IMS Museum acquires 14 cars from Chip Ganassi Racing, including 5 Indy 500-winners
This is the museum's largest acquisition since 2011.
With the addition of these five Indy 500-winning cars from Ganassi, the museum now owns 39 500 winners and has in its possession 49, far and away the largest collection in the world.
The collection of 500 winners provides a needed update to the museum, which gives it five Indy 500-winning cars more recent than the previously most current winner it owned (1995).
INDIANAPOLIS — In the process of the IMS Museum's $60.5 million facelift, museum president Joe Hale and the museum's board made a decision that stands to alter its future for generations.
With all the cars rolled out of the museum's confines, they could take stock in the entire collection, and they started to see differentiating factor in the dozens of cars they owned: They either had something to do with their mission, telling the 100-plus-year history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, or they didn't.
Lucky for them, several of those non-mission cars had significant value, including the second-most valuable car sold at auction, the 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 R Streamliner, an ex-Formula 1 car driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Sir Stirling Moss which sold for $53,917,370 earlier this year. Together with RM Sotheby's, the museum sold off 11 cars in its collection, among them a (Le Mans-winning) 1964 Ferrari 250 LM ($36,344,960), a 1966 Ford GT40 MK II ($13,205,000), a 1908 Mercedes 17.3-liter 150 HP Brookland Semmering Rennwagen ($8,255,000) and a 1957 Chevrolet Corvette SS Project XP-64 ($7,705,000).
In total, the 11 cars combined to fetch just short of $125 million, and with that endowment, the museum has made its largest vehicle acquisition since 2011, purchasing 14 cars, including five Indianapolis 500-winning ones, from Chip Ganassi Racing, adding the museum's first modern-day Indy cars to its collection. The museum would not revealed what it paid for the cars.
'Three or four months ago, we started having conversations with Chip, and what a great partner to have. He's basically said, 'I have these cars, and they belong in your museum where people can see them and enjoy them,'' Hale told IndyStar. 'My whole point (in this acquisition) was that if a guy or girl who's 30 or 40 comes into our museum, they really don't see a car that is in their era that they can relate to, and with this collection from Chip, we're acquiring cars from the last 30-plus years, and it's really going to resonate with a younger crowd that comes in here.'
The five 500-winning cars acquired by the museum from CGR amount to all the team's victorious cars in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, including:
Juan Pablo Montoya's 2000 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Target G-force GF05
Scott Dixon's 2008 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara IR6
Dario Franchitti's 2010 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara IR6
Dario Franchitti's 2012 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara IR12
Marcus Ericsson's 2022 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Huski Chocolate Chip Ganassi Racing Honda Dallara IR18
Ahead of Thursday's news, the museum owned 34 500-winning cars, 28 of which are currently on display – 27 split between its pair of 500 winners' galleries as well as A.J. Foyt's victorious car from 1977 in the Four-Time Winners Gallery. Additionally, the museum currently has on loan the winning cars from 1996 and 2011 and eight more split between the Penske Gallery and the Four-Time Winners Gallery.
With the five purchased from Ganassi, it makes 49 Indy 500-winning cars in the museum's possession, far and away the most in the world. Prior to Thursday, the museum's most recent 500-winning car acquisition came in 2021, Bobby Rahal's 1986 winner, and until the addition of the five Ganassi cars, the museum's most current 500-winning car it owned was the victorious machine of Jacques Villeneuve from 1995.
Among the rest of the purchases from Ganassi include the museum's first Brickyard 400-winning car, the 2010 winner of Jamie McMurray, the Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet Impala SS, which was already on display in the museum as part of its temporary Brickyard 400-winning cars gallery.
Other highlights from the museum's latest acquisition include:
Scott Dixon's 2022 Indianapolis 500 Pole Winner, PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda Dallara DW12, in which he passed Al Unser as the all-time leader in most laps led in the 500
Michael Andretti's 1994 Target/Scotch Video Reynard 94I, Chip Ganassi Racing's first team win
Greg Moore's rookie year car, the 1996 Player's/Indeck Reynard 96I
Alex Zanardi's 1998 CART Championship-winning car, h 1998 Reynard 98I
Scott Dixon's 2015 IndyCar Championship winning car, Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet Dallara DW12
Delta Wing, one of three chassis proposals for the 2012 IndyCar season, which was unveiled at the 2010 Chicago Auto Show
Juan Pablo Montoya's Target Lola B2K/00, which won the 2000 Michigan 500
Tomas Scheckter's Target Chip Ganassi Racing G-Force GF09, in which he placed fourth at the 2003 500 — the South African driver's best finish at Indianapolis
5 thoughts on the IMS Museum's glow up: From 'indoor parking lot' to immersed wonder
Hale said since the news of the museum's $125 million endowment, outsiders haven't been shy about showing their interest in striking a deal.
'We've been approached by a lot of people who want to sell us stuff, but we really want to be strategic in what we add to the collection,' Hale told IndyStar. 'This (acquisition) was so important because it really does fill a void in winning 500 cars from the last 30-plus years, but I think we're going to be very strategic with any future acquisitions.'
Though he declined to offer specifics on the deal with Ganassi, Hale said that moving forward with the amount the museum has left from the nearly $125 million it earned from its deaccession of those 11 cars, the museum will plan to only work off of the interest revenue the endowment earns, with which it can make future purchases of cars or memorabilia to add to its collection.
'We've made a nice acquisition from Chip, but now we want to take a very steady approach annually to determine where the gaps in our collection are,' Hale said. 'It won't always be cars. It could be different items we think belong in our collection, whether it's a helmet or a race suit or a trophy.'
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