25. March 2025
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Museums & Exhibitions

Audrain Automobile Museum (Newport RI)

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Audrain Automobile Museum

Audrain Automobile Museum
3.8

Rating

 3.8/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Nice collection of cars
  • Interesting exhibition, well assembled

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Museum is simply too small

Unfortunately, I had very limited opportunity to explore the sights in and around Newport, Rhode Island, during my visit in July 2024. My coverage of the Tennis Hall of Fame Open and the induction to the International Tennis Hall of Fame of Indian tennis player Leander Paes  was simply too demanding. At least, I visited a few places. One of them is the Audrain Automobile Museum. Here is my review.

 

Audrain Automobile Museum – Location & Admission

The museum is located right next to the grounds of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. There is free street parking as well as parking lots next to two malls. The one at the Bellevue Gardens Shopping Center is significantly higher priced, but offers two hours of free parking if you spend money in one of their stores. As there is a CVS pharmacy and a grocery store, this should be easily doable. Newport offers a scheduled trolley bus service, which also gives you reduced parking at a central parking lot. Out of tennis events, the next stop is Bellevue & Memorial Blvd, served by line 68.

The Audrain Automobile Museum is opening daily from 10:00 to 16:00. Adult admission is 18 USD. However, you can typically find much better deals on platforms like Groupon.

 

Audrain Automobile Museum – The Visit

The exhibition space of the museum is rather small, while they have storage locations with a rather large number of cars. Thus, Audrain Automobile Museum did create an opportunity out of that and shows alternating exhibitions to certain topics. During my visit in August 2024, for example, I visited the Colors, the Cars of Summer one. There are a lot of stories around the car (in English). QR codes also allow you listening to the sounds of he engines. The exhibition I saw roughly had 30 vehicles in display. Not all of them were cars, there were only some scooters and motorbikes as well as go-karts for kids.

The temporary exhibition definitely did meet the topic. Furthermore, the cars were in excellent shape. However, the undeniable downside of the visit is that the collection of cars is indeed very small. My visit took at most 25 minutes. If you dig deeper into the topic and consume all of the information provided, you should add some ten to fifteen minutes to that time.

 

Audrain Automobile Museum  – Services

The staff was knowledgeable and very helpful. Close to the entrance, there is a small souvenir store with a nice range of items.

 

Audrain Automobile Museum – My View

It is a cool museum – but if you base the rating of your visit on the regular price (which I do in my review), it is questionable if it is worth the money. The architecture is nice and the cars are in great shape, indeed. As you see in the pictures, my visit during the Colors, The Cars of Summer exhibition did meet the topic and presented a nice variety of vehicles. Nonetheless, the visit was really short. I have to reflect that in the rating.

 

Greater Newport & Providence (RI) Area

Here are postings related to the Greater area around Newport and Providence in Rhode Island:

 

Technical Museums in 2024

Here are all my postings related to technical museums I published in 2024:

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