Peter von Sneidern likes to walk around the Northeast Motor Sports Museum and ask visitors if their visit exceeds their expectations of what the museum has to offer. They always say “yes,” the board member of the museum and vintage car restorer said.
The museum just south of the New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Route 106 opened in 2016 is packed with not only race cars but other exhibits and racing paraphernalia.
Visitors are allowed to reach into the interior of the cars, look under the hoods and even get on the floor and stare up at the suspension. Some cars have been restored and are still racing while others look much like they did when they took their final lap decades ago.
The museum’s collection of nearly 40 cars, motorcycles and even a snowmobile also includes the No. 20 car that Connecticut’s Joey Logano drove to win his first top-level, NASCAR Sprint race at the New Hampshire speedway, as well as a 2005 Lola that New Hampshire’s Bill Binnie drove in world-class events in the United States and Europe, including at Le Mans.
There are also racing uniforms, helmets, trophies, piles of old racing newspapers and photos that detail the sport’s history in New England, starting with the first oval track in Cranston, R.I., in 1896. There are photos of a 1925 track in Salem made entirely out of lumber and with 49-degree banks.
Von Sneidern comes up from Temple where he owns Kidder Mountain Restoration to play host on the first and third Saturdays of the month when the museum is open during the off-season. He also donated a vintage race car to the museum that he bought in 1969 and spent hundreds of hours restoring. The modified 1932 Ford Model B raced in the Keene area in the late 1930s.