BONUS: Autocar meets British Motor Museum CEO Paul Armstrong

Hello, properly here, bonus episode of our AutoCard podcast, My Week in Cars, sponsored

as you know very well by Anderson EV, makers of all British premium home chargers for EVs.

They've been doing it for a year now and we're proud to have them.

It is my pleasure to introduce this week Peter Armstrong, who's a new CEO or newish CEO of

the British Motor Museum, six months in the job. That right, Peter?

It's more like eight months now. Eight months in the job.

Oh, you're still able to smile, I see.

Still able to sell, still wet behind the ears, still not a clue what I'm doing.

I don't believe that for a second. In fact, what we're trying to

discovering this hour power is what you do, what you are going to do.

This is just, I should say, a little bit of a disclosure. I am a trustee in this place.

We've met already quite a few times. 400 car collection, started off full of

Austerns and Rovers and borruses and things like that, but now much broader Ford, Vauxhall,

Rolls Royce, and everything in between.

But the fact that I'm a trustee means that I'm probably not likely to tell the truth very much,

but luckily you will because you're here to improve and criticize and generally fix, aren't you?

I see idea, but I'm not trying to lose my job, so I might make up some stuff as well.

Excellent.

You're a museum specialist rather than a car man, aren't you? And that was

a thing you made very clear from the beginning. What did you make of the place?

Have you been here before, before you came here for real?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question because when I was choosing what I want to apply for,

so the bit of background is that I was working in museums in this country, in England,

for a long time, and then I decided to go and work abroad, and I ended up working in America

for 11 years, and then came back to this country mostly because the grandchildren were born and

wanted to go and see the grandchildren. But I then needed to look at what actual museum I wanted to

work in, and which we would be, because as a museum specialist it's not necessarily down to the

objects that are in it, it's more down to the stories that you can tell and how interesting

the place is and do you want to work there. So I worked at the Royal Armies for a long period of

time, so I think Leeds didn't know this place existed, worked in the museum industry for like

20 years, didn't know this place existed. So it really was a question of not knowing that this

museum had been going for long, so there was some work to be done to erase its profile. But also,

when you look at a museum you have to say what's its product, how deep can its foundations be,

because lots of museums are built, we all know the stories of the museum, the baked beans, the

museum with the sheep and the, it's actually a museum of the Armstrong's as well, my last name

in Scotland. I know what an exciting museum that is. You've been there? I've been there, I was asked

to do some work for them and it's basically a shed in a place in Scotland where the Armstrong's come

from and it's full of stuff to do with the Armstrong's and it's five quid to get in and if

you're not an Armstrong where the hell would you go? So they're not doing too well on the numbers,

so I did some work with them. But you know there are these museums all over that are really formed

by people who are real enthusiasts in their subject and then can't understand why nobody

else is interested. So you have to make sure that their product you've got is really good and so this

is a really good museum from a point of view of the foundations that it's got. It's got a great

product, it's got a great building which is always interesting because a lot of these buildings have

a lot of work on them and this old and it also has a conference centre which drives people too when

the boot comes. There's another income stream. I always say if museums were successful and profitable

then the private sector would run them and they're all run by charities, they're all run by the

government or they're run by local governments because museums are not a great model for making

huge amounts of money paying your shareholders. That's not the reason they're here for. So this

place has got a really good product and a really good foundation and good income streams that are

not necessarily in normal museums. So it was a good solid place to come to work for and then

I'm answering all these questions before you're answering questions. Oh I've got plenty more.

