Detour Pit Stop #21: The Brumos Collection, USA
As one of the most impressive collections of landmark cars in Porsche’s motorsport history, it would have been a crime for the Brumos Collection to live behind closed doors. But that’s exactly where it used to reside, locked away in a warehouse, down the road from the historic site of the Brumos Porsche dealership on Atlantic Boulevard, in Jacksonville, Florida.
Brumos Racing is one of the most long-standing and highly regarded sports car race teams in the world. Or rather, it was. In 2013, 42 years after its first motor race, Brumos Racing’s drivers shut off the flat-six cylinder engine of their Porsche 911 GT3 and the team packed away for one final time. Brumos achieved great things, including four overall victories at the Daytona 24 Hour race, widely recognised as one of the toughest sports car races in the world.
The Brumos Racing team was established by Peter Gregg, a successful racer who bought the Brumos - Brundage Motors - business and its various car dealerships in 1964. He set up the race team in ‘71 and went on on to form a legendary partnership driving with Hurley Haywood. It’s the cars of that era, which they raced together, that are displayed in the Brumos Collection, plus some significant additions from Porsche’s past - a 917K that was owned by Jo Siffert and starred in Steve McQueen’s Le Mans, should that float your boat. (Our suspicion is it will.)
The collection is housed in a bespoke building that harks back to the former Ford plant in Jacksonville, there’s almost as much to admire about the architecture as there is about the cars housed within. A boardwalk entrance nods to the board tracks that were wooden wonders of the 1920s, built using Oregon Fir or Southern White Pine, depending on the location, and held together with 50 tons of steel nails.
Significant European sports and racing cars mix it with prized Indycars, for the first half of the tour. It’s hard to drag yourself away from those to take in all that the Porsche collection has to offer, including Buster, the 1968 Mercedes transporter that Hurley Haywood said “…struck the fear of God into the other teams’ hearts because they knew Porsche was here.”
A personal favourite is the little Porsche 914/6 GT, which Haywood and Gregg pedalled to overall victory in the 1971 IMSA GT Championship. It looks like a little menace, which is exactly what it proved to be, beating more powerful cars. The next year, the rare model ended up heading to Mexico with Hector Rebaque, the future Formula One driver. It was discovered 16 years later, in a field with a tree growing through its floorpan. It’s enough to send a shiver up your spine.
With clean and clearly presented tablet displays and a wealth of archive material, the modest museum may only number around 65 cars but it is as immersive as you could hope for. If you’re looking for a day off from the family vacation in Orlando, and have had enough of Disney Land, drive just a couple of hours north and treat yourself to a tour of the Brumos Collection before the owner, Dan Davis, former majority owner of the Brumos dealerships, changes his mind and closes the doors once again.
Words James Mills Twitter | Instagram
Photography James Mills, The Brumos Collection