Meet Blake: A fourth-grade boy crazy about cars

A private tour through the Martin Auto Museum’s 170-plus vehicles gave nine-year-old Blake a walk through automotive history — from an 1886 Benz to a Duesenberg once linked to Al Capone’s inner circle. Surrounded by that much irreplaceable history, it was still the modern muscle cars that held his attention longest. See what makes this Phoenix collection, and its youngest fans, stand out.

The good-humored fourth-grader is grinning ear-to-ear as he enjoys a private tour of the Martin Auto Museum in north Phoenix, a collection of more than 60 automobiles. While the vehicles on display include a 1922 Chevy Sport Roadster and a 1930 J-249 Duesenburg Boattail, itâ€™s the 21st Century muscle cars that draw Blake.

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Most museum tours end with kids checking their phones by the halfway mark — but Blake wasn’t most kids, and this wasn’t most museums. A private walk through more than a hundred vehicles spanning over a century of automotive history had plenty to hold a fourth-grader’s attention, from a horseless carriage predating his great-great-grandparents to a Prohibition-era Duesenberg once linked to Chicago’s underworld. And yet, surrounded by all that irreplaceable history, it wasn’t the oldest or rarest car in the building that lit him up. What actually pulled a nine-year-old’s attention away from a Duesenberg and toward something built decades later?

A Collection Built by One Man’s Obsession

The museum Blake toured traces back to real estate developer Mel Martin, who started collecting cars in the 1960s and never really stopped. What began as a personal hobby eventually grew into a formal collection in 2005, and by 2008 Martin had opened it to the public as the Martin Auto Museum. Today the collection has expanded well past 170 vehicles, alongside one of the largest assortments of automotive memorabilia, antique gas pumps, and vintage signage found anywhere in the Southwest.

History Old Enough to Predate the Automobile Industry Itself

The depth of the collection is what makes a tour like Blake’s possible in the first place. The oldest vehicle on display is an 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen — widely considered the first true automobile — alongside a 1930 Duesenberg J Boattail Speedster once owned by John Factor, an associate of Al Capone, and the actual 1963 Chrysler 300 that paced the 47th Indianapolis 500. It’s the kind of range that turns a museum visit into a genuine timeline of automotive history, not just a static car lineup.

Why the Muscle Cars Still Win

With all that history on display, it says something that the cars closest to Blake’s own era were the ones that held his attention longest. That’s not unusual, though — muscle cars have a visceral, immediate appeal that predates any appreciation for provenance or rarity, and it’s often the entry point that turns casual young visitors into lifelong car people. A century-old Duesenberg earns respect; a modern muscle car earns genuine excitement, and museums like this one get to watch that difference play out in real time.

Why Private Museum Collections Matter

Institutions like the Martin Auto Museum fill a gap that big-name manufacturer museums and major public collections can’t always cover — a single, passionate collector’s personal taste, built up car by car over decades rather than assembled all at once with a curator’s checklist. That personal touch tends to produce collections with a distinct point of view, mixing genuinely significant historical vehicles alongside cars the founder simply loved, which is part of what makes a tour through a place like this feel different from a more clinical, encyclopedic museum experience.

Introducing the Next Generation to Car Culture

Moments like Blake’s tour matter more than they might seem at first glance, because the collector car hobby has a well-documented aging problem — the enthusiasts who grew up wrenching on muscle cars in the 1960s and ’70s aren’t getting any younger, and the hobby depends on younger visitors discovering the same excitement early enough to eventually become collectors, restorers, and museum patrons themselves. A single memorable museum visit can plant that seed in a way that browsing photos online never quite manages to replicate.

What Makes a Collection Worth a Century-Long Tour

Spanning from an 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen through modern muscle cars means a single walk through the Martin Auto Museum covers essentially the entire span of automotive history in one afternoon, a scope few private collections anywhere in the country can match. That range is exactly what allows a visitor like Blake to walk past Prohibition-era gangster cars and Indy pace cars without losing interest, because there’s always something from a slightly different era waiting just a few steps further into the building.

The Cars That Started It All, Still on Display

It’s worth remembering that every muscle car on display, no matter how exciting to a nine-year-old visitor, only exists because of the decades of automotive engineering and business history that came before it — the same history represented by the Duesenbergs, early electrics, and horseless carriages sharing floor space in the same building. A museum that keeps all of that history under one roof gives visitors the rare chance to see the whole timeline connect in real time, rather than treating muscle cars as if they appeared in a vacuum.

A Museum Built to Be Toured, Not Just Viewed

Unlike some private collections that stay closed to all but a select few, the Martin Auto Museum’s decision to open to the public in 2008 and keep expanding since then reflects a deliberate choice to treat the cars as something meant to be shared rather than simply owned. That accessibility is exactly what made a tour like Blake’s possible in the first place, and it’s a model more private collectors could stand to follow if the hobby wants to keep bringing in new enthusiasts.

One Afternoon, an Entire Timeline

Few nine-year-olds get to spend an afternoon walking between a car built before their great-great-grandparents were born and one built during their own lifetime, and that compressed sense of history is exactly what makes a place like the Martin Auto Museum valuable — not as a static archive, but as a place where the whole story of the automobile is still close enough to reach out and touch.

The Kind of Visit That Sticks

Plenty of kids get dragged through museums they’ll forget by the following weekend, but a private, guided tour through a working collection like this one tends to land differently — there’s no velvet rope keeping a nine-year-old at arm’s length from the cars, and that closeness is often exactly what turns a passing interest into a lifelong one.

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