Driven to Win Exhibit Opens Saturday at The Henry Ford Museum

by Cyndi Paceley
Dearborn, MI — Driven to Win: Racing in America, the first comprehensive exhibition to cover American auto racing, including stock car, sports car, drag racing, IndyCar, hillclimb and land-speed racing, will open March 27 inside The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.
Photo: The Henry FordPresented by General Motors, the 24,000-square-foot permanent exhibit will offer an in-depth look at the people, experiences, culture, spectacle, risks and innovations centered in the world of American auto sports.

“Racing is such a multisensory experience,” said Patricia Mooradian, president and CEO, The Henry Ford. “With Driven to Win, we hope to bring to life the excitement fans get at the race track and inspire our guests with the passionate stories of those innovators who have dedicated their lives to this exhilarating and game-changing sport.”
Photo: The Henry FordThe exhibit offers an unprecedented collection of some of the most important and significant vehicles in the world of racing, including the 1967 Ford Mark IV that earned an all-American victory at Le Mans with Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt at the wheel; the 1988 Chevrolet-powered Penske PC-17 driven by Rick Mears for the third of his four Indy 500 wins; the 1906 Locomobile “Old 16,” the first American car to win a major international road race in the United States; the 1965 Lotus-Ford, the first rear-engine car to win the Indianapolis 500; the 1965 Goldenrod, which held a land speed record of 409.277 mph for wheel-driven cars until 1991; and a 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE, a track-ready performance car used in engineering tests at Germany’s Nürburgring racing circuit.

Also featured are several interactive zones including Motorsports Performance Training, where visitors can see what drivers go through before hitting the track. The Sports Car Race Shop shows how experts design and engineer winning race cars through planning, problem-solving and testing.
1958 Moore/Unser Pikes Peak Hill Climb Racing Car. On Loan from Bobby and Lisa Unser. Photo: The Henry FordThrough six interlinked full-motion racing simulators, visitors can drive the world’s fastest cars on the most challenging tracks in wheel-to-wheel competition.

A 4D film, “Fueled by Passion,” offers an all-access look into the hopes and dreams, successes and failures of those who live and breathe racing every day. The film includes exclusive footage and interviews with drivers, crew members and engineers from five different forms of racing.

“Our motorsports heritage goes back to the days of Louis Chevrolet and beyond, and it has always remained a big part of who we are and what we do, especially in terms of driving engineering excellence and implementing the transfer of technology and innovation from the track to the street,” said GM president Mark Reuss.

 

The Henry Ford: New and always improving

844 shares
share
tweet
emailBy George Tamayo | August 4, 2021 4:00 AM ET
Presented by: The Henry Ford New. Improved. Fresh: words that are essential to the lexicon of modern marketing. Museums on the other hand are, by their nature, dealing in the past. Filled with artifacts and archives from bygone eras, museums are still enterprises that must attract visitors and benefactors to keep the doors open and lights on. Does that mean that they, too, must also find their own path to relevancy?

“It was something that was on our minds from the get-go,” says Matt Anderson, transportation curator at The Henry Ford about planning for the “Driven to Win: Racing in America presented by General Motors” exhibit. “How do we keep the exhibit fresh? How do we stay current with not only the trends in racing, but culture in general?

“Part of the solution was to leave some expansion space within the exhibit that would allow us to bring in cars from the recent past,” Anderson explains. “But in a more immediate sense, we wanted to make sure we found ways to bring in the racing world of today. While museums are necessarily about history, and we at The Henry Ford are no different, we are mindful of conveying the idea that motor racing isn’t a thing of the past. It continues on.”



One simple, yet elegant solution is a countdown clock (ABOVE) – prominent within the exhibit – that counts down to the next race each week. It includes tent pole events such as the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500, along with smaller, regional events that represent the entire spectrum of American racing. Alongside it is another digital display with a curated Twitter feed from drivers, teams, sanctioning bodies and venues that continuously refreshes with all the buzz of the moment.

Another significant part of The Henry Ford’s vision with the Driven to Win exhibit is to build new audience for the sport, which resulted in including several interactive elements central to achieving that aim. For the youngest visitors, there’s a gravity racing activity (BELOW) similar to a Pinewood Derby. For others, there are high-end motion simulator rigs that allow visitors to drive a number of world circuits. There’s also a synaptic training rig used to test and improve hand-eye coordination that was developed in conjunction with Indianapolis-based Pit Fit, renowned for training a number of current NTT IndyCar Series drivers.

 

“We certainly wanted interactive elements within the exhibit,” Anderson continues. “But more than just being interactive, we wanted to convey the idea that racing drivers are indeed athletes. So to that end, it’s common to hear people walking away from the exhibit with a new-found understanding and respect for what the modern day racing driver experiences, and what specific skills are needed to do what they do.”

It’s not just about physical attributes, but also the mental aptitude required by both the drivers and their technical teams. (BELOW) To showcase this aspect of the sport, a pit wall from Le Mans was recreated with all of the actual data telemetry and radio chatter from one of the GTE Pro-class-winning Ford GTs of 2016. It’s all synced with onboard video to give a complete perspective.



According to Andersen, the exhibit will also be a constant work in progress. New cars and artifacts are already in the works to cycle through, despite the display having only opened in March of 2021, proving that Driven to Win is always new and always improving.

The Henry Ford, in Dearborn, Mich., just west of Detroit, occupies a 250-acre campus with three separate attractions, including the Ford Rouge Factory where the Ford F-150 truck is made.

The new “Driven to Win: Racing In America presented by General Motors” exhibit occupies 24,000sq.ft of The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation. It includes 22 racecars, 225 racing artifacts, a theater, and so much more, all helping to trace more than 125 years of American racing.




The exhibit is subdivided into eight zones covering topics that range from The Dawn of Racing to modern-day Motorsports Performance Training.