The Chrysler Museum is the Victim of Poor Management

The Walter P. Chrysler Museum closed its doors forever this past Sunday and I was there for a few of the final hours. Like everyone else in the Mopar community, I am saddened by the loss of a historic facility that I enjoyed so much, but unlike many others, I am pissed off at how the museum has been managed over the past decade. For me, the closing of the Walter P. Chrysler museum has only served as a final kick in the balls from the folks who have run the museum into the ground over the past 10+ years.

Let me begin by pointing out that this isn’t one of my typical works, based on facts or real-world testing, but rather a look at how I have come to have a love-hate relationship with the Walter P. Chrysler Museum over the past decade.

First thing’s first – this closing isn’t Fiat’s fault. This problem has been caused by the museum-level management and I say that because this problem started long before Fiat had any involvement. The Chrysler Museum has been dying slowly for more than a decade and while some will point the finger at each of the corporate entities which oversaw the automaker during the last decade – the museum was killed by poor business management spanning all of those owners. The constant during that period was the people calling the shots for the museum – not the people calling the shots for the automaker. Fiat didn’t make the decisions that killed the museum and neither did Daimler or any of the other folks running the automaker. This was a failure by the people in the building, calling the shots for the museum…and I will tell you why I believe that.

When I moved to the Detroit area back in 2005, I was excited to be so close to the heart of the Mopar universe, living about 15 minutes from Auburn Hills. Visiting that area, I got to see all sorts of interesting test cars on the roads and in parking lots, along with attending events at the gorgeous Chrysler HQ building. Also, I was just 15 minutes from one of the most remarkable collections of Chrysler Group vehicles from the last 100 or so years in the form of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum.

I made my first trip to the museum with my wife (she was still my girlfriend back then) a few days after moving to Metro Detroit and I was amazed at the displays. The combination of classic cars which played a part in the development of the Chrysler brands and the racing vehicles which put the Mopar name atop performance world – plus a spread of concept cars from years past – made the Walter P. Chrysler Museum one of my favorite spots to take friends and family visiting the area. There was also an impressive gift shop with all sorts of Chrysler-branded items, from clothing to diecast cars, and I would frequently stop by to check out the newest collectables.

During the first few months in Detroit, I visited the museum at least every other week- enough so that I soon joined the “friends of the museum” club. I believe that it was less than $100 per year and for that price, I could visit the museum as often as I wanted with my immediate family and while there, I got a discount on items in the gift shop. There was even a magazine and a membership package with an official membership card, stickers, etc. It was a cool package and one that I made good use of, visiting the museum very regularly – including the weekly car shows and the annual CEMA show event.

On top of all of the vehicles, tech displays, classic imagery and the museum store, there were always at least a few volunteers on hand who knew the museum well, and who were more than happy to offer their information on the various features of the museum.

Visiting the museum was one of my favorite things to do on a slow Saturday, so when it came time for me and my wife (who is also a Mopar fan) to get married, we knew where we wanted to have the big event – at the Walter P. Chrysler Museum. After hearing about a friend who got married at the Henry Ford Museum, getting married at the Chrysler Museum seemed like the best idea in the world, so we began putting money away for what would likely be an expensive venue.

About a year before the wedding, we contacted the museum and explained that we were interested in using the facility in some way for our wedding. Even if we used the small theater area where there were no cars, we wanted to get married in the museum. The museum management responded simply by telling us “no”. So, my wife called and explained to whoever was in charge back then that we met via our interest in Chrysler Group vehicles, so we wanted to have some portion of the wedding there – even if we simply said our “I dos” and left. The management still quickly told her no, because they weren’t set up for weddings. We explained that it could only be a small group of 20-30 people, well below the capacity of the theater, and in addition to a rental cost, we would pay the door fee for every person who attended. We basically told them to name their price and we would make it happen, even if just a short ceremony in the theater – away from the vehicles – followed by a quick exit.

Still, no, because of an insurance problem that they couldn’t explain. Mind you, it was never like the manager checked into it, talked to someone else or anything else, she just said that no matter what, we weren’t permitted to get married in the museum.

So, we thought of something else. We proposed that we get married on the steps of the museum or on the back lawn, and in addition to paying a facility fee and paying admission for everyone on hand, we would also schedule the ceremony at a time when we wouldn’t interfere with the normal hours.

The woman replied by telling us that the museum wasn’t interested in any way in hosting our wedding, and that it was the end of the conversation.

