Roush Automotive Collection Is an Automotive Treasure Trove You Can Tour for Free

Jamie McMurray was in the wrong lane.

With one lap to go in the 2007 Pepsi 400, the 31-year-old driver from Missouri found himself leading a procession of drafting stock cars around Daytona Motor Speedway. The trouble was that his Ford Fusion was outflanked, with Kyle Busch to his inside. Busch, then NASCAR’s up-and-coming bad boy, had a similar comet’s tail of cars in the wake of his Monte Carlo … and the preferred lane.

Two 200-mile-per-hour conga lines raced toward the checkered flag.

In those closing moments, the bottom groove of the 2.5-mile tri-oval appeared to be the fastest way around. To make matters worse for McMurray, Busch had his brother Kurt behind him, providing a friendly shove in the draft.

Luckily, McMurray also had a drafting partner—his Roush Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards. Side-by-side, the two lines raced under the fluttering flag. It was a dead heat. McMurray beat Busch to the start/finish line by .005 seconds.

“I would have bet all the money in the world Kyle Busch would have won it coming out of turn four,” conceded a NASCAR announcer. Nearly 20 years later, the finish still stands as the closest in the Cup Series at Daytona.

You might expect this sort of car to be on display at a museum. You’d be correct.

You might also expect there to be some sort of admission to view a car of such provenance. You’d be wrong!

Jamie McMurray’s Daytona-winning stock car, and some 110 other historic vehicles, are on public display at the Roush Automotive Collection in Livonia, Michigan, a stone’s throw from Detroit. Cars parked mirror-to-mirror fill multiple rooms of the warehouse compound. McMurray’s winning Fusion is still covered in confetti as well as the residue left by a Pepsi and beer shower some two decades ago.

Most vehicles on display are tied to a compelling anecdote like McMurray’s Daytona triumph. Race cars, race trucks, classics, concepts, prototypes, military, tractors—name any motorsport or facet of automotive enthusiasm, and you can probably find an example in the Roush collection. The best part? They’re all free to view.

Guests are welcome to wander the diverse collection and snap photos without paying a single penny, and it’s largely thanks to one man: Jack Roush.

Roush was born in Kentucky and grew up in Ohio. After graduating from Berea College, he moved to Michigan to work for Ford. He eventually left the Blue Oval to pursue building his own company, Roush Performance Engineering, which he founded in 1976. During that era of his life, he also fielded a professional drag racing team with Wayne Gapp, competing in NHRA, IHRA, and AHRA.

In 1982, Roush partnered with German race team Zakspeed to build a Mustang for the IMSA Camel GT Series. For the next decade, Roush built fast Fords and employed road racing’s best drivers across SCCA and IMSA. Hall-of-famers like Tommy Kendall, Scott Pruett, and Willy T. Ribbs took home trophies for Roush—24 national championships and titles, including 12 manufacturer’s championships and an incredible 119 road racing victories, to be exact.

Later that decade, in 1988, Roush pivoted from road racing to stock cars and built a shop in NASCAR country (North Carolina) and hand-picked Mark Martin as his first driver. Together the duo would go on to earn 35 Cup Series wins.

To this day, Roush still competes and owns multiple teams in NASCAR. He has since partnered with Fenway Sports Group and brought on fellow Michigan man Brad Keselowski as co-owner, and the winning results have remained the same. Roush’s teams have won eight championships across NASCAR’s three national series, and this year’s roster of three drivers—Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece, and Keselowski—is poised to add to that total.

In addition to his on-track results, Roush has contributed to the safety of the sport by helping develop roof flaps on stock cars to prevent pirouetting flips at superspeedways like Daytona.

Also, if you have any interest in go-fast Fords, you’ve likely perused the Roush Performance parts catalog. Same guy. Roush is a pilot, too, and he owns multiple P-51 Mustangs.

Take all these disciplines, combine them with personal cars, concepts, and automobilia (signs, trophies, experimental stop lights), cram everything in a 30,000-square-foot building, and you have the Roush Automotive Collection. If you ever find yourself in Southeast Michigan, it’s a must-stop.