So and then because I'd just come from a maritime museum full of boats it was the same

sort of topic. Boats are large objects that transport people that people love, people are

really enthusiastic about the first one they ever had as well as the most beautiful historical one

that they've got in there now they've made some money. So it's a similar kind of topic and so I

was really interested in that case. So when you walk into any museum but it's the proposition

really that you look for first? Yeah well the thing about museums is that it's fun right? Yeah and

that's one of the things that we sometimes forget we get so precious about the objects

that they stop being fun and you're supposed to whisper you know you're supposed to go and

if you look at the museums particularly in America they all look like Greek temples because

that's the Greeks for the places where the knowledge is. They've all got steps and then

the top of the steps there's going to be some the founder on a horse somewhere and then you go

inside and you're supposed to shush and read these tiny little labels that you can't quite

read because they're tiny and then you get bored they're not fun and and people want to spend

their money particularly in today when we haven't got a lot of money we want to do some fun things

and family things and make memories not necessarily you know go along and worship these particular

objects so well that's really interesting what do you see is do you when you first came here

did you see instantly things you could improve? Well yeah this is my this is the bane of being a

museum director at length of time I've always been a museum director as if you walk into any

museum and you immediately start looking at what the lightning is like where the toilets are and

where the way finding is any good and what they're doing and so and about that time that's

usually when your wife says I'm off to the cafe you're on your own so it's a it tends to be

so yes you're always looking to see what you think so you could improve what seems you could

be. Give us a give us a flavor of this place it's a massive roundhouse

auditorium or sort of exhibition space which is right next to Jaguar factory with the Aston Martin

factory on the other side of it yes so it's in this sort of interesting area but what did you

give us give us your first thoughts give us your well I thought when I first arrived

that it's a really modern looking building and I wasn't expecting that because it's been here for

30 odd years so it's a cool looking modern building which has to be because it's about something that

is cool the cars and the shapes and the design is important so you don't want to have just some

warehouse of cars so it's a cool looking building when you get there there's a huge parking lots

outside car parks they change it now car parks not parking lots back to America car park outside

which we use for shows so there are a lot of shows here so you know this week there's a motorbike

there's actually a motorbike one on sunday the bamboo run which is historic motorbikes

but three weeks ago there was the BMW show 5000 people last week we launched an exhibition based

around the Forza Horizon 6 game we got like 5000 people came for that so big shows happened because

we can use these parking lots in the outside area and then the building itself is a large

round building which allows you to wander around it rather than have to follow a route and that's

got and then outside and that's the cars you would expect to see yeah you know the first mini the

first Land Rover the things you would expect to see for British built cars and then outside there's

another huge building which is our collection center which is really just where we put everything

else that we couldn't fit in this building in a warehouse but because if you're a real petrol

head it's a place you can wander through and see the collection it's not just locked away somewhere

that you can't see it yeah there's a lot of extraordinary stuff there isn't there you know

experimental cars that people didn't even know existed yeah there's a lot of that interesting

it's also a Jaguar Daimler how it's just Truster based so there's a big exhibition from them and

it's also where we have a little workshop so we got five people that work in the workshop that

conserve cars rather than rebuild cars that's right there's a deck you can watch them you can

watch them do it yeah yeah and it's very similar to when I was in America the seaport where I'd

worked before because they had a large a shipyard where the big ships would come in and they would

be worked on as well so where was that in Mystic in Connecticut so if you're going halfway between

Boston and New York there's a place called Mystic for those who are old enough you'll remember Mystic

Pizza with Julia Roberts it's that little town it's a little village fishing we used to be a fishing

village but now it's full of sailors in New England elite and there's a huge huge

museum there the living history museum really which has old little ships in it as well is it

is the job for somebody like you when you go into a job like that or this one

do you do you attempt to sort of join the community or do you sort of stay as a

as a and a kind of a critic or a manager you know what's the

it's vitally important that you become part of that community yeah because people especially

with Mystic is a small village most people have worked there at some point or their father'd work

there so this museum's the same so in the auto industry in this area where we are in the heart

of the automobile industry right you know the commentary round is in Birmingham etc everybody

has either worked in the industry or had some brother who worked in the industry or a father or

a mother or some relation or grandfather who worked in the automobile industry and it's really

important for me who's never worked well actually I have worked in the automobile industry let's come

that and understand how much people are passionate about the car industry and I don't mean passionate

as in I'm passionate about that particular car although you might be but I'm just passionate

about the automobile industry in this country yeah it's one of the things that I was going to

sort of tackle you on was that about being a museum specialist is that I'm a I'm a car specialist

