The Best of America, and America's Best.(The Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Collection.)(Column)

Byline: Dutch Mandel

I felt sort of like a blues club owner who shoos the last late-night patron out then sits down with a tall cold one to enjoy a private jam session. That was lunch in Ypsilanti, Michigan, home to as much automotive emotion as one little burg in the shadows of a big brother town could hope to muster.

This was the Monday following Ford's centennial celebration, and just a ways down old US-12 they packed crates, coiled speaker wire and pushed Porta-Johns off Henry Ford II World Center grounds. The masses-among them a bundle of Model Ts that trekked 2700 miles to mecca, and one fellow who drove from Brazil to this car-nivale-descended on Motown for the happy hundredth party.

Now that was over, and here I sat in a bar booth across from Jack Miller, the force behind the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Collec-tion and Miller Motors Hudson, as he spun tales about people and places long gone and forever etched in automotive history.

Miller's family once owned the Hudson store in Ypsi (say "Ip-see'') and now he oversees the museum that welcomes 10,000 visitors annually at two bucks a pop, which comes nowhere close enough to pay for the new roof. Guests get the privilege of seeing Miller's homage to local auto history, and little do they realize as they walk in the front door that those two dollars will be the best money they'll spend all year. This is because Miller is himself a walking exhibit, a curator and docent who brings the showroom to life. While it was a Hudson store, Miller expanded exhibits to include other Ypsi commercial successes: Kaiser, Tucker and Corvair. They're here, along with assorted memorabilia, in original glory. A battleship-gray '52 Hudson pickup is a heartbreaker, as is a low-mileage, bone-colored Kaiser-Darrin 161 Roadster with its unique slide-into-the-frame door technology. In another corner sits a Tucker montage: A ...