Darryl Starbird’s Car Museum Is A Weird Road Trip

Technically, it's called Darryl Starbird's Rod & Custom Car National Hall of Fame... It's a mouthful, no doubt, but it's a collection of unique and wildly modified cars you won't find anywhere else in the world.

Normally, most people get exposure to the hot rods and true custom cars through the traditional fairground car exposé. I remember always asking my pops to take me to see it when I was younger, then again asking the buddies to go when we were legal drivers of our ridiculous chopped and bagged mini-trucks. It was the style at the turn of the century. My generations Zubaz pants if you will. Unbelievably, nobody was ever up for going to one of these shows.

Perhaps it was the generational gap between what Boomer's and Millennials considered to be "custom" cars. Darryl Starbird's collection seems to parallel that of the wild beatnik side of car builders like Big Daddy Ed Roth and the hundreds of talents that were influenced by his incredible imagination for motorsports. While they were show-stoppers in the 60's and 70's, those designs were seen as cliche and kitch by the time we all came of age. Incredibly cool when we were ten, but it was cooler to think they were lame by the time we hit sixteen. Typical stupid kid mentality.

Skip forward to today in 2021, I'm just now learning that Darryl Starbird has an actual museum filled with these cars in Northeast Oklahoma that's open to the public during the warmer months of the year. How is this not common knowledge? Then again, if you've ever ventured East of I-35, you've probably turned off your interests that direction like I have. Lots of trees, some real pretty country, and meth. Hard pass... but if you can make a pilgrimage to the home of the wildest cars of yesteryear, it might be worth the risk of being trapped out that way.

Here's the official website.