We got married in a nice historic home in Romeo, Michigan and less than a month later, I received a member’s newsletter from the museum stating that they had begun offering wedding packages, which was kind of a shot in the gut after they had refused to consider any sort of wedding ceremony on the grounds less than a year earlier.

Shortly after that and sometime around the Cerberus takeover of Chrysler, the museum changed their membership program. The affordable $100 a year program was gone and in its place was a ridiculously elaborate tiered system. To get the same benefits of the package that I had when I joined, you had to pay somewhere in the area of $1,000 a year. Needless to say, I did not renew my membership and when I would visit the museum after that, paying the basic door fee, I noticed that attendance began to drop. There were often times where I would be the only visitor in the museum on what should have been peak times.

As attendance dropped, so did the quality of the content in the museum. Vehicles have never changed often, but as time went on, it became increasingly rare to see any new vehicles on display. As you might imagine, less “new” or different features leads to less attendance, as there isn’t much reason to visit a museum over and over to see the same things. The volunteers still did their best to provide a great experience for visitors, but with less new cars came less return visitors. Making matters worse, the weekly car shows that I had attended in my earlier days in Detroit came to an end, so I found less reason to make my way to Auburn Hills and the museum.

I don’t know how much longer it was before the company announced that the museum was closing except for private events, but it didn’t come as a huge shock when it was no longer open for any sort of regular hours. The museum was still open for the rare car show, but I imagine that in the past few years, the foot traffic into the museum had to be a fraction of what it was when I first arrived in the area.

After failing to offer fresh exhibits, jacking the price of a membership through the roof and literally refusing to take a bag of money to let someone get married in the parking lot, the shot callers for the Walter P Chrysler Museum had made enough piss poor decisions to kill it. People blame Fiat simply because the Museum died while they are the parent company of what we knew as the Chrysler Group, but Fiat was only involved for the final blow. The museum was killed by more than a decade of terrible business decisions made by people who seemingly didn’t have any idea of how to keep a museum interesting and those people aren’t the same folks who have brought the Chrysler automotive brands back from the brink of bankruptcy.

I was there on the final day and the museum was almost as great as I once remember it. The parking lot was packed and there were more people than I had seen inside of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum for more than 10 years. Unfortunately, while there were plenty of smiling faces, there were lots of people who were disappointed in the final effort. The metal rope protecting one vehicle was broken off in the display and rather than fixing it in some manner that looked nice, they just set an orange cone next to it. Multiple people were complaining that there were very few Vipers on display, as many had expected to see the LeMans-winning Viper from the 90s and the original Viper concept, but I suspect that both of those vehicles are in the Viper assembly plant. Most notably, and the thing that seemed to surprise the most people with whom I spoke was that the gift shop was just an empty room.

On the final day that the museum was open, I had planned to spend some money in the gift shop, possibly some sort of memento of the final days or maybe a diecast car for my collection, but there was nothing to buy. No posters, no stickers, no cars, nothing special to recognize the closing of the once-great Walter P. Chrysler Museum. The cars looked great, of course, and the volunteers in their bright red shirts were out in full force – making sure that every question was answered for one last time.

As I left the Walter P. Chrysler Museum that one last time, I found myself standing at the exit door, staring up at the 3-tier pedestal that greeted every visitor. I am still pissed off that they wouldn’t let me marry my wife there only to open up that option a short time later and I’m still annoyed that they raised the prices of the annual membership to unreasonable levels, but as I walked out that one last time – I was sad. I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to bring my kid to the Museum when he has his first Mopar muscle car and sad for my friends who didn’t make it to the museum before they closed the doors for the final time.

I made one more trip through each floor, not taking pictures – just taking in the sights as kids played with the interactive displays and as long-time gearheads told their stories about experiences with these vehicles back in the day. On this final day, in the final hours, the Walter P. Chrysler Museum was as bustling and as beautiful as ever and it burns me to my core that this wonderful place was killed by a decade of poor business decisions at the museum level.

Sure, I am still sucking on some sour grapes from the wedding discussion, but at the end of the day, I am sad not for myself – but for all of those people who won’t get to experience the Walter P. Chrysler Museum for years to come. While their poor business decisions may have technically only removed a small, unprofitable portion of the company, the closing of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum was like watching something special die for Mopar fans around the world.

It breaks my heart to see the museum die altogether, but like an ailing pet – at least it isn’t suffering anymore.

Related Articles