I love cars and one of the things that Jesus you offer about use people who know about museums

is that they tend to say to you well of course it's not just about you car geeks it's about

other people they're more important than you are and I'm sick of being told I'm not very important

than a car museum right that car geek is important surely so that you're always looking for your

aura how many people you can get in the building right because you need to make the money so they

always look at how we can expand that audience and introduce we have a massive

core audience of car geeks and that's that's an audience in its own right it's like if you had a

if I had a museum that was all about I don't know the national portrait museum and I was looking at

all the paintings and there might be simply a real fascinating by the painters or painters

themselves that's a very small niche but a car is just it's democracy everybody's had a car or

known a car it doesn't matter whether you've had an old jalopy that cost you a thousand pounds

and that you still love or whether you've got the latest Ferrari it's just that kind of I am a car

I have a car connection in some way so by saying it's not just for the car geeks that's ridiculous

because everybody's a car geek yeah because I mean I'm buying a car for my wife now who isn't

particularly a car geek but God she's looked at some cars before we came to the right one

so have you come to the right we've come to the right one I'm going on Saturday well I hope so

let's try it out but it's you know everybody has got a passion for them and an involvement with

them or something it might not be really that interested what's under the hood it might not

be that interested in you know all the kind of history of it but they are interested in the car

and they have some relationship with it yeah I think that's very true so you've been here six

eight months you said you must have drawn some conclusions by now what what what's going to change

well the big change for there will be some big changes coming down the line I mean changes that

will cost us a lot of money and but we'll go to various different funds to do so as we go down the

line but but in the small areas that change I want to see a lot more movement so we have all

these cars that you can come and see but we don't drive many of them and cars are not there to just

look out for there to be driven so they look like most of them run don't they yeah so we try to keep

all in running which is fascinating but if I remember the public can I come I want to see them

going I want to see them moving around so over the summer we're going to have a lot more cars

going out with our volunteers to take people on even even it's just like a five minute trip around

the museum but a lot more to see the visually cars moving backwards and forwards and just being

static to look at because we do pride ourselves in trying to keep them all running as possible

you know I went to the London to Brighton and that's the site to be seen when they kind of

leave that in the morning to head from London to Brighton run that's fascinating so we want to

so that's one of the things we're going to be changing pretty quickly and we're also trying

to link as much to do with how people perceive with cars now so the Forza Horizon exhibition

that we've currently got on looks at how the digital world perceives cars so the Forza game

for those that don't know it is 42 million players around the world it's the biggest car game in the

world and people sit in their bedrooms and actually the average age is 41 apparently so it's not a

kids game wow and didn't they that yeah no they play those games and they drive those cars and that

might be the only time they ever see those cars is on the screen so what we're trying to do is say

you can actually come and see the actual cars yourself here in real life but people are engaging

with cars now through the screens as much as they are through your podcast but also you

we know how many of these things on Instagram and different kind of programs socials I mean

there's somebody they've got 21 million followers and all of that that's how they're engaging with

it they've seen the success of Top Gear and the TV programs now the Formula One TV program

the real popularity of these is that people are seeing them through the screens so our

job really is to help them make the connection between looking into the screens and then seeing

the real thing as well this was Forza Six wasn't it yeah Horizon Six so that there's been loads

of iterations of this before I believe five of them yeah yes why do you reckon they chose

to launch that here well that the company who makes it is a company called Playground Games

and Playground Games are based in Leamington Spa and Leamington Spa is down the road

okay and the people who worked in Playground Games brought their kids here and loved it

wow so they just came to visit us and said hey this we really like this place we're going to be

launching this new Horizon Six I mean they launched it in Los Angeles and so you know

where it's like lost it's like you know it's like only fools and horses it's just sort of Los

