In late 2016, the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills was cleared of historic vehicles to make room for Maserati’s American headquarters. The museum itself was closed back in 2012, but the cars were displayed to a select few in the years between. After the museum’s clearout, it was obvious that the company’s 400-vehicle collection would not be lost, but it took until now for FCA to announce new premises for the cars. The place for them will be created from the former home of the Dodge Viper, the Conner Avenue Assembly Plant close to the 8 Mile Road in Detroit.
The factory building, which started out as a Champion spark plug factory in 1966 and stopped producing Vipers late last August, has nearly 400,000 square feet of floor space. Some 77,000 square feet of that will be turned into display space, 22,000 will be reserved for meetings, and the rest of the available space will house cars that are not shown. However, FCA says the facility will open to the public in the future, at a yet-unannounced date; it seems that the most important thing right now is to get the cars under one roof instead of having them scattered around the city.
As the Conner Avenue plant was decommissioned, hundreds of pieces of Viper and Prowler production related memorabilia were salvaged. Some of them will be kept by FCA, but plenty of stuff like signed hoods will be auctioned for charity from today until April 13. A full list of the available items will be available here.
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