British Columbia Is Home to a Stunning Classic Car Collection

For particularly intense car enthusiasts, taking in a world-class collection of rare automobiles can be a breathtaking experience. Throughout North America, a host of museums have become dedicated temples to the art and engineering that makes a memorable car, including California’s Petersen Automobile Museum, Florida’s American Muscle Car Museum and Pennsylvania’s Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum.

But in the Pacific Northwest, an under-the-radar car collection for the ages has slowly come together — and while it’s not as well-known as some of the names mentioned above, it probably should be. It turns out both the collection itself and the method by which it was assembled are well worth discussing.

Recently, Skye Ryan at Chek News reported on a couple based in Ladysmith, British Columbia whose automotive collection includes a car that competed in the 1908 Great Race — a competition in which drivers made their way from New York to Paris. Harry and Shirley Blackstaff have been collecting cars for the last 60 years. To be more specific, many of these cars were assembled as a result of finding parts that had been dismissed as scrap.

“I’m glad I saved it when I did because this kind of stuff would have disappeared and nobody would have known where it had gone to,” Harry told Chek News.

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As Old Cars Weekly reported at the time, the Blackstaffs’ Zust was restored in time for the hundredth anniversary of the 1908 race. It, along with the other two cars that finished the race, have all stood the test of time and have been preserved until the present day. Questions remain about the future of the Blackstaffs’ collection; as Chek News notes, the couple is looking into ways to turn their collection into a museum for future generations to appreciate.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…