I Didn’t Expect to Love the Tampa Bay Auto Museum

Florida is full of surprises, but few are quite as delightfully strange—and surprisingly brilliant—as the Tampa Bay Auto Museum. Tucked into a low-slung industrial building in Pinellas Park, this museum isn’t about horsepower, chrome, or celebrity-owned cars. It’s about innovation, engineering oddities, and the kind of vehicular visionaries you’ve probably never heard of. In short: it’s a car nerd’s paradise.

When I visited, I expected a sleepy stroll through a few old cars. What I got instead was a deep dive into the weirder side of 20th-century transportation—cars that use hydrogen, cars with propellers, cars that were just a little too ahead of their time.

Not a Car Museum — a Museum of Ideas

At its core, the Tampa Bay Auto Museum isn’t about cars so much as it is about engineering thought experiments. The focus here is on vehicles that challenged the norms of their era, whether by design, drivetrain, suspension, or material. The collection leans heavily into French and Central European manufacturers, many of whom you’ve likely never heard of unless you moonlight as a vintage car historian.

The museum’s founder, Alain Cerf, originally from France, wanted to showcase mechanical innovation—not just flashy style. The result is a lovingly curated, deeply niche, and totally fascinating collection that rewards curiosity and close attention. The museum is stilled privately owned, and nearly every car in the collection is street legal. Many have won awards, too.

Most Fascinating Cars at Tampa Bay Auto Museum

Let’s take a look at a few of the headliners—or at least the ones that stuck in my head like a great indie film you can’t stop thinking about. Many of the cars at Tampa Bay Auto Museum are the only ones or one of the only ones left in the world. Nearly every car here was innovative in one way or another in its time. Signage in front of each provides the car’s specs, what makes it unique, and a brief history about the car and/or its maker.

1770 Fardier de Cugnot Reproduction

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first full-size, self-propelled land vehicle. Basically, he invented the first automobile. It was steam-powered with two wheels in the rear, one in the front, and a steam boiler. In the historic demonstration in 1770, Cugnot’s vehicle pulled a 5-ton cannon approximately 4.8 kilometers. It was reportedly unstable, though, and was never widely reproduced.

In 2010, students at ParisTech built a replica and drove it down a Void-Vacon street, Cugnot’s native commune in France. The one at Tampa Bay Auto Museum was also built in 2010 and is a faithful and fully functioning reproduction. The original 1770 Fardier de Cugnot is housed at Arts et Métiers Museum in Paris.

1925 Gerin

The 1925 Gerin Aerodyne is one of two cars designed by French military pilot Jacques Gerin. This vehicle was innovative in many ways- a body made of laminated wood over an aluminum space frame so it has no underlying chassis, independent four wheel suspension, a quick change drivetrain, adjustable steering wheel, and much more.

The body of this automobile was never finished. TBAM’s shop is finishing it using sheets of aluminum to contoured to the body. They are following Jacques Gerin’s drawings and patents to stay true to his vision.

1929 Ford Model A

I turned around from the wall of Czech Tatras and immediately thought of adventuring through the desert in the 1930s. This Ford Model A might not have been out there, but it was innovative in many ways. For starters, it has a safety glass windshield and standardized drive controls and pedals. The big innovation here, though, is the gazogene system that powers this vehicle.

This Model A comes from Palma de Mallorca in Spain where it received the gazogene conversion in 1939. Gazogenes became popular in the late 1930s when gasoline wasn’t available due to wars. This particular trademark Gas-O-Gen was installed in 1939 or 1940 after the Spanish Civil War.

The car is powered by hardwood lump charcoal that is burned in a sealed combustion chamber at the rear of the car. The fumes from the combustion chamber then flow through a series of filtration chambers. The final filtration process results in pure hydrogen which is pumped into the carburetor.

The Tatras

The Czech Tatras were some of my favorite cars at Tampa Bay Auto Museum. They reminded me of VW Beetles, and I love their rounded lines. The Tatra 77 is generally considered the world’s first production aerodynamically-designed automobile. I’m only showing here three of the six Tatras on the showroom floor.

The 1942 Tatra is in the T87 line which replaced the T77 in 1938. There were more than 3,000 T87s produced though there are less than 100 left in the world today. It had a top speed over 100 mph but had a tendency to oversteer and could be quite dangerous.

The 1938 Tatra shown here is in the T97 line, a smaller vehicle than the T87 but with the same technology. Production began in 1938; however, Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany in 1939. Hitler ordered a halt to the production of this Tatra due to its similarity to a Volkswagen being produced. Only 510 of these cars were made.

The 1950 Tatra was a less expensive version of the T97. It was named Tatraplan to pay homage to the first Communist economic plan. It’s also known as the Tatra 600. Like many of the cars at TBAM, this one is all original except for paint and some chrome plating.

1955 Claveau

Another car with rounded lines that I loved. Which figures, because this is the only one of its kind in the world. The 1955 Claveau was a prototype produced by Emile Claveau for the 1955 Paris Auto Show. It was Claveau’s last known design and the only one that has survived. This car was innovative for its rubber ring suspension which were later installed successfully on scooters and bikes.

This car was rescued from a salvage yard and later purchased by Tampa Bay Auto Museum. It was never driven as it never had a gas tank installed. The team at TBAM installed a gas tank, and it was driven for the first time 50 years after it was displayed at the Paris Auto Show.