocks. creating a museum is like
in fact, harold had only sold three collector cars in his lifetime. family members are dismayed. none of us wanted to be the ones who said we split all the stuff up. you don t want that car oil on your hands. if you really didn t want them. why did you ask for them? because it made me feel like that s the reason they wanted them, to sell them. the museum auctions off 145 of harold s donated autos. their estimated value well into the millions. his 1940 packard convertible victoria sells for 113k while his 1936 rolls royce goes for more than 65 grand. they do their part to help the museum keep going, but when the sleek looking building finally opens in 2012 its name s been changed from the harold e.lemay museum to lemay s american car