Angeles Dubai indeed but we've did it here as well so it was a big

oh yeah 5,000 people we had drifting we had a guy Sonny Kang who's the who's placed hang

in the Fast and Furious series of films he was here so we had thousands of people

no that's great big success yeah huge yeah and it's still on it's on until November

so people can still come and try I mean I I've played the game it's upstairs in our mezzanine

level so it's upstairs in mezzanine level they have these huge screens and they're actually

sitting in what seems like a car and trying to play the game I end up in the paddy field

going round and round in circles no matter what I do but some people are very good at it and then

the actual cars that are in that game or some of the cars that are in that game are highlighted on

that on the mezzanine level and within the museum we've got about 25 of the cars that appear within

the game and we've bought some in as well about it with Polaris which is a really weird thing we've

got you know Aston Martin's in here the Valkyries here those kind of things that's great you know

it presumably does a lot of good for the museum too it does yeah and I hope you're impressed by

the name I'm named a few cars no I'm very impressed after eight months I may have got them completely

wrong but do you find that do you think you're going to finish up knowing something about cars in

the end so what happens is all the stuff about boats goes out one year and I think about cars

comes in the other year but what is what is interesting about being your museum director

rather than a car or a boat or whatever expert is that I find the stories that are fascinating

the ones that most people find fascinating so if I took you on a tour my tours would be about the

people and the cars and the interesting facts and the fun bits of that it wouldn't be about telling

you about the mechanics and the engineering of those things and a lot of people just want that

they just want that kind of well I do even though even though I care about the compression ratio and

crankshaft and all the rest of it I think I'm still interested in there's a couple of tales that

that we discussed just before we started talking one of them concerns a jagger which is over there

over the way tell me that story oh yes that was when I came for my interview when he gave me a hard

time I was just looking you asked me which car I thought was the most interesting one and there

was a there was a car in the collection that center that was and forgive me I'm

seven cars made in Coventry of this particular type of car and then it was made during the

Second World War and they're all in this warehouse and a bomb hit it from the blitz during the

German attack and six of the cars were destroyed and the seventh one just got a bit of damage to it

and we have that seventh one in the collection and so it's labeled the car that Hitler couldn't

destroy and it's still a great because it's got a great story behind it and you can see where the

shrapnel of the bomb hits the back of the car and you can see but it gives but because six were

hit it gives you it immediately takes you to the Coventry and how Coventry was devastated during

the Second World War and starts to think about that and it adds to the storyline not just about

let me just look at this car yeah so I found that really interesting yeah yeah you've also got a

story about uh how you dealt with being the director of the Armory's Museum didn't you which

which I think you you started off like describing as a as a museum full of guns and knives which

yeah it's an interesting so the the Armory's which is a national museum it's based in Leeds the

head officer in Leeds but it also looks after the White Tower and the Towerland and then the place

called Fort Nelson in Portsmouth is a national collection of arms and armor and most people

think it's about knights in armor jousting and a lot of it is but it's also every other weapon

that ever has been in this British army right up to modern day and everything and everything

but what of course it is is a museum full of things that put holes in people or holes in

things if you're hunting yeah so that's a really difficult story to tell especially if you're

trying to invite bus loads of school kids in exactly it's supposed to be primary school kids who mostly

have people who are teachers who just don't want to engage with that particular storyline with those

kids and that's that is the key number of children that normally go into museums is that

Canada age range you know and you open the museum two days after Dunblane not a good time is that

what happens that's what happened oh so uh so you've got a museum full of guns

that are bound and a full of knives which are more or less bound in this country for the right

reasons I lived in America it's the right reason but uh but uh you're trying to encourage people to

come to that museum and say and so you've really got a really really niche market of people who

want to go and look at those things but we looked at it and said well what happens if it's not about

that what happens about it's about protection what about all these objects these guns and knives

were developed to protect a nation or an individual or a lord or somebody's house or whatever it

happened to be they were designed and built to give form protection if we start looking at protection

