“I’ve heard that over and over,” recalled Doug Trimper.
That opportunity has now passed as the Trimper’s Wheels of Yesterday Antique and Classic Car Museum closes its doors for good.
Since 1996, anyone driving on Route 50 into the resort passed the low-key Wheels of Yesterday Museum on the right. Visitors stuck in summer traffic may have fondly recalled Greyhound’s “leave the driving to us” slogan evoked by the big 1956 double-decker Scenicruiser bus parked out front.
This past summer, a sign quietly went up at the museum announcing the cars inside were for sale, and the property itself was listed with Coldwell-Banker Real Estate. Granville Trimper’s personal automobile collection was being sold off car by car.
Trimper, who died in 2008 at age 79, is well know in the coastal community as patriarch of his family’s Boardwalk amusement park, former Ocean City council president, former Worcester County commissioner and lifetime volunteer firefighter.
What many didn’t know is Trimper was also an avid car collector who loved to hunt for old autos and restore them to their former glory.
Trimper’s car collecting passion began 40 years ago when son Doug presented his father with the gift of a 1931 Model A Ford coupe. “He had always liked Model As and Model Ts,” recalled Doug Trimper, “and every time he’d see one, he’d point it out.” Granville spent a year and a half taking apart the old Model A and putting it back together. A new hobby was born, which soon outgrew Trimper’s garage.
“We needed a place to store them,” said Doug Trimper. The huge I. Villani & Sons furniture store on the main highway in then-undeveloped West Ocean City was available, and the Trimper family acquired it in 1996.
“When we started, we only had about 12 cars,” Doug Trimper recalled, “so we contacted local car collectors to help fill the building. As our collection grew, they took out their cars and we put ours in.”
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