The Model T Museum in Richmond, Indiana

Plenty of museums have a Model T. This one has the Model T as its whole reason to exist, and it is run by the club that keeps the hobby organized. If you have read about the clubs and museums that look after these cars, Richmond is where that world keeps its front door.

A Model T museum run by the owners' club

The museum belongs to the Model T Ford Club of America, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with its mailing address in nearby Centerville, Indiana. The club is not affiliated with Ford Motor Company. It calls itself the largest club of Model T owners, with members in all 50 states and 41 foreign countries and more than 130 chapters, and it dates its founding to 1965.

That ownership shapes the place. Club members and their immediate families get in free and can use the museum's library. You do not need to own a Model T to join, which says something about the club's idea of who the cars are for. Membership also brings six issues a year of the club magazine, The Vintage Ford.

The club established its Model T Museum in 2007, first near Centerville, and later moved it a few miles east into Richmond. Press accounts date the move to 2012, though the club's own published history is thin on that point. Where it stands now is not in doubt: 309 North 8th Street, at North 8th and D, in Richmond's Historic Depot District. In 2017 the club dedicated the Bruce McCalley Memorial Library and Research Center there, after a donated collection of more than 600 items roughly quadrupled the library.

What is on the floor

Indiana's state tourism office counted more than 40 vehicles in 2025, permanent and on loan, spread across two buildings. The number shifts as loans come and go. The character does not. This is a collection arranged to show how the car changed and how it worked, more than to show off a few trophies.

Two cars frame the story. A 1909 touring car is one of the first Model Ts, from the months when Ford was still deciding what the car would be. A 1927 coupe is one of the last. Between them, nineteen years of production, and the slow change from brass to black and back toward color.

The cutaway chassis is where many visitors linger. A Model T body hides almost everything that made it work. Peeled open, the planetary transmission and the simple running gear stop being words in a manual and become parts you could almost touch. Nearby, the machine shop makes the point quietly. These cars survive because people still know how to make what wears out.

Homecoming weekend

The museum is quiet most weekdays. Once a year it is not. The club holds an annual homecoming in Richmond, and it is open to the public. It ran in June through 2025 and moved to August in 2026, so check the club's calendar before you travel. There is a swap meet, there are seminars and demonstrations, and there is a car show where the exhibits on the lawn have license plates and owners standing beside them.

For a first-time visitor, homecoming is the best way to see what the building is for. Inside, the 1909 touring car stands still. Outside, a car of the same family is being started, adjusted and argued over. It is one thing to read about driving a 100-year-old car. It is another to watch someone do it at walking pace through a crowd, steering around children and folding chairs.

"A museum like this works because the people at the door have grease under their fingernails. You can ask them how something felt to drive, and they will tell you what it felt like last Tuesday."

Nora Beckett

The club's larger national events can draw more than 100 Model Ts, and its Annual Meeting falls early in the year. Homecoming is the one that brings the club back to Richmond.

Planning a visit

Published listings do not agree on the details. One gives opening hours of Tuesday to Friday, 10 to 5, and Saturday, 10 to 4; another lists Tuesday to Sunday. They also disagree on admission for non-members, and all of these figures are dated, so check the current hours and price on the club's website, mtfca.com, before you drive in. Members, again, get in free.

Richmond pairs naturally with a bigger museum trip. Dearborn's collection places the Model T inside the national story of the automobile. Richmond places it inside the lives of the people who keep it running, and it is the more personal of the two. The Model A has its own world of clubs with a separate history, and the story of how those clubs formed is worth reading next.

In 2026 the newest Model T is 99 years old. In Richmond, on the right weekend, that age is hard to believe. Someone is always about to start one.

Sources and notes

• Visit Indiana: Sample a taste of automotive history at this Richmond museum
• Model T Ford Club of America membership brochure
• Old Cars Weekly: MTFCA to dedicate new library and research center (2017)
• Old Cars Weekly: Model T (December 2007, on the Centerville museum)
• Automuseums.info: The Model T Ford Club of America Museum
• Roadtrippers: Model T Museum, Richmond, Indiana