can we look at things like well let's take a look at a knight's helmet

knight's helmet's put on when he's jousting to protect him from being hit in the head by a bit

of stick it's not the same kind of helmet that a kid might wear on a skateboard so let's look at

the helmets and do they what kind of materials they're made out of uh and talk to go into that

kind of stem work that we're doing with that let's look at night crime uh kids are stabbing

into the for why why why are kids taking knives well they're taking a knife because it's cool

they perceive it as cool and they're fighting they're going to get attacked that's the same

reason why a 17th century guy used to walk around with a sword because he's thought it looked cool

and he was fighting he's going to get attacked he's Romeo and Juliet so we can once you start

opening that kind of storyline it opens it too much why no audience and you found that that played

well even with the the the officialdom didn't it yeah because yeah yeah we start work a lot with the

home office and with the police and all those things because museums are very neutral places

they can look at things from a neutral perspective they don't have a agenda and people believe museums

so and a world where people are not believing anybody anymore so nobody believes a politician

nobody leaves anything on the website forgive me but nobody leaves a journalist nobody believes

nobody believes these people very much anymore because there's so much false stuff going on

museums still have a level of belief you come in here and see a car and it says this car was built

in 1974 you'll believe it's 1974 because it's a museum they've done their research they know

what they're talking about yeah so you have to be very conscious of that when you're telling

those stories that you're really giving the factual side of it out and that you're ensuring that you're

telling the right kind of stories presumably that's quite an it's a significant investment just to

make sure that everything you say is accurate yeah well that's why I was saying why museums

don't make any profits because you know you need a curatorial stuff and you need an academic stuff

and you need an archive stuff who are doing all this research or they're doing all this research

but they're not necessarily generating revenue so you have to you know balancing all those things

off is that is that the nub of your your own interest in this the the desire to just put

things on the record better truthful partially I mean I think my my main desire is a phrase I use

if we're not having fun they're so the main thing is that we really enjoy what we're

doing and make it a joyful thing so that when the visitor comes to do it they get joyful and they

pick up biosmosis all this factual stuff the Americans have a horrible name for it it's called

edutainment oh dear so exactly it's about educating but also entertaining yeah and so

that's what we're trying to do have so you have a good time you enjoy it you have

memories you have a it's a nice place to go to but by the way you're also learning all this stuff

yeah I reckon I've been here hundreds of times I reckon I'll learn something over the same time

yeah it's a funny place like that yeah I was just you're gonna have to remember

remind me of the name as well so I was just this thing yesterday where we're opening a blue plaque

to oh Eleanor Thornton Eleanor Thornton okay so the lady who was used as the model for the spirit

that goes in the front of every rose voice yeah she was a proper fast woman I gather yeah she was

but she was like it's 1920s you know 1910 1920 and she and she had a fascinating tale a fascinating

story and then it opened had a blue plaque went on the wall of where she used to live in

Levington Spa yesterday and I went to it and I just went to it because I wanted to represent the

museum because we're quite connected the rose voice and societies the rose

voice owners club but when I got there this is when I learned all about this woman you know

but killed on a by a torpedo in the first world war while traveling with Lord Buley to uh

you know illegitimate child to Lord Buley who uh and shared child then you know is giving away

and but at the actual blue plaque were the great great grandchildren so you know fascinating story

and tale all about this yeah one thing to do with a car that you could open up so many stories

personal stories as well as the biggest story as well yeah yeah that sounds great I wish I'd been

there yeah it's good um what what people always people always in another generalization that's

what we do in journalism um it's often said that museums are hard to finance what what holds this

place up why why is how can it open its doors all of every day you know where does the dog come from

well it's different streams and there's one of the reasons you know when I looked at the museum

that I was interested in coming to so there's a conferences that we have so we have a huge conference

space now because the museum is built on a bit of a slope you can take cars and push the cars

into the conference spaces so car launches things so we can hold 600 people in some of the rooms we've

