{"id":18446,"date":"2018-08-21T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=18446"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:24:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:24:47","slug":"who-says-you-cant-road-trip-in-the-dodge-challenger-srt-demon-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/showcase\/2018\/08\/who-says-you-cant-road-trip-in-the-dodge-challenger-srt-demon-part-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Who Says You Can’t Road Trip in the Dodge Challenger SRT®<\/sup> Demon? – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Getting to the Gilmore Museum was a blast<\/a> and now that I’m here the memories come flooding back.  I grew up in West Michigan, about 30 minutes north of Hickory Corners. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of riding with my grandma down to the antique shop in town, where she had a booth with old things she curated for sale. She\u2019d bring down a few \u201cnew\u201d items, collect any money from things that had been sold, and we\u2019d grab lunch at one of the diners along the route back.<\/p>\n

If I was lucky, we\u2019d swing into the Gilmore Car Museum for a visit. At that time in the mid to late \u201980s, the museum pretty much consisted of a farm with a few old barns that housed a collection of vintage automobiles, tractors and bikes. There was nothing else like it, at least where I\u2019m from, and with my grandma now gone, the memory of walking through those barns wide-eyed and fascinated with turn-of-the-century technology has remained in me like a faded black-and-white photo pinned to the back of my brain.<\/p>\n

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The Gilmore has undergone what must have been a multi-million-dollar overhaul and upgrade over the last decade plus, but it\u2019s happened in such a way that none of my nostalgia feels misplaced. The barns have been shored up and cleaned up, but still hold an old-times feel. The newer buildings have been disguised as old dealerships from a certain place and time, such as a Ford museum built to look like a Ford dealership complete with service bay. There\u2019s also an old service station, a functioning diner, and a handful of other \u201cmuseums\u201d on campus dedicated to a type of car, brand or mode of transportation. Now that I\u2019ve grown older and have traveled a bit, I\u2019d still rate it as one of the coolest car museums in the world.<\/p>\n

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The Gilmore sits on 90 acres of beautiful, well-kept farmland, making it a prime host for car shows of all types. \u201cMopars at the Red Barns\u201d is one such show, hosted by the Western Michigan Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> Club. Somewhere between 200-300 cars, trucks and even SUVs showed up Saturday morning at the corner of West Hickory Road and M43. Pulling in off of West Hickory, there\u2019s kind of a time warp that happens as you enter through the main gate and roll past a farmhouse and several barns and then make a right at the old service station. There\u2019s kind of a loop road that we followed until there was a spot free to park. I was behind Mark Trostle and his White Knuckle Dodge Challenger SRT\u00ae<\/sup> Demon in my SRT Demon, and could hear a number of folks grab their buddy\u2019s attention, \u201cWow! That\u2019s a Demon! There\u2019s TWO of them!\u201d I think in Detroit we\u2019re kind of spoiled, I mean I saw six last Saturday and that\u2019s not including mine, but there are many rural places that haven\u2019t been exposed to the beast in the flesh yet. It\u2019s always fun talking to other enthusiasts about the car beyond the infamous numbers: Just how it handles, its road manners, what the power feels like in everyday driving.<\/p>\n