I Just Had My Mind Blown By A Car Museum In The Middle Of Nowhere Built By A Scrap-Metal Magnate

Having lived in Detroit, LA, and Bavaria, and having a brother who lives in Hong Kong, I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the greatest car museums/collections this world has to offer. This past weekend, while on vacation with my family in Iowa, I saw one that surprised me and that I feel compelled to share.

I went on vacation this past week to the town of Okoboji, Iowa. Also called the Iowa Great Lakes, it’s a system of Glacier-formed lakes that has created a vacation area for Iowans, Minnesotans and Nebraskans. What was I doing there? My wife’s sister has a place there, and invited us to hang out; as I owe my wife after the WWII Jeep ordeal and I wanted take my son to the midwest for the first time (since that region was so formative to my upbringing), I was keen to take them up on the offer.

I’ll have a full story on the trip in a review I’m writing about my press car, the Mazda CX-90 (TLDR: A solid family car, and can be had for a white hot deal on the used market), so I’ll just skip ahead to my final half-day in Okoboji, when I stopped by Okoboji Classic Cars.

Just to set expectations: This was not the best car museum I’ve visited, but it was the most surprising. One expects to find impressive automotive displays in big cities, but Okoboji Classic Cars is a big metal pre-fab shop building located in the city of West Okoboji, which has a population of 308.

The biggest nearby towns are Milford and Spirit Lake, whose populations are roughly 3,300 and 5,500, respectively. Spencer, which is 30 minutes away, has a population of 11,300. Obviously, these numbers swell in the summer, but you get the idea: This is small-town, rural America.

So forgive me if I wasn’t expecting this:

About 15 years ago, Toby Shine and his wife Sylvia created a beautiful replica of 1950s Main Street in the nearby town of Spencer, Iowa, as well as 1960s-era Arnolds Park. At ~28,000 square feet, it is either America’s largest indoor mural painted by a single artist or the second largest. And it is simply stunning.   

The cars in the collection are awesome, but they’re not what surprised me. What surprised me is that someone spent lots of time and money building, basically, a Hollywood set. And if this were in LA, I’d have been less surprised; but it’s not in LA. It’s in West Okojobi.

One man, Jack Rees, spent over 28 months coming to this building, mixing his own paint daily (he is said to have used 400 gallons in total), and using a 4″ brush to create a facsimile of nearby downtown Spencer and Arnolds Park — a fake world for car nuts like you and me to enjoy. Check out this car hop service just outside a Drive-In:

Here’s an attendant to take your ticket:

And here’s the actual drive-in, which features a VW thing and a pair of MGs sitting between murals of a bunch of other cars and behind an actual movie being projected onto the painted-screen ahead.

Here you can see 1960s-era Arnold Park:

For reference, here’s what Entertainment Row in Arnolds Park looked like back in the day (this image appears to be 1950s-era):

Here are a few other great sets; a Chevy and Buick dealership with stock cars and pedal cars inside:

Here’s a mechanic’s shop with a 1941 Plymouth inside:

And here’s a restaurant that, I’m fairly sure, was actually a real restaurant, even if it wasn’t being used as one:

Sadly, as Sylvia told the small tour group I was in, her husband Toby passed away eight months ago. Sylvia did an amazing job guiding tours, and it was clear that cars are her love, too.

Here’s a bit more about Toby, per his obituary:

As the third generation in the family’s scrap-metal recycling business, founded in Spencer in 1902, Toby quite literally grew up in the yard. He dedicated his entire career to nurturing and expanding the company. In time, he proudly came to work alongside his two daughters, Keven and Eva –one of the greatest joys of his life. Over the decades, his passion for the business never faded; even in his final months, Toby continued coming to the office, keeping an eye on the price of copper (of course), and beating Mike Wycoff and Eva in cards.

An innovator at heart, Toby loved investing in new equipment and technology. He had a legendary reputation as a negotiator. Toby regularly inspired others in the scrap metal industry to watch closely, to see what he’d do next. He was often ahead of his time, including installing some of the first of its kind wire-chopping equipment in the U.S. Even with all the cutting-edge equipment he brought into the business, Toby often said that the real strength of the company came from within his family of employees. A respected industry icon, Toby received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 from the Institute of Scrap Metal Recycling Industries (ISRI). An honor he cherished, even though Toby claimed he was “too young” for anything with the word lifetime in it or to be called “Mr. Shine.”

Beyond steel and scrap, Toby had another great passion — classic cars. He attended auctions and shows with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store. Toby poured his creativity into Okoboji Classic Cars — a “Man Cave” turned museum that captures Okoboji and Spencer history. Through his fondness for classic cars, Toby developed some of his most precious friendships.

Toby and Sylvia could have spent their fortune on anything, but they decided to spent quite a bit of it on a beautiful car museum in their local town. I remain blown away, especially by the mural. Can you spot the door handle and the door handle and door hinges hidden in the red and blue cars’ bumpers below?