Dick's Classic Garage opened in July 2009, a collection of 60 cars in a new, modern building in San Marcos, Texas, about halfway between Austin and San Antonio near Interstate 35.
 
Dick Burdick, an 80-year-old Texas businessman and car collector, opened the 43,000 square-foot building to house such gems as a 1948 Tucker, a 1929 Dusenberg and a 1931 Packard roadster. Most of the exhibits are displayed in chronological order from 1929 through 1959.

The Tucker, No. 48 of the 51 made during the company’s brief one-year lifetime, has an odometer reading of less than a mile.

"He's probably got one of the best collections in Texas," said Richard Skidmore, Burdick's son-in-law who's helping with the museum. "This is his way of kind of sharing it with everyone else."

Burdick told an Austin newspaper that he plans to bring more cars to his new nonprofit museum, which has a restoration area for his next purchases.

But the bulk of Burdick's collection — about 250 cars — resides in the 29-year-old Central Texas Museum of Automotive History in Rosanky, Texas., a small out-of-the-way community southwest of Austin and about 40 miles west of San Marcos.

Dick Burdick notes on the museum web site: "Anyone who is at all interested in the history of our country and its people will have a natural fascination with the automobile, not only for its mechanical development, but also for the men and women who had the foresight and ingenuity to begin its development. Just look at the impact the automobile has had on society, not only in our country but around the world. This is why we find the preservation of the automobile so important to this and future generations."

Informaton: Dick's Classic Garage, Central Texas Museum of Automotive History

Two of the featured cars — a 1948 Buick Roadmaster convertible, 1929 Duesenberg