20 on rooms so you can put a couple of cars on the stage can't you on the stage yeah so that makes

about two and a half million quid or something out of that and then there's the visitors who've

come to the doors who've paid for the ticket to come here and then the shows so the shows are

really big so even on a Saturday that's raining uh we'll have to do more because of that show that

we do on a Saturday without that show so we do a considerable number of shows all the way through

the year the big ones are the BMW show and the Landrover so

and then we do even do things like some train shows as well but they're the ones that

you know we've got I think it's 34 this year we're doing 34 shows wow so that's a whole you can camp

here too can't you if you ask not yeah you can stay overnight yeah stay overnight we're building a

hotel so we're in the middle of just starting to think about putting a shovel in the ground to

build a hotel which we should open in spring of next year uh which will have about 130 rooms in it

gosh and then next door to that we're building which we just signed a couple of weeks ago

a uh at least to put an EV uh station in there working a big one isn't it yeah it's about 12 EVs

it's the Dutch company that we're working with and they're putting it into that space there because

we're only two minutes off the m40 yeah so cars if we're only people can come and charge their cars

so presumably those two things could make a big difference here couldn't they

I hope so I mean it's it becomes much more a destination yeah then just to kind of come

to see the museum it's much more a destination passing through yeah so you know you've got

bring your car charge it up while you're charging up you can go around the museum

yeah really interesting of course yeah so all so that that's that was all happening and pretend

that's something to do with me but that was all before I got here but I'm making it happen at least

but but uh the big thing for this museum I think is that it hides its light under the

bush a little bit it's a fantastic museum it's got some incredible objects within it it's got

a great story to tell it's in the heart of the British automotive which is still a massive industry

for this country even though people think you know we're not building cars anymore the the work that

we're doing in uh in technology and the various changes that the British engineers are making

and small organizations all over this country is it's still the world leaders yeah I need to tell

that story as well yeah I think so the the people that you're right next door to

are building particularly distinguished cars don't they we're going to see this electric

jaguar which controversial but it's going to be extraordinary having just been shown the car

without disguising on it I can say it looks fantastic yeah and of course Aston Martin right

next door yeah um and we are of course in the middle of the the old oxford corridor where the

place is full of formula one teams and God knows what yeah it's it we are and that's how

serenity is connected to me in some particular way and we're having in about two weeks time we're

having a four day STEM session for school children so four days of bringing in people from Aston Martin

people from JLR people from playground games and digital people who will come and talk to the young

potential new engineers so the kids will be in these big auditoriums yeah yeah yeah we go and they

and they'll actually stand up and talk yes so they've got like 400 kids they'll do some activities

as well because otherwise it's boring yeah but they do some activities but it's all about you could

be an engineer you could work in this area wow or you could do anything in this area because

it's not just about engineering there's marketing and finance and all those other areas that you

could be working in if you really work really hard you could be a journalist in this area

nobody wants that no that's okay fair enough what museum director so you uh you know we're just talking

about what the future could look like based around the automotive industry is that sort of

the last question is that the the the reason places like this will survive you know in 20

years 30 years time you still see a role for yeah I think so I think that we kind of there's

various different types of museums isn't there's museums you can go and just look at things on

the walls and look at beautiful objects there's nothing wrong with that to see those two objects

and there's those ones that actually have a sort of egalitarian work that's gone on with the people

who build the stuff and get their hands dirty we're one of the hands dirty ones I think and so

we will have a role going forward what that's going to be I think there's going to be much

more to do with the technology that is going to be necessarily telling us about the history I

the phrase I use is is that we are not just keepers of history we are active participants

in it we're going to be doing things that make a difference to the future not just show you

stuff that was in the past yeah that's exciting well thanks for talking to us Peter Armstrong and

I look forward to a a long and happy tenure in this place let's do it again in eight months

I'm still here that would be up to you cheers thank you

Ford F-150 Lightning

Forza Horizon 6

conserve cars

drifting

Aston Martin Valkyries

compression ratio

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