All change at Gaydon

What was the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon has recently been through one of the biggest upheavals in its history, closing late last year and reopening in February with a new name and a new building, so the time had come to pay another visit and see what had changed. I have been there several times over the years and seen the place develop since it first opened in 1993 in the ownership of the Rover Group; it was included in BMW's sale of Land Rover to Ford and is now owned by Jaguar Land Rover. Following a refurbishment and the opening of the brand new Collections Centre it is now known as the British Motor Museum and is responsible for three principal collections, the original British Motor Industry Heritage Trust assets being joined by those from the Jaguar Heritage Trust and the former James Hull collection.

The Jaguar Heritage Trust collection is now at Gaydon. I like this XJ6 estate but it never made production.

The contents of the main museum have not changed greatly, although the displays have been rearranged and in most cases improved, for instance the barriers in front of the 'Time Road' section have been removed so the rear row of cars are now accessible. One retrograde step however is the way the last-of-the-line British Leyland sports cars (TR7, Midget and Spitfire) are now displayed, stacked three-high on a metal frame so the Spitfire at the top is barely visible. There seems to be a growing trend among museums, no doubt for space reasons, to display their cars above ground level on walls or racks where they can't be seen up close, but fortunately this is the only example of this type of display at Gaydon. One random stack of cars in the middle of the building does look a bit odd though and surely there is enough floor space to squeeze in just two more cars. The new layout seems rather more spacious and I suspect there may be slightly fewer exhibits than before as some have been moved into the Collections Centre.

A stack of sports cars. I don't know why they're displayed like this.

The real excitement is in the Collections Centre, an all-new building adjacent to the existing one, entry to which is also included in the admission price. This is not a museum as such, more of a storage facility that is open to the public, and aims for the first time to put on public view the many cars in the reserve collection that had been hidden away in private storage and unite all of the museum's vehicles on a single site. The ground floor houses the workshop and the Jaguar Heritage Trust collection previously based at Browns Lane, Coventry, although the former is currently out of use while problems with the floor are rectified. When active however, a viewing gallery will enable visitors to see work being carried out.

Upstairs in the Collections Centre is where the real gems are kept though, and British Leyland enthusiasts will have a field day here. Many of these cars have not been displayed since the museum was owned by the Rover Group many years ago, and in some cases have never been seen in public before, so there was much I hadn't seen and my photo collection has been greatly enhanced by this visit. These include a large number of fascinating and often unique British Leyland and Austin-Rover prototypes and concept cars, and it was brilliant to finally be able to get up close to cars I had read about but never seen in the flesh.

Just a taste of what can be found in the Collections Centre.

These are in many ways the untold story of the British motor industry and deserve a wider audience as they show how things could have turned out differently if these prototypes had made it into production. Some are tragic missed opportunities (AR6 Metro replacement), some are probably best forgotten (Metro saloon), some are plain bizarre (a six-cylinder Metro!), and even though I have spent many hours exploring the ever-informative AROnline, some still came as a surprise, such as the proposed Vanden Plas version of the wedge Princess that I was unaware of. All provide a fascinating insight into the troubled manufacturer's plans and the internal politics and budget constraints that scuppered many promising ideas.

A missed opportunity. This should have replaced the Metro in the late eighties but instead we got the Rover Metro.

As this is principally a store, the cars here are not neatly displayed like those in the main building, but simply lined up very close together with just enough space to walk between them. Although pretty full, not everything is now located here and there are still some cars in private storage. This brings me to my one major criticism of the Collections Centre: it is very heavy on modern Jaguars and Land Rovers. While these are significant cars, often the first or last of their type, and deserve to be kept for posterity, they are still relatively new and a common sight on the road so they aren't yet of historical interest. My personal preference would be to hide these away for a decade or two until they become classics and bring some more historic prototypes out into public view instead. I suppose as owners of the museum, Jaguar Land Rover get the final say on what goes inside though.

During normal opening times, access to the Collections Centre is only by joining one of the guided tours that depart from the main museum at fixed times and must be pre-booked on arrival. On event days however, an open-access system is employed to allow visitors to wander in and out at their leisure, using tokens to control numbers as fire regulations restrict the building's capacity to 200 people. For this reason I would recommend visiting on an event day as I did, as there is a lot to see and it is worth taking your time to have a good look around; I must have spent a good couple of hours in there. Unlike the comprehensive histories of those in the main building, only basic information cards are displayed on these cars so you may struggle to recognise some of the more obscure types, but there are always knowledgeable members of staff on hand to answer your questions.

Space is tight in the Collections Centre. Here's the first Rover 800 squeezed in.

A visit to the new-look British Motor Museum is highly recommended to all car enthusiasts, even those who have been there before. I had felt the museum was getting a bit stale with much the same selection of exhibits on view every time I visited, so the refurbishment has breathed new life into the place. The Collections Centre finally provides a chance to view all those fascinating members of the reserve collection that had been hidden away for so many years, and I guarantee there will be something there that you didn't know about and haven't seen before. If you want to see more of the exhibits, both from this latest visit and previous ones, take a look at my Flickr album.