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Antique Motorcycle Museum

Argos, Indiana

THE FLAT, FERTILE FARMLAND around Argos, Indiana, may seem more like tractor territory than motorcycle mother-land, but Argos, a one-stoplight hamlet of 1500 souls roughly an hour’s ride south of South Bend, contains one of the most-interesting collections of important motorcycles anywhere.

They’re found in the aptly named Antique Motorcycle Museum, housed in an old brick building formerly a Masonic lodge. The museum is the work—indeed, its contents are the property—of one Larry Feece, a machinist whose shop and garage began overflowing with the vintage and classic bikes he’d collected. So Feece acquired his building and the museum was born.

It contains about half of his collection of 275 bikes, machines dating from 1899 to 1970. Some have race histories, all possess character. Five of them—two Vincents, a Rudge four-valve racer, an Indian and a Ducati—carry their manufacturers’ serial number l. Most are original and exist under a patina of dust which heightens the impression that they sit just as they were when rolled off the street, all too rare in this day of wildly overrestored historic bikes. All in all, this jewel of a museum is well worth a visit. —Jon F. Thompson

Information

Antique Motorcycle Museum 139 E. Walnut St. Argos, Indiana 219/892-5177 Open Saturday and Sunday, summer only, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission $2